Commentary: A 1949 Harry Truman speech that rings true today

In the interest of sharing something that I ran across while looking for something else, I found a speech that President Harry Truman delivered on Nov. 3, 1949, in St. Paul, Minn.

I offer it under the rubric: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.” | 01/26/12 06:06:49 By - Bill Morem

Commentary: Thanks to Gingrich, Washington state's caucuses might be relevant

Newt Gingrich has accomplished something I didn't think was possible.

I don't mean his return from the political graveyard to win the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday, as significant as that is. | 01/25/12 06:16:28 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Despite ban, those big Burmese pythons are here to stay

Now that federal regulators have outlawed the importation of humongous, gator-eating pythons, all Floridians can breathe a grateful sigh of relief. Finally we are saved from this insidious reptilian plague!

Sorry, but no. We might as well try to ban fleas. | 01/25/12 06:04:01 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Hearing the outraged voices of the poor

Peter De Vries, who wrote for The New Yorker, said reality is what won't go away no matter how hard you try to make it go away. For Americans in 2012, what won't go away is the growing income disparity between rich and poor and the decline in American social mobility. | 01/25/12 06:00:36 By - Michael Carey

Commentary: Paula Deen may just be the perfect pitchwoman for diabetes

Don’t expect Paula Deen to go cold turkey on the hoecakes.

If she did, she wouldn’t be Paula Deen. And her ardent fans — people who stand to learn from her newfound health challenges — would disengage. | 01/24/12 06:01:32 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Strip Club's 'I Have A Dream Bash' a moment when reverence died

You might call this a requiem for reverence.

It seems that one Jeffrey Darnell Paul, a graphic artist from Miami Beach, had been tasked with creating a poster for a strip club’s so-called “I Have A Dream Bash” last week in apparent “honor” of the Martin Luther King holiday. So this genius concocts an image of the nation’s greatest human rights leader holding up a fan of $100 dollar bills like some low rent “playa” while a scantily-clad woman looks on. Paul, let the record show as African Americans duck their heads in mortification, is black. | 01/24/12 06:02:14 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Remembering Joe Paterno

The pain and suffering are over for Joe Paterno. | 01/23/12 13:59:53 By -

Commentary: A world without Twinkies?

Some say that in the event of a nuclear holocaust, the only survivors would be cockroaches. I am confident, however, that Twinkies also would survive, providing the roaches with something for dessert. | 01/23/12 06:11:10 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Religion only seems important to Americans in an election year

The public prominence of faith during a presidential campaign is akin to Iowa's re-emergence as a state that matters once every four years.

People don't talk much about it the rest of the time. Could be because religion, like the Hawkeye State, isn't that important to most Americans. | 01/23/12 06:00:25 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Getting 'those people' to straighten up and fly right

The General Assembly is back in session, thank the Lord; now, we'll have some protection against Those People.

Take, for instance, the bill Republicans have introduced to require drug tests for anyone applying for unemployment checks. We certainly don't want to give taxpayers' hard-earned money to some druggie just because he's out of work. | 01/22/12 06:36:08 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: 'God particle' comes with a steep pricetag

Science never was my strong suit. But I do have to confess some interest in the pursuit of what’s popularly called the God particle, much to the dismay of particle physicists who prefer the term Higgs boson. | 01/22/12 06:29:41 By - C.W. Gusewelle

Commentary: Haiti's ingrained suspicion of international 'help'

Two years after the earthquake that shattered its buildings and soul, Haiti has grown sick of compassion.

Citizens, nations and charities responded quickly after the Jan. 12, 2010, quake that claimed 250,000 lives and left more than a million persons homeless. Non-governmental aid organizations rushed in with medical supplies, food and water, and tents. Their trucks and tents still crowd the landscape. And that’s become a problem. | 01/21/12 06:35:49 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Want shovel-ready investment? Try spending on defense

President Obama just ordered massive cutbacks in defense spending, eventually to total some $500 billion. There is plenty of fat in a Pentagon budget that grew after 9/11, but such slashing goes way too far. | 01/21/12 06:12:02 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Gingrich should learn that the poor already work hard

I wish Newt Gingrich had met Kendra Keel.

Gingrich, the Republican presidential candidate who has shot up in state polls before Saturday’s crucial S.C. primary, and Keel, a founding member of the Myrtle Beach group Mothers Against Violence, both attended Monday’s King Day breakfast and community awards banquet. | 01/20/12 14:42:43 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: An off the record meeting for 500 journalists?

A day after the Democratic National Convention Committee reiterated that Charlotte's gathering would be "the most open and accessible in history," 500 media representatives were given a tour Wednesday of their September digs. | 01/20/12 13:34:18 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: The stained-glass ceiling halted Perry's presidential run

When hillbilly bandleader W. Lee "Pass the Biscuits, Pappy" O'Daniel quit the U.S. Senate in 1948, he promised to go home.

"I might start a fiddle band," he said. | 01/20/12 07:36:18 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: War and brutalized consciences

Nearly 30 years ago Greg told me how it was, cutting the ears off dead men. I had sought out Vietnam veterans to interview for a story about a pop song that was inspired by the war — 19 by Paul Hardcastle. Greg gave me an earful.

I think of Greg whenever it is time to pass judgment on the things soldiers do. | 01/20/12 06:03:25 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: GOP candidates are bashing capitalism

The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant, and in popular lore, the elephant never forgets. But this year, some key GOP figures forgot things they were supposed to know. | 01/20/12 06:08:31 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Will Colbert Nation make its point about super PACs in S.C. primary?

What's more likely to call attention to the outrage that is the super PAC: a bunch of Occupiers showing up at federal courthouses Friday — or Colbert Nation upending Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary by voting for Herman Cain? | 01/19/12 07:35:34 By - Linda P. Campbell

Commentary: Haiti isn't trendy but it's the real news

The news of the day is burning with big questions:

Who’ll be the next head coach of the Dolphins? Why is Rosie O’Donnell killing hammerhead sharks? Is Khloe Kardashian really a Kardashian? | 01/19/12 06:00:52 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Could Libertarian Gary Johnson shake up the presidential race?

A candidate from the Southwest looks like a shoo-in for the fall ballot. But he won't be a Texan, or named Perry or Paul.

Three weeks after he declared himself "liberated" from Republicans, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is proving that you can quit and still get ahead. | 01/19/12 06:00:55 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Media must be transparent on campaign spending

The most squalid and anti-democratic element of the U.S. electoral system is its insatiable appetite for money, vast rivers of money. It transforms our leaders into supplicants, required to contort themselves and their policies to please rich patrons. Current spending forecasts for all candidates in the 2012 races run as high as $8 billion. | 01/18/12 06:08:38 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Obama needs to look towards Latin America

It's no big secret that the United States has lost some economic and political clout in Latin America over the past decade, but United Nations economic projections for 2020 should set off alarm bells in Washington D.C. | 01/18/12 06:00:12 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Ron Paul is the great contrarian

Does Ron Paul matter?

The Texas congressman doesn’t have a chance of winning the GOP presidential nomination. In fact, it’s looking like no one does against Mitt Romney. | 01/17/12 06:00:15 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Colbert's super PAC shows political spending is so sad it's funny

Stephen Colbert is making a mockery of political spending in the 2012 election. This seems to be the only sensible response. Mocking is what's called for. | 01/17/12 06:11:36 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Jim Crow is alive and kicking

I have something for you.

In June of 2010, I wrote in this space about a book, The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander, which I called a "troubling and profoundly necessary" work. Alexander promulgated an explosive argument. Namely, that the so-called "War on Drugs" amounts to a war on African-American men and, more to the point, to a racial caste system nearly as restrictive, oppressive and omnipresent as Jim Crow itself. | 01/17/12 06:04:15 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: South Carolina as a GOP model for the nation?

The broad concepts the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination will tout on the stage at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center Monday night have been preached for almost a quarter of a century in South Carolina.

Taxes are low. Labor unions have been defanged. | 01/16/12 14:53:39 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Iran gives the West a gift

The most recent threat by Iran to block the Strait of Hormuz and choke off the flow of the world's oil supply, while frightening to some, really represents a golden opportunity. | 01/16/12 13:56:27 By - Paul V. Kane

Commentary: The spirit of MLK lives in Occupy movement

If Martin Luther King Jr. were somehow able to attend Lexington's annual celebration of his birth Monday, where would he spend his time? | 01/16/12 13:06:25 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: Is MLK a safe icon or radical organizer?

It’s a case of mistaken identity.

At last count, 893 streets in the United States (and another two in Puerto Rico) have been renamed for Martin Luther King Jr. | 01/16/12 07:13:34 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Peering into the 2012 economical crystal ball

Every year at this time we peer into the murky future, bracing ourselves. We grasp for answers and make predictions.

We can show great confidence in our predictive powers, delivering sensible judgments so people think we’re smart. Or we can be provocative. | 01/16/12 06:00:54 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: For S.C. GOP primary, forget Romney and bring on Ric Flair

After watching Newt Gingrich’s concession speech in Iowa, I can’t wait for the GOP presidential debate that will be held at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center on Jan. 16. He tore into Mitt Romney, who won the Iowa caucuses by eight votes over Rick Santorum in the closest race there ever, as all of the cable news networks carried his remarks live. | 01/16/12 06:00:06 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Wounded warriors get help from therapy horses

War Horse, director Steven Spielberg's movie adaptation of a children's book, is a fictional story about an unbreakable bond between a young military man and his horse. But true stories about horses and warriors are being written right here in North Texas, and lives are changing through the therapeutic benefits of the relationship that can develop between the two. | 01/15/12 06:19:35 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: We must help returning troops forge a future

Anne Pritchett hangs out where good people gather to try to shape America into the better country that it has always promised to be.

