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Editorial
WTSP's debate snub
A media watchdog group reports that local CBS affiliate WTSP-TV Ch. 10 has earned more from political advertising this year than any other station in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market. You'd think a station that lauds itself as "one of the best-performing CBS affiliates in the country" could sacrifice every now and then when an important public debate dwarfs its own commercial interests. WTSP had that chance this week, but declined to bump the premiere of 48 Hours Investigates to air the first gubernatorial debate between Jeb Bush and Bill McBride.

Editorial
Bush's game of catch-up
With new plans to build classrooms and give more incentives to teachers, the governor is making promises that run counter to his own education agenda until now.

Letters
Keep CentCom where it's safe: at home in Tampa
Temporarily deploying a CentCom team closer to "potential battle zones" might offer immediate advantages in the war against terrorism, but there's good reason not to move the U.S. Central Command permanently to the Persian Gulf. These key personnel and facilities are much more secure on friendly home ground. If CentCom's ability to direct operations were interrupted or impeded by terrorists, it could have grave consequences.

 

Columns today
John Romano
Superb? Yes. MVP? No way
Call Alex Rodriguez one of the most impressive players in baseball and few would argue otherwise.

Mary Jo Melone
Wednesday means cake, some coffee and the world
Tom Shelby sits at the head of the table, his cane beside him, his gavel in mid air.

CHRIS GOFFARD & TAMARA LUSH
Officers flash beer, badges
What happens when you start a night of partying at Club Hedo in Ybor City?

 

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.