St. Petersburg Times Online: Opinion

Editorial: Living on borrowed dime
In a holiday season that finds many households struggling to pay the year-end bills, the games that Florida government budget writers have played in recent years may carry a familiar ring. Here are three:

Editorial: To right a wrong
The U.S. Supreme Court should right the wrong decision it made in 1986 when it upheld a state antisodomy law and keep the government out of the bedrooms of consenting adults.

Letters: Maybe it's time to put limits on no-fault divorce
Re: If voters haven't called for "marriage reform," why bring it up? by Howard Troxler, Dec. 9.

Columns today
Howard Troxler: Congress can't diminish freedom of press; neither can local judge
Steve Andrews, who is an investigative reporter for WFLA-Ch. 8, has delivered a series of reports about how judges in Tampa are handling drunken-driving cases.

Gary Shelton: Just to be safe, stay away from the road
DETROIT -- This was not supposed to be their game. This was not supposed to be their day.

John Romano: Gimme five!
TALK OF THE TOWN

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.