The end of the war in Iraq and the return home of U.S. troops in December led me to find a safety pin she had given me at a 2006 peace rally near the Plaza. Such keepsakes symbolize what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve loved in his lifelong civil rights efforts for peace, nonviolence and love. It’s what we’ll celebrate in honor of the Jan. 16 holiday for King’s birth. | 01/15/12 06:41:55 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: South Carolina is ready for glare of GOP's spotlight

The Palmetto State dodged a bullet last week when Texas Gov. Rick Perry surprised political observers by saying he would remain in the hunt for the GOP presidential nomination. | 01/14/12 06:04:40 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: The Republican party can't make up its mind

Republicans love to invoke Ronald Reagan and for good reason. He won the White House by unseating an incumbent president, not easy to do. But in this race, none of the candidates has managed Reagan’s signature political feat. | 01/14/12 06:08:41 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Santorum's straw man on gay marriage

We gather here today to parse the meaning of "boo."

Not "boo" as in the greeting of ghosts and goblins but, rather, "boo" as in the chorus that drowned the bigot Rick Santorum last week after he defended his opposition to gay marriage before an audience of college students in Concord, N.H. Santorum took the same header into non sequitur and illogic that gay marriage opponents often take, i.e., if we legalize this, then we must also legalize polygamy. | 01/13/12 06:00:17 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: FBI's definition of rape aligns stats with real world

Last week, the FBI’s crime database joined reality.

The agency issued a new definition for the crime of rape, rectifying a policy more than 80 years behind the times.

The old definition had long contributed to skewed data and damaging attitudes. | 01/13/12 06:08:33 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Hispanic voters will be Romney's biggest problem

Republican hopeful Mitt Romney will have two big problems if, as expected, he clinches the Republican nomination for the November election: his business background and Hispanic voters.

While most of the media focus on the first, Romney’s biggest problem will be the second. | 01/12/12 14:11:19 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Federal court keeps Oklahoma from discriminating against Muslims

Thank goodness for Oklahoma.

Every time Texas begins to feel like some remote backwater -- say, during a presidential campaign -- Oklahoma is right there to make Texans feel downright civilized. | 01/12/12 06:01:53 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Santorum stumbles over food stamps stereotype

Unfortunately, I’m never amazed at what can come out of a politician's mouth. The latest non-surprise flowed from the lips of former Sen. Rick Santorum as he campaigned in Iowa. | 01/12/12 06:00:41 By - Charles E. Richardson

Commentary: Iran's Ahmadinejad's Latin American 'tour of tyrants'

Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad will be visiting Latin America this week for the fifth time since 2007 — as often as U.S. presidents over the same period, and visiting more countries than them. He must have powerful reasons to spend so much time in the region. | 01/12/12 06:07:24 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: In breast cancer battle, exercise can save lives and dollars

In the battle against breast cancer, there's one self-defense tool that every woman should be wielding. Exercise. And with the direct national cost for breast cancer care in the United States at $16.5 billion yearly, we need to be instituting public policies and community strategies that help ensure that she can. | 01/11/12 06:02:26 By - Helen Durkin

Commentary: There's nothing like the printed word

What the world is today, good and bad, it owes to Gutenberg. So said Mark Twain in 1900 about the man who invented the printing press. What would the American novelist say today?

Does print have a future? | 01/11/12 06:18:29 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: Romney will win Florida ... unless manatees grow wings

Florida is being overrun by pundits and pollsters in advance of the upcoming Republican presidential primary.

The national media's mission in the weeks ahead is to inject the Florida primary contest with high drama and suspense. In reality, the race is easy to call. | 01/11/12 06:06:48 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Occupy Washington fights the cold

Early in the pre-dawn hours of Jan 5, Park Police went from tent to tent in the freezing night to wake up sleeping Occupy Washington protestors at Freedom Plaza, a block away from the White House. But they were not about to evict the 100 people camping there for three months hoping to "get big money out of politics" as they say. | 01/10/12 12:48:56 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Paul is picking up evangelical voters from Perry

Once, he led a prayer rally called The Response.

Now, Gov. Rick Perry is The Reject. | 01/10/12 11:43:41 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Voter ID laws and life in the margins

You have no driver’s license because you have nothing to drive. You have no passport because you’ve never been out of the country. You have no other photo I.D. because you have no bank account. You work and get paid under the table, a wad of cash sliding from hand to hand. | 01/10/12 06:00:11 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: U.S. citizens can force Congress to change

New Year's is a day for hope and optimism — two words rarely associated with the U.S. Congress.

Americans' disenchantment with their elected representatives is nothing new. "There is no distinctly native American criminal class, except Congress," Mark Twain wrote more than a century ago. | 01/09/12 06:02:22 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: Romney might wish to decline Haley's endorsement

Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney would have been better off had he won the endorsement of President Barack Obama instead of S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley. | 01/09/12 06:07:52 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Iraq shows limits to U.S. powers

A few days after the final U.S. troops trekked across the Iraqi dessert and into Kuwait to end an almost 9-year-old war, an arrest warrant was issued for Sunni Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, which, according to various reports, means a potential major fracture of that fledgling government. | 01/08/12 06:53:00 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Ron Paul may be consistent but that doesn't mean he's right

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson, meet Ronald Ernest Paul. He is the very soul of a foolish consistency. Meaning that he is willing, often to a fault, to follow his ideology to its logical and most extreme conclusions. | 01/07/12 06:23:03 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Sheriff Joe Arpaio may have failed at fighting crime

In the end, it may be children that finally rid Arizona of the bullying tactics of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The adults there certainly haven’t been able to do it.

Many regard the longtime sheriff of Maricopa County as a disgrace to the badge he wears. Others, particularly conservatives, can’t get enough of his antics. Everyone from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas has sung his praises. They like his brashness. He makes inmates wear pink underwear, prisoners live in tent cities and Latinos tremble. | 01/07/12 06:27:24 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Mixing supply-side economics and abortion

Abortion battles are usually fought over heated moral and political arguments. So it’s worth noting when a health economist applies the laws of supply and demand to abortion in red states like Kansas, and comes up with predictions about where abortion politics are taking us. | 01/06/12 06:11:42 By - Alan Bavley

Commentary: Re-envisioning capitalism

Over the past few months, I’ve been participating in some rigorous back-and-forth with defenders of capitalism, including business professors and relocated retirees who happen to be former executives of major corporations. They first and foremost believe in capitalism and free enterprise. (Let’s pretend for a second that the current tax structure and other policies don’t distort the market in favor of the wealthiest among us and we really are dealing with a true form of free enterprise.) | 01/06/12 06:08:35 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Send in the pythons to eat the politicians

Job-killing government regulators are at it again. Now they want to take away our beloved pythons.

Well, to be clear, not my beloved python. I’ve never been quite comfortable with the idea of a pet that would devour me without compunction. (I’ve enough trouble maintaining personal relationships with cold-blooded humans.) | 01/05/12 13:47:11 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Newspapers are transforming, not dying

We live in turbulent economic times, and the TNT isn’t immune from those forces. But I’m reminded again of the resilience of this hybrid print-digital-mobile news and advertising company that sails under The News Tribune banner. | 01/05/12 06:02:16 By - David Zeeck

Commentary: In the Americas, 2012 will be a wild year

Every year brings about changes, but 2012 is likely to be an especially eventful one in the Americas: there will be elections in the United States, Mexico and Venezuela, as well as other news events that could change the political map in the region. | 01/05/12 06:11:22 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Let's get rid of the State Department

A favorite talking point for politicians these days is that the deficit is too high. Here is a suggestion that will reduce the deficit and the size of government, not raise taxes and greatly improve national security: close the State Department. | 01/04/12 06:03:17 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Media should be exposing Iraq War’s years of ineptitude

The U.S. war in Iraq ended just before Christmas, and if you blinked you probably missed it. TV news coaxed some seasonal sentiment out of the troops getting home for the holidays, but the Sunday-morning talk shows — where news of consequence is usually autopsied — barely noticed. | 01/04/12 06:15:48 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Why the GOP needs Ron Paul

Ron Paul is wacky, won't win the Republican nomination and must be giving Republican leaders a splitting headache.

It's not so much that the Houston-area congressman opposes the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Or that he believes the Civil War was a waste and that slavery could have been ended by buying slaves and setting them free. Wouldn't that have been a bailout for slave owners? | 01/03/12 12:05:46 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Getting America back to work is challenge for 2012

2011 will be remembered as the year Americans woke up to the harm of growing disparities in wealth and income. The challenge of the new year is to begin reversing the trend of inequality. This isn’t a call for “class warfare,” but rather an alarm to the middle class that it needs to look after its own interests. | 01/03/12 07:22:45 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Even I coulda been a contenda in GOP field

If nothing else, the presidential candidates who dominated the news in 2011 brought an old guy a new revelation. Made me feel like Brando. Made me feel like shouting from the waterfront, “I coulda been somebody.” (“Instead of a bum, which is what I am.”) | 01/02/12 06:54:02 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: 2012 will be anything but boring in the Americas

Every year brings about changes, but 2012 is likely to be an especially eventful one in the Americas: there will be elections in the United States, Mexico and Venezuela, as well as other news events that could change the political map in the region. | 12/29/11 06:00:00 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Israel faces a threat from within

Over the six decades since its founding, Israelis have faced, and continue to face, countless threats to their country’s survival as the democratic state of the Jewish people. | 12/28/11 06:03:36 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Looking for the perfect president

I waited lackadaisically through the fall for that bolt of lightening that would make it clear which Republican candidate was best suited for the presidency. But the days between now and Jan. 21 began to dwindle, and still nothing more than a general feeling. | 12/28/11 06:06:21 By - Cindi Ross Scoppe

Commentary: Ban cell phones while driving? That law would be violated a lot

Maybe this is what they call “cognitive dissonance.” Or maybe it’s just plain old hypocrisy. But up to a fairly obvious point, the proposed law against using cell phones while driving is something nobody can rationally or credibly dispute. | 12/27/11 06:00:29 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: 2011 offered very few great, historic moments

I knew 2011 was going to be one of those years when I wrote a column saying that $80 billion of proposed federal bailout money to the U.S. Postal Service was a useless subsidy to “a dying ink-on-paper technology in an electronic world.” | 12/26/11 06:02:54 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: No Child Left Behind has turned schoolkids into commodities

Compared to modern school kids, I was a downright worthless student.

