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Editorial: Commissioner Horne's kingdom
Debra Austin enjoys an impressive reputation on the campuses of Florida State University, where she serves as vice president for institutional effectiveness, and Tallahassee Community College, which she left last year after being passed over for the presidency. She has the academic credentials and the administrative experience to achieve success as the next chancellor of colleges and universities in Florida, and she deserves the support of the educators she will lead.

(Editoral): Unconscionable cuts
The struggle for a responsible budget continues as three moderate Republican senators join the Democratic chorus against President Bush's proposed tax cuts.

Letters: War coverage has too much of a negative focus
I have been a loyal St. Petersburg Times subscriber since moving here two years ago. But I have to say that I am disgusted with your coverage of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The front page of Tuesday's issue was just another case in point (the others this week have been equally negative).

 

Columns today
Christopher Goffard, Tamara Lush: TV provides dog's view on murder
Turns out, the real heroes of the notorious Vicki Robinson case weren't the detectives who solved her murder, the officers who stopped her killers on a Texas highway, or the prosecutors who put them away.

Mary Jo Melone: Protesting on the fringe and from the heart
Joe Bohren wasn't like the others. He didn't shout slogans. He didn't pace back and forth.

Gary Shelton: Feaster might not gloat, but he could
There are moments, sweet, delicious, giddy moments, when all logic and reason take leave of Jay Feaster, a logical and reasonable man.

 

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.