Don Addis Editorial Cartoons E-mail a letter to the editor

August 24, 2000

The Times recommends...
For a better justice system
With no open seats in this year's Pinellas-Pasco judicial elections, the three challengers running had no choice but to oppose sitting judges. Traditionally, judicial incumbents enjoy such a powerful advantage that few local lawyers are willing to make a run against them. The challengers deserve credit for their willingness to make this a real election.

Clean up Hillsborough's judiciary
Hillsborough voters have a historic chance to clean up the local judiciary. Last month's suicide of state attorney Harry Lee Coe exposed an office torn by politics, just as the widening investigation into several sitting judges renewed questions about the ethics and depth of some on the Hillsborough bench.

Dillinger for public defender
Bob Dillinger

Letters
Clinton shouldn't take credit for our prosperity
Re: Clinton: Keep this prosperity going, Aug. 15.  

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.