I don’t mean worthless as a pejorative. (My father would have used a more colorful term to characterize my scholarly pursuits.) But worthless as a commodity. Us kids at Montrose Elementary School weren’t making anyone rich. Not like today’s pupils, particularly those in Florida, who’ve become valuable cogs in a burgeoning industry. | 12/26/11 06:07:14 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Holiday songs to fill your days with fa la la

Let's all get into the Holiday Spirit, as expressed by the festive song heard so very often on the radio at this time of year: Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock! Jingle bell . . .BANG. | 12/25/11 06:08:46 By - Dave Barry

Commentary: Where have all the candy canes gone?

I swear, I thought the reader was talking about a former very popular stripper at Brothers III.

I heard, "What happened to Kandi Kane?" when what he said was, "What happened to candy canes?" | 12/24/11 06:04:35 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: A cherished Christmas memory

Favorite Christmas memories are as varied as the people who experience an event that becomes permanently fixed in the mind.

Mine happened in December 1999, and it involved simple words on a piece of paper. | 12/24/11 06:33:05 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: A Christmas box full of youthful memories

This Christmas, I am doing something different for gifts. Some gifts, anyway. I have a suitcase of letters from my college years and the years immediately after, the mid and late '60s. I am sending them back to the people who wrote them -- when I can. | 12/24/11 06:48:42 By - Michael Carey

Commentary: Bah, humbug to this 'War on Christmas' stuff

The annual controversy surrounding greetings for this season, "Merry Christmas" vs "Happy holidays," is enough to make me say, "Bah, humbug!" | 12/23/11 06:01:38 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: President Obama shouldn't denigrate the wealthy

So President Barack Obama will rest his re-election hopes on class warfare. After his speech last week in Osawatomie, Kan., no other conclusion is possible. The astonishing message: Achieving success and wealth in the United States is vaguely disreputable. | 12/23/11 06:14:19 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Wounded Warrior Project helps veterans to keep on winning

A war is over, but not the pain. "When you lose both legs, you think you can't do anything," said Dan Nevins, an Iraq war veteran with a story to tell.

"The wounds last a lifetime." | 12/22/11 14:17:51 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Don't dilute child labor laws

This year in Missouri, a legislator proclaimed the state’s child labor restrictions “so over the top” and proposed allowing children of any age to work unlimited hours.

State Sen. Jane Cunningham’s bill created a kerfuffle. She eventually pulled back. | 12/22/11 06:07:53 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: We could use an Archie Bunker again

Where is Archie Bunker when you need him?

The reactionary, bigoted curmudgeon of the hit sitcom “All in the Family” was one of the key cultural touchstones of the 1970s. A buffoon, to be sure, Archie was also a readily identifiable American type, the self-pitying white man ill at ease with recent changes in the social order. But because Archie was also portrayed with depth and sympathy, the laughs at his expense helped the audience come to grips with the turmoil they felt wrestling with their own biases and those of family members. | 12/22/11 06:07:11 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Our debate over Iraq has been quieted by 9 years of war

After this past weekend’s rather quiet end to the war in Iraq, it is kind of hard to remember how loud we were at the start.

The last detachment of American troops left early Sunday under a cover of darkness. Reporters on the ride into Kuwait described the troops as proud but also relieved, marking the significant moment modestly. | 12/21/11 06:12:18 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: When it comes to Egypt, will Washington get it right?

Voters in Egypt, the largest, most populous Arab country have just completed the first round of elections since overthrowing their long-time dictator. The results are as demoralizing as they were predictable: Some two-thirds of voters chose members of Islamist parties to represent them in parliament. | 12/21/11 06:03:13 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Why Newt Gingrich is pledging to be faithful to this wife

I was out shopping recently when I bumped into a respected member of this community who is also a longtime Baptist minister. | 12/21/11 06:04:59 By - Merlene Davis

Commentary: Kim Jong Il's North Korea was absurd, cruel, tragic and dangerous

As if the world did not face enough uncertainty at the end of 2011, we received the news on Sunday night that North Korea’s Kim Jong Il died. As is common for the sadly surreal nation, the information came wrapped up in confusing and absurd nondetails, with reports indicating the 69-year-old died of exhaustion on a train. | 12/20/11 12:10:54 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Ron Paul — the other GOP candidate from Texas

To some folks he's like the doddering old uncle who was locked in the basement too long -- the Walter Mitty of the presidential campaign. | 12/20/11 06:03:02 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: What if Congress' salary was tied to our debt levels?

Comes a provocative idea from across the Atlantic — France, no less. It’s an idea born out of frustration over Europe’s unsustainable public spending and debt crisis. It could just as well be applied in the United States. | 12/20/11 06:01:12 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Marine Corp brass did a disservice to Dakota Meyer

The Marine Corps has done a disservice to its most recent recipient of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery in combat. | 12/19/11 06:24:27 By -

Commentary: Ike wouldn't like today's GOP

Republicans like Nelson Rockefeller and Dwight Eisenhower must be spinning in their graves. They have to be wondering just how their party has degenerated into the midget of the month club. | 12/19/11 06:05:43 By - Dennis Jett

Dave Barry's holiday gift guide

The holiday season is a time of traditions. Here in America, the most popular holiday tradition, observed by millions, is to celebrate the birth of Jesus by going to a Walmart at 4 a.m. on the day after Thanksgiving and getting into fistfights over steeply discounted TV sets. | 12/19/11 06:02:06 By - Dave Barry

Commentary: Usually, you already have what you need

After I moved into my dream house a dozen Christmases ago, I rushed to the tree lot by the old non-denominational church and I bought the tallest, thickest and most beautiful tree I could wrestle away from the throngs of merrymakers trying to beat one another to the perfect tree. | 12/19/11 06:12:51 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: Remembering Iraq's mass graves

As U.S. forces leave Iraq, let us not forget that one reason troops were sent there to kill and to die was to end 20 years of mass slaughter by Saddam Hussein’s forces, a mission that has been accomplished. | 12/18/11 06:29:04 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: We're ignoring a national threat

A dangerous enemy threatens America. This threat is hard to confront, because it does not represent any one government and is not in any one location; it operates in smaller cells all over. If not stopped, it is sure to inflict violence on the country, decimate cities and alter our way of life. | 12/18/11 06:26:14 By - Taylor Batten

Commentary: Scrooge for president

The contest for the Republican presidential nomination took an interesting twist today when a surprise conservative candidate immediately shot to the top of national polls. | 12/18/11 06:31:48 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Will GOP take a chance on Gingrich?

Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid seemed improbable from the beginning, and in the early weeks he did his best to make it more so. One of his first decisions was to take some time off for a vacation cruise. Then he popped up on “Meet the Press” to bash the House GOP’s Medicare reform as “right-wing social engineering.” | 12/17/11 06:15:30 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Rise of the jellyfish

It was the invasion of the surreal: thousands and thousands of gelatinous sea creatures, with their dangling venomous tentacles, overwhelming the cooling canal of the St. Lucie nuclear power plant, washing up against the turtle protection nets, clogging the intake screens. | 12/17/11 06:26:45 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Dakota Meyer's heroism didn't need embellishing

You might hope, after the tragic Pat Tillman fiasco, that government and military leaders had learned some painful but lasting lessons about bogus accounts of combat operations, and the heroism that brave Americans often display under the most terrifying of circumstances. Apparently not. | 12/16/11 13:29:10 By -

Commentary: Did Obama find his campaign groove in Osawatomie?

Almost everyone agreed that President Barack Obama’s speech last Tuesday in Osawatomie, Kan., was — at six minutes short of a full hour — too long. | 12/16/11 06:10:47 By - Steve Kraske

Commentary: Fear and loathing of Occupy Wall Street

Frank Luntz, the ultra-popular consultant best known for his work in Republican circles and on the Fox News Channel, came here shortly before the 2008 elections and urged members of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce to brace for hard times and to find a way to sell vacationers on a vision of relaxing in Myrtle Beach, not fighting with lines or hassle. | 12/16/11 06:07:49 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Gingrich can't be the GOP's best option

There must be something in the glorified air breathed by front-runners vying for the Republican presidential nomination that makes them lose their minds. | 12/15/11 06:00:40 By - Merlene Davis

Commentary: Panic in Florida's state house

An absolutely true news item: Having passed a law allowing gun owners to bring their weapons inside the state Capitol building, the Florida Senate has hastily installed panic buttons on the office phone of every senator and staff member. | 12/15/11 06:03:11 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Trampling the Bill of Rights in defense's name

Without doubt, the United States needs the means to defend itself from terrorists.

Without doubt, the United States should not, in providing for that defense, violate the constitutional principles that define a free people possessed of rights that no government can take away at its discretion. | 12/14/11 06:05:26 By -

Commentary: Gingrich's ideas on child labor are truly bad

Now that Newt Gingrich has brought it up, maybe it's time for a refresher course on the value of child labor laws. The Republican presidential candidate's claim that child labor laws are "truly stupid" rightly offends many people. But the bigger problem is that such a notion is intellectually feeble and flatulent. A guy who is notably smart and likes to publicly announce it with nearly every word and gesture should be wary of uttering such nonsense. | 12/14/11 06:01:22 By - Fannie Flono

Commentary: Latin America’s Pacific bloc might work

While last Saturday’s summit that created a Community of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (CELAC) in Venezuela drew big headlines, a little-noticed meeting of five Latin American Pacific rim countries two days later will have a much greater impact on people’s lives, and on the region’s economic future. | 12/13/11 06:02:53 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Obama takes stand for racial diversity in school policy

Barack Obama has deftly begun what could be his most significant legacy on racial equity.

Did you miss it? Most people did. In early December, the administration sent new guidelines to the nation’s 17,000 school districts about how to address “racial isolation” in primary and secondary schools. | 12/13/11 06:00:11 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Fun in Iowa with the GOP

or Newt Gingrich, it was his first night as prime-time headliner instead of crusty sitcom sidekick.

For Mitt Romney, it was his first round on the ropes in a prizefight that might last till August.

