St. Petersburg Times Online: Opinion

Editorials
Schools or loopholes?
The Senate's budget proposal would force Gov. Bush to decide which is more important: adequate funding for education or tax breaks for special interests.

Preaching bigotry from the bench
Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court is a man who thinks his bench is a pulpit from which to preach bigotry. He became a hero to religious fundamentalists when he refused to take down a copy of the Ten Commandments he had tacked on his courtroom wall. He was then elected to the state Supreme Court, where he continues to disgrace the judiciary.

Indian self-policing is a bad idea
A measure before the Florida House today is a relief bill for thugs, thieves, hustlers and crooks. It would encourage an expansion of gambling on Indian lands even as it stripped police and the courts of the authority they need to protect the public.

Letters
Deputies dealt with babysitter in a logical way
Re: Deputies draw guns on teen babysitter, Feb. 27.

Columns today
Howard Troxler
A fractured logic for broken system
Our friends in the state Legislature are worried that not enough people in Florida have health insurance.

Jan Glidewell
At long last, opposites attracted
A strange, but for me fortuitous, juxtaposition of the courses of lives will take place this evening at Island Estates near Clearwater.

Ernest Hooper
Haircuts R fun; the Mayor's Paper; smoking clothes
As a person who used to get his hair cut at a barber college for $5, I have never thought much about making the experience an enjoyable one for my two sons.

Robert Trigaux
In the age of Enron, being duped is now all the rage
Dupe: to deceive with trickery; a person easily fooled. -- Webster's Dictionary.

Perspective
Taking jobs, alienating customers
For weeks Americans have been told that the outsourcing of high-tech jobs is good for our economy. So said Greg Mankiw, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers in a recent report signed by President Bush. So, too, writes Thomas Friedman of the New York Times in articles praising the rise of call centers in India used for everything from making airline reservations and reading medical X-ray films to providing tech support for American computer firms.

Philip Gailey: Democrats fall off campaign finance reform wagon
Well, what do you know. Soft money is back, and it's making hypocrites of all those Democrats who fervently championed the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, not to mention those Republicans who objected to the law's restrictions on issue advocacy.

Bill Maxwell: Who is for the farm worker?
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is touting legislation to improve the lives of Florida's 300,000-plus farm workers, who endure institutional and systemic injustices each day in our fields and groves and their personal lives.

Robyn E. Blumner: For some defendants, an American gulag
In Bernard Malamud's masterpiece The Fixer, inmate Yakov Bok was subjected to psychological torture in a Soviet gulag through the humiliations of constant shackling and repeated strip searches.

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