Don Addis Editorial Cartoons E-mail a letter to the editor

Editorials
Al-Arian in limbo
The news that federal authorities are still actively investigating University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian's links to Islamic terrorist groups should delay USF president Judy Genshaft's decision on whether to fire Al-Arian. It would be premature for Genshaft to make a final determination on Al-Arian before the FBI does.

Church in crisis
The Roman Catholic Church still hasn't acknowledged that the growing sex abuse scandal has revealed institutional failures as well as human weakness.

Letters
Bishop should be commended for handling problem
Bishop Robert Lynch is a now a victim of the frenzy that has gripped our nation's media and the confusion that now reigns within the church and its faithful. He is a good and faithful servant of the Lord and of the church, and has guided the local Catholics with truth and justice.

Columns today
Howard Troxler
Passover: a time for remembering origins, regardless of faith
This evening marks the onset of Passover, or Pesach, the annual observance of the delivery of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt. The story comes to us from Exodus, with some later embellishment, you will forgive me for mentioning, in my very favorite movie of all time, The Ten Commandments, also starring Edward G. Robinson as Dathan ("Nyyyyah! Where's yer God now, Moises?")

Robert Trigaux
Too strong for its own good, Mercantile bows out
If any of the Tampa Bay area's independent and home-grown banks seemed on a tear, it was Mercantile.

Bill Maxwell
A repeat of a bad nominating decision
Like father, like son.

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.