But for voter Mary Morter, 74, of Des Moines, it was another chance to torment visiting politicians. | 12/12/11 14:15:22 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: In the 'War on Drugs,' dissent in considered 'unpatriotic'

I owe Kyle Vogt an apology. A former military policeman, he’s now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, or LEAP, a group of former cops, prosecutors and judges that supports ending the war on drugs. | 12/12/11 06:08:05 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Sorry GOP but Jesus would side with 'Occupy' folks

'Tis the season to mix politics and religion.

GOP candidates are working fervently to stake out their free market credentials in advance of the inconveniently scheduled Iowa caucuses. “Occupy” protesters are refusing to go in from the cold. You knew it was only a matter of time before somebody brought Jesus into the argument. | 12/12/11 06:06:27 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Roosevelt, Churchill and the meaning of leadership

A thin fragment of moon stood watch that Christmas Eve as the president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain came out onto the south portico of the White House. They were there to light the national Christmas tree — and to speak a holiday greeting to an uncertain world. | 12/11/11 06:24:58 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Taking time to make the world slow down

I'm reading a great book, "Moonlight Mile," a thriller by a terrific writer, Dennis Lehane.

It's superbly written, gripping, a real page-turner. It's one of those books you can't put down. Except that I have. Numerous times. I've been plugging away at it for a month or so now, and I'm about halfway through. | 12/11/11 06:42:13 By - James Werrell

Commentary: 'He is our president'

It had been a good Thanksgiving, and the day after, I was sitting in a small coffee shop way out west getting ready to resume the drive back to Raleigh. The television was turned to a news station, and President Obama was commenting on something to do with foreign policy (the volume was too low to discern what exactly). | 12/10/11 06:35:36 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: CELAC has no teeth

Contrary to what most headlines suggested, and to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s claim that it’s the most important thing to have happened in Latin America in the past 100 years, the new group of 33 Latin American and Caribbean states created at a Dec. 3 summit in Venezuela will hardly make it into history books. | 12/10/11 06:03:54 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: How long will the bond market play nice?

How the government borrows from the bond market, simplified version: A Treasury guy walks into a room full of people with money. He says, “OK, we’re selling 10-year notes today. Any takers?” | 12/09/11 06:10:23 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: When health care bills are a bigger fear than dying

While others were celebrating Thanksgiving, Devin Pate was in the critical care unit of Conway Medical Center. It was just a couple of days after her family made the almost impossible decision to remove the tubes helping her breathe.

Devin died after a more than 5-year fight against Gardner syndrome, a rare cancer. The life expectancy of those who are diagnosed with the disease is between 35 years and 45 years. She was 21. | 12/09/11 06:01:22 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: For healthier female body images, let's drop Photoshop

Thanks to a computer science professor and a Ph.D. student, American women may soon rediscover the muffin top.

And the crooked noses, upper-arm pudge and multifarious skin blemishes that skilled photo editors excise from the fashion plates that fill our glossy magazines and other venues for advertising. | 12/08/11 06:10:38 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Minorities play too small of a role in U.S. media jobs

Opening most publications or turning on the TV today would make many think people of color have left the planet.

Minorities are appearing a lot less in the media as journalists, newsroom managers, experts, commentators and actors despite the nation’s black president and the U.S. surging toward majority-minority demographics. Those were key points of an American Prospect magazine article and a National Association of Black Journalists 2011 diversity census report. The article, “The Right Messengers,” said the American media “does a terrible job of covering racial issues — and having a president of color has done little to change that fact.” | 12/08/11 06:00:22 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: Deliver us from the overly devout

Count me among those pulling for Tim Tebow. Frankly, I don’t think the former University of Florida star now playing for the Denver Broncos has much of a chance at long-term stardom in the NFL, at least not as a quarterback. But right now he’s winning, and he’s exciting, and I like the kid.

Here’s what he isn’t: He isn’t a doctrinal obligation on anybody’s part to root for his team or his success because he’s a Christian. | 12/07/11 12:54:11 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: American TV's obsession with missing white women

Let the first word be one of compassion. For anyone who has a loved one missing, Godspeed the day of that person’s safe return. Or failing that, Godspeed the bitter satisfaction of knowing his or her fate. To have someone you love vanish is, one imagines, a special kind of hell.

That said, let the second word be one of exasperation. | 12/07/11 06:03:52 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Two surges, different outcomes

From 2007 to 2009, a surge of 20,000 troops under the generalship of David Petraeus saved a mostly lost war in Iraq. Petraeus' counterinsurgency doctrine helped win over the population, as the surge in troops gave greater security to Iraq's government and military. Despite occasional violence, fewer Americans have been killed in Iraq in 2011 (53 in the most recent count) than in any year since the invasion -- a quiet that could end with the departure of all American troops soon. | 12/07/11 06:07:11 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Obama builds on Bush's AIDS project

World AIDS Day, on Dec. 1, was truly remarkable this year for several reasons -- mostly good, but at least one bad thing.

It was the day George W. Bush returned to Africa, a continent that benefited greatly from his unprecedented HIV/AIDS initiative; President Barack Obama committed to a major increase in funding for treatment of HIV here at home; and Magic Johnson included Tarrant County's AIDS Outreach Center as a partner in opening a new AIDS health clinic in Fort Worth. | 12/06/11 06:07:36 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: How Latin America is gaining on poverty

In sharp contrast to the gloom surrounding U.S. and European economic news, a new United Nations report has good news for Latin America: it says that poverty levels in the region have dropped to their lowest levels in 20 years, and will continue falling in 2012. | 12/06/11 06:03:43 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Herman Cain, the media and electoral coverage

All along, the Herman Cain campaign — which Politico called “one of the most hapless and bumbling operations in modern presidential politics” — has been riveting but improbable. Yet whatever the ex-restaurant executive’s other misdeeds and missteps, Cain’s bid seems finally to have crumbled because of extensive coverage of a woman’s allegations that she had a 13-year extramarital romance with him. | 12/06/11 06:06:37 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: The life of an embedded reporter

The nature of war and warriors seldom changes. The ways wars are fought do change. And the way they're covered by the news media has shape-shifted a lot since the Vietnam War.

I've been lucky to have witnessed the generational changes up close and personal -- sometimes too close and too personal. | 12/05/11 14:17:26 By - Mike Tharp

Commentary: World forum in Korea aims to improve aid

Three thousand leaders from 160 countries went to Busan, Korea, last week to hammer out a new way to improve the delivery of foreign aid to billions of people around the world trapped in poverty, hunger, disease, ignorance and the other cancers of underdevelopment. | 12/05/11 11:10:14 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Rick Perry has lost but he'll keep running

I'm going to go out on a limb and say Gov. Rick Perry won't be our next president.

But also, he can't quit. | 12/05/11 06:04:25 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Digital gadgets diminish our attention to real life

A young woman pointed to the seat next to mine on a recent flight, prompting me to stand in the aisle so she could move in.

Airplane trips afford us opportunities for encounters with strangers. It’s a chance to have conversations with people we’d otherwise never meet. There’s usually excitement in learning where others are going and why, where they’ve been, if they have children and what their dreams are. | 12/05/11 06:08:09 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: Most Americans see through GOP's taxes and spending humbug

Let’s talk about charity.

What should the federal government be doing to help those less well off? It’s an appropriate question as the nation enters the season of giving, when even the grumpiest among us silence the inner Scrooge and drop a few coppers into the donation kettle. | 12/04/11 06:03:25 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Amateur college athletes, Bigfoot, Nessie and other myths

What the Marx Brothers found deserving of satire 80 years ago — a college president recruiting professional players with cash – would be familiar to anyone paying attention to college sports today. It’s still built on the myth of the amateur and the ruse that it is really about helping young people get an education. | 12/04/11 06:09:27 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Uncertainty still reigns over U.S. economy

Last week, the stock market took another dive. The supercommittee failed. A bond auction flopped in Germany. The U.S. economy didn’t grow as fast in the third quarter as originally thought. | 12/03/11 06:54:58 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Politicians have never been saints

The women have been coming forth with stories about presidential candidate Herman Cain's wandering hand. If former House Speaker Newt Gingrich continues to rise in the polls, the three-time married former House speaker's messy personal life will once again be dredged up. | 12/03/11 06:42:29 By - Rob Christensen

Commentary: Time for another look at Simpson-Bowles and shared sacrifice

Who woulda thunk it?

Pick 12 lawmakers, six from each party, who have declared compromise anathema, and they still can't come up with a plan to stem the nation's indebtedness. What a shock! | 12/02/11 06:06:31 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Tragedy sprung from Westmoreland's arrogance

While clicking through the TV channels one afternoon not long ago, I happened by pure accident upon a lecture by military historian Lewis Sorley, author of a book titled “Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam.” | 12/02/11 06:07:13 By - C.W. Gusewelle

Commentary: Brownback's staff overreacted to teen's free speech

Yes, the bullying is troubling, the thin-skinned aversion to criticism vexing. But in the end, it is the piddling, picayune pettiness, the sheer, Lilliputian smallness of the behavior that I can’t quite get past. | 12/01/11 06:00:23 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: How to spot a fake doctor in Florida

When your cosmetic surgeon injects Fix-A-Flat and Super Glue into your posterior. When her own surgically enhanced butt seems to have been acquired from a 360-pound NFL offensive lineman. When your doctor goes by the name of Duchess. When she locates her surgical theater in a suburban townhouse. To us highly trained professional journalists, these criteria suggest that perhaps Duchess might not be Dr. Duchess. | 12/01/11 06:12:10 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: On immigration, Gingrich has a reasoned approach

Finally, there is a voice of reason on immigration among the front-runners for the Republican nomination, who until last week's debate seemed to be competing with one another to see who could take the craziest stand against Hispanic immigrants. | 11/30/11 06:05:05 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: For Republicans, Romney is the 'castor-oil' candidate

Nominating Mitt Romney is sort of like taking grandma's castor oil. Republicans are dreading the thought of downing their unpleasant-tasting medicine but worry that sooner or later they will have to. | 11/30/11 06:09:51 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Gov. Brownback can also learn from teen's tweet

Meet the other Sullivan sister.

