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

Editorial
Politics taint voter rights inquiry
It looks as though the U.S. Justice Department lied to the American people when it said it would not let partisan politics interfere with its inquiry into violations of voter rights in Florida's 2000 presidential election. After 11,000 complaints and an 18-month investigation, the department reduced the case to one charge against only three of the state's 67 counties. The department said it would sue Orange, Osceola and Miami-Dade counties for denying Spanish-speaking voters adequate help at the polls.

Editorial
The nuclear brink
India's and Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons turns the latest standoff over Kashmir into a global crisis that demands U.S. diplomacy.

Letters
Education needs better funding, not slick TV ads
A television commercial has been airing showing Gov. Jeb Bush interacting with students in a classroom and giving the impression that he is "the governor for education." The script is peppered with expressions of praise for his accomplishments and his commitment to quality education for the residents of Florida.

 

Columns today
Sandra Thompson
Don't yield to worries on lives of new 'adults'
On one side of the cake was an icing photograph of a little girl, a baby really, and on the other side a photograph of a beautiful young woman. Congratulations, it said, as so many cakes will say this weekend. It struck me that the two pictures on this graduation cake are illustrative of what's going on in the minds of the parents of these young people who've put high school, and home, behind them and are going off to college.

Lucy Morgan
Ethical path narrow and dangerous
Legislators walk a dangerous line when they try to pass laws about their own professions. But they've made themselves almost immune to conflict of interest charges.

Darrell Fry
For players' sake, ban steroids
Think of all the reasons why Major League Baseball shouldn't ban steroids. Then ask yourself this: Are any of those reasons worth developing liver damage? Heart disease? A stroke?

 

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.