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Bush winces at price tag on state history
TALLAHASSEE -- There's a map from 1589, illustrating Sir Francis Drake's attack on St. Augustine, its colors still bright as summer. There are papers telling how in the early 1970s Disney transformed the groves of Central Florida into the concrete Kingdom of the Mouse. There's a telegram from civil rights leader Rev. C.K. Steele to Gov. LeRoy Collins, asking him to stop the persecution of black citizens during the Tallahassee bus boycott in 1956. There's the diary of Gen. Thomas Jesup, who captured Chief Osceola in the Seminole Wars of the 1830s.

Editorial: Public isn't Peterman's priority
At a recent meeting with Pinellas School Board members, state Rep. Frank Peterman, D-St. Petersburg, complained about their sour attitude toward the voter-mandated reduction in class size. "We need to start thinking ahead about how we're going to do it, not just talking about why we can't," he said.

Editorial: Leading by example
The $15-billion President Bush wants to spend treating AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean could have a significant impact. And there is no time to waste.

Letters: Voters approved smoking ban, so enforce it
Re: Retailers lobby for smoking loophole, Feb. 4.

 

Columns today
Sandra Thompson: After Bucs euphoria, reality rears its ugly head
The party's over. We had the post-playoff, pre-Super Bowl week of excitement, the Super Bowl, the post-Super Bowl week of excitement and all that came after the victory -- driving around town honking horns, a big parade, red championship T-shirts everywhere. Then we had Gasparilla, and the shuttle blew up.

Lucy Morgan: Democrats, be careful what you ask for
We've all been playing the speculation game about our next lieutenant governor.

 

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.