Bill Maxwell
George Bush is clearly not up to the job
By now, politically aware Americans know that President George W. Bush's honeymoon is over. I will not repeat all of the poll numbers, only that of a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal tally showing that Bush has a lousy 50 percent job approval rating.

Robyn E. Blumner
Driven by politics, not principles
The U.S. Supreme Court has turned into a political one, where today's justices are quite likely to vote along party lines.

Martin Dyckman
A ban on soft money is critical to campaign finance reform
TALLAHASSEE -- When the United States declared independence 225 years ago, the resolution needed the approval of but a single chamber, and even that, as David McCullough and other historians emphasize, came none too easily. It is tantalizing to wonder: Had the Continental Congress consisted of a House and a Senate, might our national anthem still be God Save the Queen?

Don Addis
Shipping gator aid to the Big Apple
My old cohort in humor, Paul Dickson, with his pal Joseph C. Goulden, once wrote a book called There Are Alligators In Our Sewers & Other American Credos -- "a collection of bunk, nonsense and fables we believe."

The British care to rehabilitate criminals
What should we do with children who kill? Lock them up forever or place them in therapy? Declare them "evil" or try to rehabilitate them?

O'Connor's conscience
In airing her concerns about issues of fairness, the Supreme Court justice has given new momentum to the movement for a moratorium on the death penalty.

Making peace with the two-piece
String bikinis, hankinis, Brazilian bikinis and teeny bikinis. Monokinis, Tongo bikinis, thong bikinis and hipster bikinis. To the tune of half a billion dollars a year, American women are dropping their maillots and tunic suits for something a little more revealing than the basic tank. Bikini-clad women -- most whose bodies probably wouldn't make the cover of Cosmopolitan -- are strutting their stuff from St. Pete Beach to Santa Cruz, wearing little but a few scraps of spandex and a tan. The two-piece trend even made the front page of the New York Times.