Olivia Sullivan is the older sibling of the Shawnee Mission East senior who created a media and blogosphere frenzy by her errant tweet about Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback last week. It was 18-year-old Emma who sent this overly-scrutinized message: “Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.” | 11/29/11 06:00:53 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Trampling on the First Amendment at UC-Davis

A menacing crowd of protesters had encircled police and they had no choice but to defend themselves with pepper spray. Or at least, that is the story campus cops at UC Davis initially told. Video of the Nov. 18 incident tells a different story. | 11/29/11 06:04:36 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Some 'one-percenters' aim to give back

It's easy to fume at corporations, banks and tycoons that seem to pocket ever more money at our expense. But heading into an election year, a few 1 percenters are contemplating giving a little bit back. | 11/28/11 06:45:23 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Failure was always an option for supercommittee

Well, they’ve blown it. Failure was an option.

The 12 supercommittee senators and representatives announced last Monday they couldn’t come up with a spending, taxing and deficit reduction package.

Thanks for wrecking everyone’s Thanksgiving. | 11/28/11 06:05:07 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: UC-Davis police didn't need the pepper spray

She could lose her job, but give her this: UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi showed courage when she apologized for the actions of her campus police before a massive crowd of students calling for her dismissal. | 11/27/11 06:04:33 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: NBA players, owners are from Mars

Most days, Tammy Smith wakes up tired and goes to bed hungry. She has 12 children — three with sickle cell anemia. She can’t find a job. Her husband died last year.

To her, the NBA lockout that has put the season in jeopardy might as well be taking place on Mars. | 11/27/11 06:29:41 By - Linda Robertson

Commentary: What went on in the shadow of Penn State's image?

The image of Jerry Sandusky, was built through years of shared success, adulation and financial reward. Sandusky was more than one potentially flawed and predatory man, he was Penn State, its record for running a clean program, Paterno's legacy, the boosters' loyalty, Western Pennsylvania's self-image, the Penn State cash cow that filled bank accounts. Tearing off that veil would be painful indeed. So much so that people on the inside might even be able to convince themselves that maintaining the illusion was really the humane thing to do. | 11/26/11 06:32:14 By - Jacalyn Carfagno

Commentary: Giving bullies a veto on the First Amendment

Imagine five Jewish kids go to school one day wearing their yarmulkes. The school’s numerous skinhead students are furious. At lunch they mill around in the school yard, muttering threats and complaining to the assistant principal that that their political beliefs have been insulted. The assistant principal responds by calling the Jewish kids into his office and ordering them to take off their yarmulkes or go home. | 11/26/11 06:06:29 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Picking a president shouldn't be like picking a golf buddy

A presidential campaign constitutes the world’s longest and toughest job interview. While it’s fine to vet candidates on likeability, credibility and, yes, experience, it might not hurt to require that they also show evidence of having thought deeply and with an informed mind about the world and America’s place in it. We are, after all, choosing a president — not a golf buddy. | 11/25/11 06:03:28 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Sexual harassment is not a joke

I don't know whether Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is a serial sexual harasser of women or not. But with multiple women accusing him of such past misconduct - four at the last count - he at least has (or had) a serious problem in knowing what some women considered appropriate behavior toward them. Recognizing and addressing that would surely have been in order. | 11/25/11 06:08:50 By - Fannie Flono

Commentary: A story on Thanksgiving

In difficult times, in a country divided by petty partisan politics without any goodwill in sight, it’s tough to muster enough reasons to feel grateful this Thanksgiving. When we’ve become so estranged from each other that Congress can’t even agree on what to serve our children during the school lunch, it’s tough to sit at the table in harmony. | 11/24/11 06:03:57 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: Many GOP candidates have stumbled over Cuba in South Florida

Don’t worry Herman. When it comes to this Cuban immigration stuff, we’re all befuddled.

Campaigning in Little Havana last Wednesday, Herman Cain was confronted with a truly bewildering foreign policy question. Not like the one about Libya that stumped him last week. Not like trying to recall what’s-his-name from Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan. | 11/24/11 06:00:21 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Socialism and the NFL

Once again on Thanksgiving Day, Americans of every political persuasion will gather around the dinner table and wax poetic about all sorts of topics, some silly, some serious.

But as many Americans consume pieces of just-right sweet potato pie and slabs of fried turkey, tens of millions will be in front of television sets cheering on the most popular form of economic socialism the globe has ever known. In laymen’s terms, it is called the National Football League, which will televise a triple-header on Thanksgiving Day. | 11/23/11 12:17:15 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Why the U.S. defends weaker nations

Recently, an open mic caught French President Nicolas Sarkozy and American President Barack Obama jointly trashing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Sarkozy scoffed, "I cannot stand him. He's a liar." Obama trumped that with, "You're fed up with him, but I have to deal with him every day." | 11/23/11 06:11:31 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Finding the wit and will to fix broken communities

This is not about your neighborhood.

Probably not, at least. The demographics of newspaper readership being what they are, you likely do not live in Liberty Square or anyplace like it. | 11/23/11 06:06:46 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Childhood sexual abuse causes life-long damage

In the Penn State University pedophilia scandal and cases involving Catholic priests, many wonder how the perpetrators got away with the crimes for so long and how the sexual assaults on children went unreported for years. | 11/22/11 06:00:53 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: Jack Ambramoff's truth

When a guy like Jack Abramoff starts truth-telling about the venal world of Washington, don't buy it. Not that he's lying. But he's hardly giving the whole truth, at least not in a half-hour phone call, or in the numerous publications and television shows that are featuring him these days, or in his book, "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist."When a guy like Jack Abramoff starts truth-telling about the venal world of Washington, don't buy it.

Not that he's lying. But he's hardly giving the whole truth, at least not in a half-hour phone call, or in the numerous publications and television shows that are featuring him these days, or in his book, "Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Washington Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist." | 11/22/11 06:14:38 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Burma wakes up

The Arab Spring may be foundering in the Middle East as democracy struggles to take root from Tunisia to Syria to Iraq, but in Southeast Asia, a new democratic Spring has just been born. | 11/21/11 14:23:56 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: School that banned U.S. flag T-shirts missed a teachable moment

Is banning a few students from wearing U.S. flag T-shirts really the best way to maintain order in a public school? Really?

That's what officials at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., insist they were doing last year on Cinco de Mayo. And now a federal judge has concluded they were not outside First Amendment bounds. | 11/21/11 06:14:21 By - Linda P. Campbell

Commentary: Congress isn't ready to act on Supreme Court's health care decision

It surprised no one last week when the U.S. Supreme Court said it would review constitutional questions about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. President Barack Obama's signature 2010 healthcare overhaul was headed for the high court from the moment he signed it. | 11/21/11 06:05:40 By - Mike Norman

Commentary: Penn State reminds us real life is neither perfect or tidy

In times such as these, I always go back to Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and to a lesser degree, Martin Luther King Jr.

Since late last week, I’ve been hearing from depressed and stunned local Penn State University alumni, all of whom are trying to come to grips with a scandal the likes of which they never imagined could have enveloped their beloved alma mater. | 11/20/11 06:25:23 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: GOP's rush to cut federal agencies is flawed

It’s not the verbal stumbles that should give voters pause about Rick Perry. Did you note how quickly his fellow presidential candidates chimed in to aid Perry in his moment of cerebral breakdown? It wasn’t just because they felt his pain. | 11/20/11 06:15:00 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: When it comes to vices, California is in the weeds

All too often, California is stereotyped as an epicenter of sin and vice. No doubt, we have our hot spots, sometimes in unexpected places. Scrolling through the Web, I noticed that there is a Southern California Hedonism Meetup Group that gathers regularly in Newport Beach. | 11/19/11 06:30:15 By - Stuart Leavenworth

Commentary: Not all democracies are created equal

Condoleezza Rice, without question, is an accomplished, brilliant, even fascinating woman. From poli-sci prof at Stanford University to the 66th U.S. secretary of state makes for one heck of a resume. | 11/19/11 06:08:15 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Only in Congress would pizza become a vegetable

See if you can score higher on this pop quiz than members of the U.S. Congress.

How much tomato paste must one slather onto a slice of pizza for it to qualify as a nutritionally adequate serving of vegetables for low-income schoolchildren? | 11/18/11 12:38:15 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Kamal Saleem's tales of terrorism don't jibe

Forrest Gump of the Middle East is the questionable keynote speaker at the Independence mayor’s prayer breakfast. Wherever Islamic terrorism reigned, the now-Christian Kamal Saleem claims to have been there, waging jihad on Israel, the Soviets, and later, America. | 11/18/11 06:11:04 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Never-ending 'War on Drugs' hits Central America

While Mexico’s bloody war against the drug cartels is making headlines worldwide, there is a little-known fact that is sounding alarm bells among U.S. and Latin American officials: Central America’s drug-related violence is far worse than Mexico’s. | 11/18/11 06:07:02 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Why Mitt Romney causes conservatives anguish

After last week’s debate, some are calling Mitt Romney the “presumptive nominee.” Indeed, despite momentary uneasiness when a questioner brought up the personal mandate in his Massachusetts health plan, he held his own — as he has in earlier debates. | 11/18/11 06:00:43 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: What took Penn State so long?

So they did the right thing. Belatedly.

You might say that is better than failing to do the right thing period, but it comes as meager comfort to those who have watched the Penn State scandal unfold and wondered how a moral imperative as obvious as a gorilla in church could have been missed by so many. | 11/17/11 06:04:20 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Time to get hungry for U.S. poverty solutions

Hunger is the new face of America, and these demographic groups have been hit hard because of high unemployment, foreclosures and the lingering bad economy. Part of the problem is that even for working people, their income has “barely budged since 1974,” the American Human Development Index recently reported in its study on median personal earnings. | 11/17/11 06:09:02 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: We shouldn't blindly worship sports 'heroes'

Sports are one of the great joys of my life, but I never got the idolatry part of sports – the hero worship based on athletic success.

