Bill Maxwell
Southern Lebanese face uncertain future with Israel's withdrawal
One of the real tragedies of Israel's chaotic redeployment from the so-called security zone in southern Lebanon is getting little attention in the American press and elsewhere in the world.

Robyn E. Blumner
Can it truly be Father's Day if the DNA says otherwise?
Attention fathers. Maybe the best present you can get yourself for Father's Day is a paternity test to make sure you really are one.

Robert Friedman
Cartoonist's character lives on in Jim Shumaker
Jeff MacNelly is dead, much too soon. But Shoe lives on.

Editorial notebook: Diane Roberts
Backward Southern Baptists
What is it with the Southern Baptist Convention? They inch two steps forward, then leap half a mile backward. Not so long ago they apologized for slavery: a late, but commendable step forward. Only now they've gone and declared that women should not serve as pastors. It's enough to make a person go join the Episcopalians -- the Episcopalians have women bishops.

Editorials
A deal that's much too sweet
When the federal government agreed to buy about 150,000 tons of sugar worth $60-million last month to bail out sugar producers, U.S. Rep. Dan Miller, R-Bradenton, called the practice "corporate welfare." Consumers may have harsher words in mind when they learn that the government program more than doubles the price of sugar in the United States, costing shoppers $1.9-billion a year, according to the U.S. General Accounting Office.

A road too dangerous
Despite the frequent fatalities on U.S. 19, efforts to make the highway safer seem to lack urgency.

Letters
Big business plays the tyrant, too
Re: Rogue democracies, by Barbara Crossette, June 11.

Martin Dyckman
Innocent lives depend on luck to save them
TALLAHASSEE -- The news that two of every three death sentences have had to be done over has politicians searching for flaws in the 28-state study and for a silver lining in what seems to be a very dismal cloud.

Philip Gailey
Some juvenile offenders salvageable with a bright future
The juvenile justice system is under assault by politicians who are looking for another cheap way to squeeze political advantage out of the crime issue. Juvenile lawbreakers are being portrayed as monsters, and some of them are. But in dealing with the worst of them, we risk changing the juvenile justice system in ways that will make it more difficult to save those who have the potential to become productive citizens.