Editorial: A chilling specter
During war, the balance of power between the executive and the other branches of government is likely to shift. The president is certainly entitled to greater deference in making some types of national security assessments. But a federal appellate court on Wednesday went too far in granting executive-branch officials virtually unreviewable authority to hold, indefinitely and without access to counsel, an American captured in Afghanistan. The decision ignored the Constitution and relegated the courts to the role of rubber stamp.

Editorial: An unfair tax burden
Poor Floridians face a greater load of state and local taxes than wealthier residents, an inequity that owes much to the state's heavy reliance on the sales tax.

Letters: A judge must respect the Constitution
Your Jan. 5 editorial, Clouded justice, gives your readers a misleading account of my judicial philosophy and that of Judge Kenneth Bell, whom I recently appointed to the Florida Supreme Court.

Philip Gailey: Republicans should reassure blacks with civil rights agenda
It's too bad -- in more ways than one -- that President Bush decided to renominate Charles Pickering Sr. to a seat on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Pickering's nomination was defeated along partisan lines in the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall, when Democrats had majority control. But now that Republicans are in charge, Bush has decided to reopen the fight over Pickering's record on civil rights. Democrats charge that this shows the Republicans are not serious about repairing their standing with black Americans after the Trent Lott fiasco.

Martin Dyckman: Republicans toss Democrats to the state Capitol towers
TALLAHASSEE -- As places of punishment go, the tower of Florida's Capitol is not exactly the old Tower of London. The view is better, for one thing. Better yet, everybody comes out alive. Still, it is definitely not where most members of the House of Representatives prefer their offices to be.

Robyn E. Blumner: Proportionality in athletic programs, a social construct, should be banished
Thanks to the way it has been enforced, Title IX, the 1972 law prohibiting sex discrimination in education, including college athletics programs, has turned college athletic directors into bean-counters. Rather than worry about quality of their programs, they are busy making sure they have enough players with the right chromosomes.

Bill Maxwell: Mrs. Mobley lived with the pain of all black mothers
Mammie Till Mobley died in Chicago on Jan. 6. She was 81.