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Author: Downey, Kyle1Lockyer, Bill2Marcmann, DavidKelwala, SurendraShumavon, SherrieBeardsley, Peter B.

Regarding "Spies Among Us" [May 8]: California left the Matrix system that matched public records with police files because the program did not provide adequate assurances that the collection and retention of data met the state's rigorous standards that protect privacy and other constitutional rights. We employ the new system only when we have reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or when we have reasonable suspicion that a particular individual has committed a crime. The system allows us to submit a single query to obtain information from several databases at once, rather than submitting separate queries to each. If we obtain useful information, we share it with appropriate state and local law enforcement agencies. If the information we obtain is not useful, we destroy it.

While your article offered a number of possible answers about "What Dreams Are Made Of" [May 15], I thought it left out one of the primary causes of dreaming: our spiritual needs. If we permit the possibility that real-time dreams are messages from our own soul and beyond, then all of the other potential causes for dreaming are not nullified but reinforced as tools that the soul uses to try to reach and guide us.

It is ridiculous to say that Freud would have "almost certainly" seen the symbol of a penis in the horn of a rhinoceros that storybook character Madeline dreamed punched a hole in the floor. Freud was neither shallow nor sex-crazed, nor is psychoanalysis so superficial and crude. The meanings of dreams are determined by painstakingly gathering dream associations and making careful inferences. It is a long, arduous process, and rarely is one able to analyze more than a few elements of a dream.

I was disappointed not to find mention of Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychology. Jung, for many years Sigmund Freud's protégé, broke with Freud in part because of how differently they interpreted the purpose and value of dreams. Freud believed dreams to reveal repressed wishes, usually sexual in nature. Jung went further. He posited that dreams were purposeful and that dreaming was an ongoing effort guided by the psyche to bring one's potential to conscious awareness, not for perfection but for wholeness.

I was aghast there was no mention of the Honda Civic Hybrid or the Toyota Prius with fuel economy figures better than the five little guys featured in "Drivers Try Downsizing" [May 15]. Nor was there mention of the federal tax credit program designed to wean American drivers from their Hummers and Escalades and into environmentally responsible vehicles. The federal tax credit Web address is www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/tax%5fhybrid.shtml.

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By Kyle Downey, Communications Director for Sen. John Thune, U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.; Bill Lockyer, Attorney General, Sacramento, Calif.; David Marcmann, Lumberton, N.J.; Surendra Kelwala, M.D., Livonia, Mich.; Sherrie Shumavon, Cincinnati and Peter B. Beardsley, Springfield, Mass.