Editorials
The sound of spin
Despite efforts in Tallahassee to portray last week's scaled-down budget in the best possible light, the cuts will hurt, leaving unmet many of the state's needs.

A selective protection of rights
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, Attorney General John Ashcroft has led the charge to dismantle privacy rights in the cause of pursuing terrorists. He tapped Congress for greater powers to gain access to people's financial and phone records. He authorized government agents to eavesdrop on a lawyer's conversations with a client suspected of terrorist connections. Now, Ashcroft has found what he apparently considers an inviolate right to privacy -- the government's record of gun purchases.

Kicking around immigrants
Ronda Storms took a mean-spirited swipe at legal immigrants the other day. The Hillsborough County commissioner wants to deny them health care under a government program that serves the poor. The idea came to her the day before Thanksgiving.

Letters
A new draft will solve nothing
Re: Why we need a draft, Dec. 2.

Paul Tash
We can't end peril, but we can prepare for it
WASHINGTON -- As we learn to live with new risks and anxieties, consider these observations from people who have been thinking about terrorism since long before Sept. 11.

Martin Dyckman
Watching the Legislature, our troops shouldn't be proud
TALLAHASSEE -- Words that failed Florida as a tourist slogan, ". . . The rules are different here," now fit the current management of our House of Representatives, where venerable rules and traditions are ignored at the whim of the leadership.

Robyn E. Blumner
Keeping our hands clean in this war
The headline in the St. Petersburg Times declaring "Key to Victory? Clean hands" was attached to a story on how good hygiene by U.S. Marines in Afghanistan is pivotal to preventing the spread of disease in the ranks. But the sentiment could be a metaphor for the way we prosecute this war against terrorism.

Bill Maxwell
Thurmond's South and all it embodies
Ah, the American South -- the homeland of Republican Strom Thurmond, the nation's oldest and longest-serving U.S. senator.

Don Addis
Neighborhood bunny bouncers
But first, the news: