Editorial
Confusing school grades
An administrative blunder points out, once again, the basic problems with the governor's school-grading system.

Editorial
Let promoters pay upfront
The promoter of 2001 Super Fest in St. Petersburg wrote the city a bad check. The promoter of May's Bay Fest music festival is offering to pay only 20 percent of its debt to the city, and it stiffed a charity involved in the event. Add the many complaints about disorganization at the recent Americas' Sail 2002, and the city of St. Petersburg has a growing public relations problem on its hands.

Editorial
A merger's deflation
Robert Pittman and Gerald Levin got better than they deserved. As two of the executives most responsible for the inflated price tag and overblown rhetoric attached to the merger of America Online and Time Warner, they earned their ungraceful departures from what is left of the combined company.

Letters
Founders didn't mean to banish God
Re: When faith rules over reasoned judgment, we've adopted the Saudi way, July 14.

Diane Roberts
Who's the next AG?
It's the state's lawyer. The people's lawyer. Voters must decide what kind of person they want to represent them for next attorney general. And Bob Butterworth has created a hard act to follow.

Robyn E. Blumner
President doesn't have absolute military authority over Americans
No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress.

Philip Gailey
More debates are needed to help voters
A question for Florida voters: With the Sept. 10 Democratic gubernatorial primary just over seven weeks away, do you know where the candidates are on the issues you care about?

Martin Dyckman
Malpractice war calls for academic task force
TALLAHASSEE -- What Florida needs least, but is least likely to escape, is another malpractice war between doctors and trial lawyers. The rhetorical guns are already thundering. Arsenals are beginning to swell with money, the root of all political evil. This is good news only for politicians on the take and for the campaign advertising industry.

Bill Maxwell
Thrilled with African-Americans in genteel sports
I was not old enough to experience the full power of the Joe Louis phenomenon in black America. In Black America, Louis, aka the "Brown Bomber," was a genuine hero from 1937 to 1949. He was seen as a great man, a towering personality who dominated and shaped the hopes of African-Americans in every corner of the nation.