I've loved the personalities, the games and the traditions. Sportswriters like Jim Murray inspired me to pursue a career in writing. | 11/16/11 06:04:38 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Decision time nears on Iran's nukes

With each report from the United Nations nuclear agency, the choices the world faces regarding Iran's nuclear program become more stark.

The most recent one essentially confirmed that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. The International Atomic Energy Agency, not known for using alarmist tones, describes Tehran's activities developing nuclear triggers for atomic weapons, advanced research on warheads that can be delivered by medium range missiles, computer modeling of nuclear explosions, and other efforts that have nothing to do with producing nuclear energy. Then again, who actually believed Iran's claims - still continuing - that this is all about producing electricity? | 11/16/11 06:13:34 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Penn State's Gilded Age

This story from Penn State is a blood diamond. So many facets, so many different angles, all of them uncomfortable to think about.

There's the hold that big-time sports has on our culture. I say this as a fan: The games matter far too much to far too many. Coaches and stars are our secular gods. Nobody in the state of Pennsylvania was as loved or as powerful as Joe Paterno. | 11/15/11 13:57:57 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: It's time to act on Iran's nuclear threat

Since the Nov. 8, 2011, release of the International Atomic Energy Agency's latest report about Iran's nuclear program, Tehran has waged an all-out campaign to dismiss the IAEA's findings, while implicitly threatening the world with a terrorist response. "Iran will respond with full force to any aggression or even threats in a way that will demolish the aggressors from within," Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said. | 11/15/11 11:56:14 By - Alireza Jafarzadeh

Commentary: What the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street really have in common

A number of commentators have struggled to link the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street protestors. Both groups seem to be grassroots, spontaneous expressions of popular discontent. They appear to occupy opposite ends of the political spectrum, however, and have different takes on the cause of, and the solution for, their unhappiness. | 11/15/11 06:13:51 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Penn State, Catholic Church share tragic parallels

In March 2002, a graduate assistant in Penn State's storied football program stopped by the training facility on a Friday night and witnessed something horrific. | 11/15/11 06:09:57 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: On 'personhood' and abortion

Moral clarity is one of the most seductive traits of social conservatism.

So last week’s election result in Mississippi comes as a seismic shock. By a significant margin — 58 to 42 percent — voters rejected an anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution defining the fertilized human egg as a person, with all the rights and protections attendant thereto. | 11/15/11 06:02:24 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: This isn't class warfare

Call for an end to a capital gains tax rate that allows a man who makes a billion dollars in a single year, through investments, to pay a lower effective rate than a man in the middle class who takes home a bi-weekly paycheck, you are participating in class warfare. | 11/14/11 06:00:43 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: How money-handlers muzzled WikiLeaks

A comment posted to London’s Guardian newspaper said it best: “Censorship, like everything else in the West, has been privatized.” The writer, somebody called “edensasp,” was referring to news that WikiLeaks — the online whistleblower that has been embarrassing governments and corporations worldwide by disclosing their secrets — was suspending operations. | 11/14/11 06:03:05 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Putting religious group's campaign against contraception into context

First marketed in 1960, the birth control pill soon became the most popular form of contraception in the United States. However, the pill was still not available to every woman who wanted it. Religious groups lobbied in favor of laws that banned all contraception, and it was not until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that the right to contraception was protected by the Constitution. | 11/13/11 06:00:56 By - Sarah Lipton-Lubet

Commentary: Daniel Ortega could have won fairly in Nicaragua, but he didn't

Nicaragua may be the only country in the world that’s perpetually under a full moon, so it’s no surprise that the big news out of Sunday’s presidential election was not that incumbent Daniel Ortega was piling up suspicious landslide voting totals, but that he wasn’t a vampire. | 11/13/11 06:14:13 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Bell Helicopter wants tax breaks but can afford to pay Wall Street

Occupy Bell Helicopter? To get an idea of why people are so angry at corporate America and the political class, consider a local exchange last week. Bell Helicopter negotiated an 80 percent tax abatement for 20 years, and a Fort Worth councilman called it "a good example" of how the city can help its own. | 11/13/11 05:59:35 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: Paterno's stubborn loyalty led to his downfall

Joe Paterno stayed too long. His ethical ideals had become rusty and the paint was peeling on his uncompromising principles. He placed a pail under the leak in the ceiling and looked the other way. | 11/12/11 06:49:50 By - Linda Robertson

Commentary: Environmental alarmists have a sorry record

The United Nations announced that the 7 billionth human probably arrived in our crowded world last week, so it was predictable that we would get another crash course on the threat posed by overpopulation. | 11/12/11 06:21:06 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Drug sentencing disparities haunt U.S. justice system

Cocaine, regardless of which disguise it wears, is a monster that most often destroys the lives of its users and sellers while devastating their loved ones. | 11/12/11 06:05:29 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Penn State scandal reveals methods of predators

This column usually is devoted to the weekend’s big game or news in college sports. Coaches, players or administrators typically have voice here as a football Saturday approaches. But this isn’t a typical football eve. Because we continue to grasp what feels like the biggest scandal in college sports history, a story so vile it’s almost beyond belief, only voices like Jeanetta Issa’s should matter. | 11/11/11 14:25:29 By - Blair Kerkhoff

Commentary: In Michael Jackson's death, it's fair to blame the pusher

Once upon a time, there was a boy who channeled the gods.

He invoked them through his feet, moving without friction across the gleam of a thousand stages. They possessed him though his voice, now rough like bark, now sweet like butter and brimming always with an emotional depth once thought inaccessible to children. | 11/11/11 06:06:19 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Morality took a back seat to sporting glory at Penn State

Five years before scandal overwhelmed Penn State, we saw devotion to school sports trump morality right here Miami-Dade County. A sexual crime against a child was shrugged off. Laws were ignored. Cops weren’t notified. | 11/11/11 06:09:21 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: How Homeland Security 'has become pork barrel spending'

The Grover Beach (California) Police Department is going to grab $133,000 in Homeland Security money to use for electronic license plate readers. Are you feeling safer? I’m not, for two reasons.

First, there is precious little nexus between these scanners and thwarting terrorists. Using Homeland Security money this way is in fact part of a decade-long, pork-barrel operation. | 11/11/11 06:06:39 By - Bob Cuddy

Commentary: I won't forgive Joe Paterno

Joe Paterno is an American icon, winner of more games than any other coach in the history of college football.

And now I can’t look at him without wanting to clench a fist. | 11/10/11 14:41:50 By - John McGrath

Commentary: Paterno's legacy soiled by Sandusky scandal

The almost unspeakable scandal enveloping Penn State University locks in a different perspective, requires a reconsidering, alters the prism through which we view sports and judge what terrible means. | 11/10/11 12:21:09 By - Greg Cote

Commentary: Venezuela is tangled up in red tape

Following last week’s announcement that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has created two new Cabinet ministries — the Ministry of Ground Transportation and the Ministry of Air and Water Transportation — it may be time to propose a new economic theory: that countries’ economic development is inversely proportional to their number of ministers. | 11/10/11 06:04:23 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Grover Norquist finds political gridlock pays off nicely

Gridlock has been good for Grover Norquist.

Norquist is the Beltway denizen who promotes the gimmicky anti-tax pledge signed by most Republican members of Congress, major Republican presidential candidates other than Jon Huntsman, and all but two Republican California legislators. | 11/10/11 06:00:00 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Why didn't Joe Paterno do more?

As the flames rise with the noise, all of it threatening to engulf a legend, the old coach remains forever stubborn. Quit? That’s not what Penn State football coach Joe Paterno teaches, not what he knows, not who he is, so he’ll fight until the very end, and here’s what will happen: The winningest coach in the history of college football is about to lose, and he’s about to lose big. His job, his reputation, his desire to finish on his terms, his decades of work, the way he defines himself, his entire legacy — all of it is about to go up in a smoldering bonfire of flames unlike we’ve ever seen in college sports. | 11/09/11 13:06:09 By - Dan LeBatard

Commentary: Cain doesn't get that journalists' code of ethics is about asking questions

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, engulfed in a growing sexual harassment controversy, tried to put the issue to rest Saturday following a one-on-one debate in Houston with rival Newt Gingrich. Reporters tried to ask Cain about the allegations brought by three women that he had engaged in unwanted sexual behavior toward them while he headed the National Restaurant Association. | 11/09/11 12:42:23 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: It's time to ignore Herman Cain

There are plenty of reasons not to take Herman Cain seriously as a presidential candidate. There is one, however, that is rarely mentioned. And it is more important than the ones the media are talking about. | 11/09/11 11:49:33 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Who exactly are the one percent?

First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at "the few at the top," who do all sorts of bad things. A few months ago, we began hearing of the "1%" who are responsible for the current economic mess. | 11/09/11 06:08:41 By - Victor Davis Hanson

Commentary: Just in time for the holidays, GOP laff-fest hits Florida

When Florida’s Republican 2012 presidential primary was moved up to Jan. 31, the reaction was mixed. Some voters were glad to getting past it sooner than later. Others were dismayed that the holiday season would be polluted by vicious campaign commercials and distracting barnstorm visits from candidates. | 11/09/11 06:07:49 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Scandal offers a view into Herman Cain's character

I see the makings of another best-seller in the recent travails of presidential candidate Herman Cain.

This one might be titled, “Owning Up To The Past: How My Failed Bid for the White House Taught Lessons in Humility and Self-Awareness.” When the dust settles, Cain will have to take responsibility for how poorly he has handled the allegations that he sexually harassed women while head of the National Restaurant Association. It will be interesting to see how Cain — a propagator of the slogan “CEO of Self” — files this episode. | 11/08/11 12:48:55 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Playing the race card in Cain's sexual harassment scandal

Do you think it gives Clarence Thomas a warm, fuzzy feeling to know he is one of Ann Coulter's blacks?

