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Bill Maxwell: Names of pride or labels for stereotypes?
Several years ago, as I prepared to speak to a class of Florida high school students, I studied the names on the roll. What I did next surprised the students and their teacher. I turned my back to the class and wagered that I could determine, from their first names only, who was white and who was African-American.

Editorial: Hidden environmental assaults
Antienvironmental forces in Congress are trying to trick the American public. Where they have failed in their frontal assault on rules protecting America's most pristine national forests from logging, they are trying to sneak through the back door.

Editorial: Byrd's preening
House Speaker Johnnie Byrd is not the first Florida politician to preach fiscal austerity while shoveling tax dollars into self-promotion. He's just the first to make such an extreme sport of it.

Editorial: Cheap talk on at-risk teens
The governor talks of strong families. His proposed budget, however, cuts services for runaways and is likely to increase foster care rolls, not reduce them.

Letters: Slashing funds for intervention is a troubling move
I am writing to express my deep concern regarding the governor's proposed budget, which eliminates funding for intervention and prevention programs from the Department of Juvenile Justice allocation. Specifically, this eliminates funding for the PACE Center for Girls, a highly regarded and successful statewide program for at-risk adolescent young girls and women. I am very familiar with the wonderful work this organization is doing, as well as the consistently high quality ratings PACE has received from DJJ. This is the first time this program has not been included in the governor's budget since PACE's expansion into a statewide organization 13 years ago. Not only has PACE proven successful in changing the lives of the young women it serves, but it has become a national model for addressing the needs of girls within the juvenile justice system.

 

Columns today
Howard Troxler: Holton case shows it's time to bring the death penalty to justice
I support the death penalty for grievous crimes. Nothing less is justice. I do not care in the slightest whether it is or is not a "deterrent."

Robert Trigaux: Skeptical economists band together in fine print
Rumor has it the growing debate over President Bush's tax cut plan will get its own reality TV show. Battle of the Eggheads.

Bill Maxwell: Names of pride or labels for stereotypes?
Several years ago, as I prepared to speak to a class of Florida high school students, I studied the names on the roll. What I did next surprised the students and their teacher. I turned my back to the class and wagered that I could determine, from their first names only, who was white and who was African-American.

 

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.