Editorials
An encouraging start
Tuesday's premiere of touch-screen voting in Hillsborough County wasn't flawless, but the problems appear easy enough to correct before this fall's general election.

Helping to feed a hungry world
Rice is food for a starving world. One-third of the world's population subsists on rice, deriving half their daily calories from it. Any bump in nutritional value or productivity that can be programmed into the annual rice crop would be a boon to the world's poor.

Twilight zone
A recent poll reveals a vast gap between the concerns of Floridians and the agendas of their political leaders, and the key issue is education.

Letters
Avoid simplistic assessments of war
Re: Religion at risk of losing its moral authority, March 24.

Bill Maxwell
The source of my interest of the Middle East conflict
Because I often write about the Middle East, especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many readers have asked me to explain why I -- an African-American who is neither Jew nor Muslim -- cares about this subject so deeply. It is a fair question, and I feel compelled to answer.

Martin Dyckman
Turns out, Bush needs Democrats
TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush's office organized a news conference last week to demonstrate -- or so it hoped -- massive support for the school code revision. Such symbolic rituals have become frequent events here, for which I suppose we can thank television. The game is to muster as many supporters as you can, put them all on camera (if only a few before the microphone) and say by body language to potential troublemakers, "Don't even think about opposing this."

Philip Gailey
What Mideast peace would look like
Let's hope President Bush can put the lid back on the violence raging between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and let's hope he can get the warring parties back to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, let's hope for a miracle, because short of one, I doubt that there is going to be real peace any time soon in that land of old hatreds and multiplying resentments.

Robyn E. Blumner
Congress is crossing the line with religion
Our politics are slathered with religion. President Bush never misses an opportunity to inject it into his speeches, from his claims that "the true strength of America lies in the fact that we are a faithful America by and large" to his recent radio address in which he sermonized on how it is God's will that we defeat terrorism.