That is how Coulter put it on Fox "News" while defending Herman Cain against sexual harassment charges that threatened to engulf his campaign last week. Liberals, she said, detest black conservatives, but the truth is, "our blacks are so much better than their blacks." | 11/08/11 06:09:26 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Science trumps climate change deniers

Richard Muller was supposed to be the white knight for the deniers of global warming, smiting the fire-breathing activists who insist that climate change is real. In the end, though, science prevailed. | 11/08/11 06:05:11 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Condoleezza Rice's book shows 'inattention' to Latin America during Bush years

If political biographies of recent U.S. presidents and top foreign policy officials are any indication of what goes on in their mind — and I think they are — the new book by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks for itself: it’s about 98 percent about the Middle East, Russia and Asia, and 2 percent about Latin America. | 11/07/11 06:10:42 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Will the GOP ever get serious about 2012?

All campaigns have their unserious candidates. Think Alan Keyes, Ralph Nader, Steve Forbes, Al Sharpton, to name a few. Mickey Mouse snares a share of votes in every presidential election — for real.

But never has it been so easy for publicity seekers to command the limelight. | 11/07/11 06:07:58 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Forget November. Retailers are ready for Santa

Baseball season just ended. It must be time for -- Santa?!

The biggest wonder of all is that Christmas has vaulted in front of Thanksgiving. And Veterans Day. | 11/06/11 06:31:24 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Time for Occupy Wall Street phase two

It’s time to launch Occupy Wall Street, Phase II. The part where the movement articulates what it wants, wins over a large bloc of the public and fights to get its demands enacted. So, who’s got some ideas? Anybody? | 11/06/11 06:16:19 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: The politics of 'I'm more religious than you are'

Religiosity — I’m more religious than you are, nanny-nanny, boo-boo — has become such a campaign issue that when I tune into the news, I wonder if I’m listening to some aspiring dictator from a foreign theocracy instead of an American politician. Last time I checked, one of the fundamental tenets of American democracy is the separation of church and state. The Founding Fathers established a secular government as a way of ensuring religious freedom. | 11/05/11 06:27:42 By - Ana Veciana-Suarez

Commentary: Bank executives have people angry

Bank of America Corp. Chief Executive Officer Brian Moynihan is trying to use the good work of the bank’s everyday employees to mask the stench emanating from the actions of executives in his company and up and down Wall Street.

Never mind that about 30,000 of those employees Moynihan is using to deflect criticism will be staring at pink slips. | 11/05/11 06:00:37 By - Issac Bailey

Commentary: In Perry's viral video, the crowd loved the 'animated' Texan

Every Texan I know was loopy last Friday.

It just happened that one of us had to give a speech. On the night after we all stayed up late for a cataclysmic event hereafter known only as Game 6, Gov. Rick Perry had to give a keynote speech that has since turned into a sour note. | 11/04/11 12:19:18 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: The iPod at 10 — a pocket-sized digital revolution

Not long ago a friend made an interesting observation over the poker table: He said the most significant technological advance of his lifetime might well be the iPod.

I’m a little older than he is, so I’d probably go with the hydrogen bomb, that lethal Cold War cloud of annihilation hanging over the first 35-plus years of my life. (It’s still around and still lethal; the terror it poses just comes from a different kind of enemy now.) | 11/04/11 06:12:27 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: Keystone XL pipeline splits Obama's base

Barack Obama won the presidency because of a rare confluence of events that created a coalition of the moment: upper-class liberals, organized labor, young voters, minorities and centrists. | 11/04/11 06:01:06 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Jobs are plentiful on Alabama's farms

Good news. The jobs crisis is over.

Meaning the recent Alabama law (toughest in the nation, they say) cracking down on illegal alien workers. Ever since it was passed, Hispanic farm laborers who had been taking jobs from hard-working Americans have been fleeing that state like a foreign language film with subtitles. As a result, there is now lots of work available in the exciting field of . . . well, fields. As in fields of vegetables and fruit. | 11/03/11 06:09:12 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: For H-2B guest workers, hard labor as 'cultural experience'

They’re the veritable saviors of the hospitality industry, aren’t they? Foreign guest workers, recruited from distant places, 7,276 of them last year, to rescue Florida’s hotels and restaurants and country clubs and amusement parks and other businesses so very desperate to fill vacant jobs. | 11/03/11 06:07:47 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Consumers win in Bank of America debit card fee fiasco

What's that saying about whatever the market will bear? Well, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks got a lesson on that maxim recently - actually a lashing over it. | 11/02/11 12:57:07 By -

Commentary: Markets became false gods

When the Cold War ended in 1989 and Central Europe and Russia abandoned Socialism, some in America saw that as a vindication for free markets and capitalism as the only legitimate way of economic life. | 11/02/11 06:07:14 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Tunisia elections outcome worries women, progressives

To get a better idea of what the future holds in the Middle East, keep a close eye on Tunisia. The country whose people lit the spark of the ongoing Arab uprisings continues to lead the way. It has just held its first elections, the first in the region. | 11/02/11 06:00:18 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Moammar Gadhafi met a fitting end

Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is finally rotting in the ground, ending the unsavory spectacle of his bloody corpse on public display in a refrigerated vegetable locker. A guy like him was lucky not to end up with his head on a stake. | 11/02/11 06:01:13 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: California's rich are soaking up solar subsidies

The sun shines on the beachfront mansions of Malibu and La Jolla, just as it does on Compton and Barrio Logan in San Diego. It beams down on the most upscale part of Clovis and its golf course development of Brighton Crest, and on the gritty flats of south and west Fresno.

But based on how California policymakers dole out valuable subsidies for solar panels placed on the residential roofs, the poorest parts of our sunny state might as well be on the dark side of the moon. | 11/01/11 06:05:20 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Perry's Texas tax overhaul isn't right for U.S.

If Gov. Rick Perry's flat-tax plan is anything like his tax policy in Texas, don't get your hopes up. It will be too simple to solve the problem and too good to be true.

Perry hopes that a bold idea will revive his struggling presidential campaign. But even some conservatives slammed the flat-tax proposal that he made last week, saying it wouldn't raise enough revenue to pay down the deficit. | 11/01/11 06:09:26 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: 'Stop and frisk' tramples on Fourth Amendment rights

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . — Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Just in case you forgot. There has been, after all, an appalling amount of forgetting where that amendment is concerned. And New York City has become the epicenter of the amnesia. | 11/01/11 06:05:39 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Marco Rubio's bio didn't need to be fudged

George Gonzalez’s father was a Pedro Pan kid. Came over in 1961, after Gonzalez’ grandmother had been imprisoned by the Castro regime for possessing counter-revolutionary documents. Gonzalez’s mother fled Cuba in 1965, after the government confiscated her family’s ranch. | 10/31/11 06:03:50 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: The Wall Street Journal - News Corp.'s other scandal

The really interesting question about the waning days of Rupert Murdoch’s reign over News Corp., his global media empire, is just how much irreparable harm his regime will do to the marquee institutions it controls that preceded him and deserve to survive. | 10/31/11 06:02:13 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Will anyone worry if the 'supercommittee' fails?

You’d think the congressional “supercommittee” on deficit reduction might be feeling a bit rushed.

Its deadline is looming. But reportedly, committee members have barely begun to sharpen their pencils. | 10/30/11 06:22:46 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Can GOP candidates match Obama on foreign policy?

Maybe it’s time to acknowledge that the guy knows what he’s doing.

During the past half year, President Obama made the call for a daring raid that led to the long-sought killing of Osama bin Laden that could have essentially ended his presidency had it gone bad, the type of raids the previous administration was reluctant to engage in because of our tenuous relationship with Pakistan, according to reports. | 10/30/11 06:13:59 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Not all CEOs wear horns

Call this column “CEOs are human, too.”

While you may be in tune with the primal scream coming from Occupy Wall Street, let’s not take pitchforks to the backsides of our business leaders. | 10/29/11 06:14:06 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Zanesville tragedy shows exotic animals aren't pets

The photographs of the carnage left on the ground outside a Zanesville, Ohio, barn are heartbreaking.

Forty-eight exotic animals killed -- including 18 rare Bengal tigers, 17 lions, three leopards and three mountain lions -- after their owner freed them from confinement before committing suicide. | 10/29/11 06:38:07 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Perry's preacher Jeffress drives his point home

Southern Baptists and Mormons are really different. Was anybody not clear on that?

Just in case, the Rev. Robert Jeffress of Dallas has been on every TV network lately except Animal Planet, explaining that Southern Baptist doctrine calls several faiths a "cult" and claiming that he wasn't just trash-talking Mitt Romney to help Rick Perry win the Republican presidential nomination. | 10/28/11 12:06:32 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: We never should have been in Iraq

Eight years ago on a night in March, they interrupted our regularly-scheduled programs for a breaking news bulletin. We sat before our televisions and watched rockets arc into the skies over Baghdad. Many of us had doubts about the stated and implied causes of the war that began that night: the need to secure Saddam Hussein’s stockpile of WMD and to retaliate for his part in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. | 10/28/11 06:06:03 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Oh to be the one percent

I’m a member of the 99 percent, the portion of Americans who don’t earn at least $350,000 or so every year (and an average of $960,000) and have become a rallying cry for the fledgling Occupy Wall Street movement. | 10/28/11 06:01:56 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: 'Lead cocktails' and electric chairs

Every time Florida starts to fade from the national spotlight, somebody like Brad Drake comes along and gets everybody laughing at us again.

Drake is the state representative who is sponsoring a bill to give Death Row inmates the choice between the electric chair or a firing squad – “a lead cocktail,” in Drake’s words. | 10/27/11 06:08:57 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Occupy movement has plenty of time to evolve

"Agenda? We don't need no stinking agenda!"

That, or something like it, is what those involved in the Occupy Wall Street rallies can shout back at critics who say they need to hurry up and choose leaders and develop a coherent mission statement. For the time being, at least, the occupiers should be content to simply rely on their common grievances to carry them forward until they can unite behind specific goals. | 10/27/11 06:05:54 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Putting our political squabbles into perspective

If you were born in the United States in 1969, you've lived under eight presidents - Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II and Obama. But if you had been born in Libya in 1969, you would've lived your entire life, until last week, under one ruler - Moammar Gadhafi. | 10/27/11 06:09:17 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Nicaragua is heading for disaster

As the word spread across the world last week that Libya’s weird and homicidal Moammar Gadhafi had breathed his last, the reactions ranged from somber relief to rapturous glee — except in Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega and his Sandinista party were plunged into grief by the demise of a longtime pal. | 10/26/11 12:58:35 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Obama keeps his promise on Iraq

Perhaps you don't want to "rejoice" at the news that America's nine-year involvement in a war is about to end.

