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November 29, 2001
Editorials
Adapt operations to threat
Without casting blame -- there is plenty to go around -- we know that the events of Sept. 11 caught our intelligence services short. Clearly, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not have the operatives and intelligence-gathering network in place to know what Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network were planning on U.S. soil.
A casualty of war?
If it acts in haste to gut public-records protections that took generations to put in place, the Legislature will be chipping away at the foundation of our democracy.
Letters
Defense should be our nation's top priority
I grew up in the quiet world that ill-informed civilians deride as an oxymoron: military intelligence. I spent the majority of my youth and young married life on secure, "closed posts." I never knew exactly what my father did, nor my husband, nor anyone in our organization, but I knew that their work was vital to the health and welfare of every citizen of this country and to world political stability as well.
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.
© Copyright 2001 St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.
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