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Editorial: Police and the mentally ill
Tampa's next mayor should investigate the troubling number of incidents in which mentally ill people have been shot by police. Tampa police have injured or killed five disturbed people in recent years. There is a growing awareness nationally of the relationship between mental illness and crime, and an inquiry could assess how officers can better protect themselves and the public.

Editorial: Legislative triage
The major criticism of the senior citizens' prescription drug assistance bill that the Florida House of Representatives unanimously passed the other day is that it is too modest. Even so, it faces a cool reception in the Senate. In such tough times for the state budget, isn't something better than nothing?

Editorial: Billboard bullies
A proposed settlement between the Pinellas County Commission and Clear Channel would permit the company to erect bigger, taller and flashier billboards than the ones that currently pollute our county roadways.

Letters: In Pinellas, our schools still need race ratios
I have found the Feb. 26 and 27 stories in the St. Petersburg Times concerning race ratios in the schools, along with the conduct of the Pinellas County School district and the School Board, to be very interesting. The question that arises from such stories is: Why are the race ratios necessary?

 

Columns today
Howard Troxler: Privatizing death row appeals will surely accelerate executions
It's the governor's job to make tough choices and propose an overall state budget. It is everybody else's job to whine and nitpick his suggestions, line by line. I'm takin' another turn at bat.

Robert Trigaux: Florida's deep pockets give generously, elsewhere
When it comes to the biggest of the big-buck philanthropists in Florida, the donors were united in where they placed their charitable gazillions last year.

John Romano: UF handed a shot at redemption
As the lights dimmed and the season was turning dark, a most amazing thing happened. Florida became potent once again.

 

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.