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Editorial
Find a clear focus in Colombia
One of the more serious cases of mission creep in the war against terror can be found in the rising U.S. military role in war-torn Colombia. What was originally cast as U.S. military aid to stamp out Colombia's cocaine production is becoming a U.S.-led effort to stamp out leftist rebels there. The strategy for closing the noose and furthering America's regional interests is problematic. The American people need to know what our priority is: drugs, the rebels or a stable supply of oil?

Editorial
Yes on Amendment 6
For the sake of health and quality of life, Florida voters should approve an amendment to prohibit smoking in most indoor workplaces.

Letters
Smoking ban would damage state economy
Re: Will ban leave patrons in a huff for a puff?, Oct. 8.

 

Columns today
Tampa Uncuffed
Sleeping with gun in public is unwise
Note to tired motorists: Don't fall asleep in a 7-Eleven parking lot with a sawed-off shotgun in the back seat.

Mary Jo Melone
Testimony for breast self-exams: 3 survivors
Ursula Schmidt was so upset at what the man quoted in the newspaper said that she tracked him down and wrote him a letter. Mrs. Schmidt is a two-time breast cancer survivor. She found the first lump herself. The man in the newspaper was a doctor in Seattle who had done a study that concluded it doesn't matter whether women examine their breasts or not. Those who do, the study reported, die as often from breast cancer as those who don't.

 

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.