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Times recommends
Amendment 11 helps university system
In its 2000 session, the Florida Legislature voted to abolish the Board of Regents because the regents wouldn't approve the creation of three new colleges that were wanted by powerful legislators. Specifically, the speaker of the House, John Thrasher, joined by the president of the Senate, John McKay, proposed the creation of a new college of medicine at Florida State University.

Yes for high school site
The quest to build an alternative high school for troubled students in Pinellas County reaches voters on Nov. 5.

Yes to protect pregnant pigs
Critics of Amendment 10 -- which would regulate treatment of pregnant pigs -- have loaded up on sarcastic puns as they attack the issue. "This is the archetypal pig-in-a-poke," said Pat Cockrell of the Florida Farm Bureau, the amendment's main opponent, calling it a "greasy attempt" to "lard up our state's Constitution." But there is nothing funny about the conditions addressed in this amendment, titled the Animal Cruelty Amendment.

No on Hillsborough charter
If you're looking to make Hillsborough County government more dysfunctional than it already is, go no further than the charter amendment on the November ballot. Voters will decide whether to create a new position -- an "internal performance auditor" -- to examine how well the county spends money on public services. Sounds harmless enough -- unless the commission, which would hire and fire the auditor, doesn't like spending money anyway on bus service, road maintenance, services for the elderly or health care for the poor. Voters should reject the proposal.

Letters
Don't clutter our Constitution with amendments
This election year, voters are being presented with constitutional amendments on a wide variety of things, none of which belongs in the Florida Constitution. Some of them I disagree with and others may have some merit as legislation or as administrative directives, but none belongs in a constitution.

 

Columns today
Steve Bousquet
The 'Bubba image' can boomerang on McBride
He played football. He was in the Marines. He sounds Southern.

Sandra Thompson
Child safety is the real scare of this Halloween
Halloween is next week, and I can't say I'm really looking forward to it. I don't have any kids at home, and where we live now we're not likely to get trick or treaters, so the holiday doesn't really affect me directly at all. But I overheard a woman at the gym ask another if she was taking her trick-or-treat-age kid out, and she said she was taking him to Davis Islands. I guess that's one place that seems safe now.

Eric Deggans
Sniper threw nation, media off balance
Suspects accused of the three-week Washington D.C.-area sniper case may be in police custody, but the public sniping has only just begun.

 

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.