After all, there is still a lot of pain to remember -- too many lives lost; too much sorrow still lingering; too little understanding as to the real reason why the war was waged in the first place. | 10/26/11 07:29:05 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Climate change deniers may be washed away by rising seas

Climate is not politics. Not abortion. Not gun rights. Yet another Pew poll this spring found 75 percent of far right conservatives, 63 percent of libertarians and 55 percent of self-described “Main Street” Republicans did not “believe” in global warming. The denial doctrine seems to have been embraced by the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination, with the exception of Jon Huntsman, as a rite of passage. | 10/26/11 06:06:11 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Taking a stand for Jamey Rodemeyer

Zachary Quinto came out recently. Ordinarily, the news that Star Trek’s new Mr. Spock had told New York magazine he was gay would barely register. It has become, a rather ordinary thing, celebrities disclosing their hidden sexuality.

But Quinto came out for Jamey. | 10/25/11 06:02:40 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Going back to the future to make the U.S. great again

The Republican Party’s search for a presidential candidate is increasingly looking like a homeless man rooting through a dumpster. He picks up something that looks delectable, sniffs it, maybe takes a bite, but then rejects it in disgust and keeps on looking. | 10/25/11 06:11:58 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Obama made right call to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq

No one can know for sure what the future holds for Iraq, the rest of the Middle East and the turbulent Arab world.

We do know two things. | 10/24/11 11:29:54 By -

Commentary: On immigration, Herman Cain hits a sour note

One could forgive Herman Cain for grinning like a Cheshire cat during last Tuesday’s GOP debate. Texas Gov. Rick Perry attacked Mitt Romney, calling him a hypocrite because undocumented workers for a landscaping service once worked on his lawn. | 10/24/11 06:04:44 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Doctor questions how HPV vaccine is marketed

Diane Harper watched from the sidelines recently as two Republican presidential contenders got tangled up in the provocative politics of HPV vaccinations. | 10/24/11 06:08:45 By - Alan Bavley

Commentary: The Patriot Act, cyber-edition

Cybersecurity is the new buzzword in Washington, capturing a wide range of potential responses to internet-related threats both real and imagined. Congress is starting to play a role, considering legislation that purports to make cyberspace more secure. But many of the solutions being offered echo those of the deeply flawed Patriot Act, enacted ten years ago this month. | 10/23/11 06:15:57 By - Zachary Katznelson

Commentary: There's nothing worse than a politician's apology

There is only one thing worse than a stupid political statement: the inevitable political apology.

Gov. Bev Perdue, House Speaker Terrible Thom Tillis and former country music star Bosephus Williams all made dumb comments recently, and they all responded to the backlash by apologizing. | 10/23/11 06:36:40 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: A high-speed train to nowhere?

When the Obama administration gave California several billion dollars for its proposed high-speed rail project last year, it attached an odd string.

The money had to be spent, the feds said, on a relatively short stretch in the San Joaquin Valley. | 10/22/11 06:42:39 By - Dan Walters

Commentary: What happens when illegal immigrants go away?

For years, we’ve been told how much better our lives would be after we truly cracked down on illegal immigration. There’d be more jobs for Americans, fewer classrooms bogged down by non-English speakers. Our emergency rooms would be free of burden. We wouldn’t have to punch “1” so much for calls in English. A better life, if only we could send the illegals home.

Now we know. | 10/22/11 06:53:03 By - Peter St. Onge

Commentary: Shalit deal was about Israel's soul

An editor looking over one of the articles I wrote about the release of Gilad Shalit asked me if I thought Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu made a deal with Hamas seeking to boost his popularity. The question is fair, I suppose. After all, Netanyahu, like most politicians, makes many decisions with an eye to political consequences. But the Shalit decision was not about politics. It was about Israel’s soul as a nation. | 10/21/11 12:19:31 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Occupy movement's next move is a critical one

By one measure at least, the movement that began with Occupy Wall Street is already bigger than the tea party ever was.

According to a report in the Washington Post, Occupy rallies were held in over 900 cities around the country and across the globe last weekend. The tea party is big, but it is not known to have had an impact in Barcelona, London, Tokyo, Johannesburg, Brussels, Munich, Rome, Sydney, Manila, Lisbon, Paris and Zurich. | 10/21/11 06:00:18 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Don't ask an iPhone 4S the meaning of life

Back away for a minute and the scene is easy to mock. Here are people who got up before the sun just to buy a new phone. They're standing there playing with their old iPhones, taking photos of the line, tweeting out the photos, documenting every little detail of the place where too much time meets too much money. At 10 before 8, Apple Store employees come running down the line like a football team emerging from the tunnel. The customers reach out for high-fives. Easy to mock. | 10/21/11 06:10:17 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: California's messed up medical marijuana laws

Chaos can flourish in the space between ambivalence and intransigence.

Such is life in California, where muddled medical marijuana laws and rigid federal laws outlawing all marijuana use have created an atmosphere stranger than fiction. | 10/20/11 06:08:51 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Blue collar America is long gone

The guys graduating from high school with me 38 years ago knew they had options, and many grabbed the quick and easy money affording them nice cars and good homes. | 10/20/11 06:07:05 By - Lewis W. Diuguid

Commentary: Rick Perry gets his swagger back

Gov. Rick Perry is back in the saddle.

Zeroing in on Mitt Romney like a prairie varmint and telling Herman Cain that they'll be "bumpin' tax plans" soon, Perry rode back into the middle of the Republican presidential race Tuesday night with some of his old swagger and his saddlebags still full of cash. | 10/19/11 13:40:13 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Ladies in White founder Laura Pollán's legacy of courage

In Miami, Havana and cities around the world where she touched hearts and changed views on Cuba, Laura Pollán is being remembered as a woman of exceptional courage. | 10/19/11 12:17:14 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is half right on rights council

When I interviewed U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week, I was curious to hear what he would say about U.S. congressional criticism that the United Nations has become hijacked by totalitarian regimes. | 10/19/11 06:05:30 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Eastman is the new general in gay marriage war

After failing to get elected California attorney general last year, John Eastman, a conservative law professor, has emerged as a different sort of general, one taking a lead in the cultural war over marriage.

Eastman, 51, has been appointed chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, the main organization advocating at the ballot box and in courts for traditional marriage, and against any effort to legalize same-sex marriage. | 10/19/11 06:02:02 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Wheldon's death is IndyCar's 'Earnhardt moment'

The horrifying death of IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon in a 15-car crash Sunday in Las Vegas needs to serve as a wakeup call to that racing series - its own sad version of an "Earnhardt moment." | 10/18/11 12:50:56 By - Scott Fowler

Commentary: Who's watching the U.S. elections?

America’s presidential election system is surely the most time-consuming on earth, not to mention the most expensive. That’s why most of the world pays scant attention to these early stages. In conversations about the election while traveling abroad, the chats usually came to a quick end when someone asked, “So, when is the election?” Hearing there’s more than a year left to catch up, most people quickly lost interest. | 10/18/11 06:07:52 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: How to explain Herman Cain

This is for those who keep asking what I think of Herman Cain. In particular, it’s for those who want to know what the tea party’s embrace of this black businessman turned presidential candidate says about my claim that the tea party is racist. | 10/18/11 06:09:29 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Jose Hernandez, an immigrant's son, makes run at Congress

I drove to Modesto last Tuesday to watch a farmworker who became a NASA astronaut announce that he's running for Congress.

His name is Jose Hernandez. On Twitter, nearly 208,000 followers know him as Astro Jose — the man who tweeted in English and Spanish as a crew member of the Space Shuttle Discovery in the summer of 2009. | 10/17/11 06:09:53 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Lisa Irwin case shouldn't become a sideshow

Cue the music and send in the clowns.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Curtain’s already up. The circus has begun. The disappearance of Baby Lisa Irwin is strange. But with the appearance of “Wild Bill” Stanton, the case officially enters the land of bizarre. | 10/17/11 06:04:14 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Vilifying, drug testing the poor is wrong

Demonizing the poor isn't new or even unpopular. Still, it was a bit disconcerting to watch N.C. House Speaker Thom Tillis (it's on YouTube) egging on a group of Republican listeners at Mars Hill College to essentially shun the poor. In a strategy that sounded like pitting the poor against the disabled, he noted that while people with disabilities are about to lose their benefits, North Carolina is providing welfare payments to unwed mothers and their children. | 10/16/11 06:05:08 By - Fannie Flono

Commentary: Fluoridation and other government conspiracy theories

For too long, we patriotic Americans have allowed winos and crystal meth addicts and backwoods yokels with no access to city water or modern dentistry to appropriate the prestige that comes with jagged, decayed teeth and the subsidiary whiff of rotten breath. | 10/16/11 06:20:34 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Californians Steve Jobs, Al Davis were world changers

As a Northern California kid who came of age in the 1970s, I'm feeling my mortality today.

The deaths of Steve Jobs and Al Davis within days of each other are like chapters closing in the book of my life. | 10/15/11 06:52:53 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Art Pope doesn't own N.C. as New Yorker article suggests

"State for Sale" reads the headline in the current edition of The New Yorker.

The state is North Carolina. And the person who is doing the buying, according to the article, is Art Pope, the Raleigh businessman, former state legislator and former GOP nominee for lieutenant governor. | 10/15/11 06:04:41 By - Rob Christensen

Commentary: Wall Street occupiers aren't from outer space

After three weeks of occupation protests spreading from Wall Street to Seattle and now to Washington, I felt I had to visit — if only for old time’s sake — to see if it was a revival of the protests I saw during the Vietnam War and the Nixon’s administration. | 10/14/11 14:19:36 By - Ben Barber