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Editorials
Protect alien children
Unaccompanied children arrive on our shores for a variety of reasons. Some are hoping to escape grinding poverty in their homelands. Others are brought in by smugglers looking to use children as indentured servants. Others are seeking safety from genocidal wars, forced conscription in the military or inhumane customs such as genital mutilation. For whatever reason they come, nearly 5,000 do so every year, and our government is ill-equipped to handle the influx.

Ending the insanity
U.S. diplomacy in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is crucial, but no one has a magic formula for curtailing the violence without appearing to reward terrorism.

Letters
Arafat and Sharon stand in the way of peace
The tragedy going on in Israel will not end until both Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon are out of the picture. They are relics of the past with their own agendas. Both of them are consumed with hate for past wrongs that were indeed, on each side, very, very wrong. They are overcome by the haunting memories of injuries not yet avenged -- nor will they ever be. They are cemented in acrimony that only the aged, ever poised for bloody revenge, can amass.  

Columns today
John Romano
Fiscal reality casts pall on a nice start
ST. PETERSBURG -- The season has just begun and already the Rays have distinguished themselves from the pack. They lead the league in frugal.

Ernest Hooper
Bean there, sorority fare, just stay out of my hair
The next time you decide to order one of Tampa's favorite dishes, you may want to consider how it will affect you.

Susan Taylor Martin
Ambulances at bay, wounded unrescued
BEIT JALA, West Bank -- With Israeli-Palestinian gun battles raging less than a mile away, you'd think the Beit Jala Hospital emergency room would be full of casualties. 

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.