Commentary: 'We are no longer the democracy we once were'

I’m trying to keep my head up. I really am. But the last few weeks, I’ve been immersed in the raw guts of what’s wrong with this country and what’s wrong with Congress. | 08/23/12 06:09:16 By - Steve Kraske

Commentary: Todd Akin's disregard for women and schoolchildren

Just keep talking, Congressman. At this rate, U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin will alienate swaths of voters long before November. Last week, Sen. Claire McCaskill’s GOP rival swiped at the federal program that feeds millions of hungry schoolchildren. | 08/22/12 06:02:54 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: For Mitt Romney, it pays to keep everything vague

No dates. No dollar signs. No numbers. Mitt Romney’s two-page plan to overhaul Medicare is an exercise in vagueness. And that could prove to be a most-effective campaign weapon this election season. Or it could be his undoing. | 08/22/12 06:15:41 By - Marc Caputo

Commentary: Todd Akin isn't the first politician misinformed on rape, pregnancy

While the rest of the country is heaping ridicule and opprobrium onto Missouri Republican congressman Todd Akin’s combed-over head, we North Carolina residents should be thanking the heavens for such a gift as he. | 08/21/12 11:44:39 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Too many doubts in Chavis Carter's ‘suicide’ case

What happened to Chavis Carter? The official story is that the 21-year-old African-American man was with two other people when they were detained by police in Jonesboro, Ark.. The other two were released, but when the officers searched Carter, they found marijuana. He also had an outstanding warrant. So they searched him again, handcuffed him and put him in the back of their car. As police were preparing to leave, they smelled smoke. They opened the car and found Carter slumped over, covered in blood, dying from a bullet wound to his temple. | 08/21/12 06:08:28 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Middle class should rise up and ignore the political spin

If ever there were a time to pitch a national read-in, this is it.

The 2012 election campaign is upon us, and from what we’ve seen so far, the tenor of the "messaging" is not what anybody would term enlightening. | 08/21/12 06:05:32 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: The scary thought of growing old

While going through their deceased parents' "stuff" one night last month, two sisters found an old newspaper article that their mother and father had kept. | 08/20/12 06:08:44 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Ryan won't solve Romney's Hispanic voter problems

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was already polling at historically low numbers among Hispanic voters before his decision to name Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate. Now, Romney risks a total debacle among Hispanic voters that could cost him the election. | 08/20/12 06:04:03 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Truth is taking a beating this campaign season

Kansas City Star political writer Steve Kraske pursues an interesting hobby each election year. He collects political mailers — those outsized campaign postcards stuffing your mailbox — so he can get a taste of what candidates are saying. | 08/19/12 06:08:08 By - Dave Helling

Commentary: Revisiting the great Chick-fil-a debate

There are two things I really like about me.

One is my very strong physical resemblance to Denzel Washington. You may have noticed it – if you squint through your weak eye while standing on your head after seven rum-and-Cokes. | 08/19/12 06:25:00 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: President Obama's next job?

It’s never too early to think about your next job, especially if you’re president and unemployment has been over 8 percent for your entire term. So I imagine Barack Obama has probably spent some time contemplating where he could send his résumé. Here’s my advice, Mr. President: Forget the stock brokerages. Because inevitably some squinty-eyed little HR person is going to say, “Now, about that speech you made about General Motors . . .” | 08/18/12 06:01:28 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Making sense of the senseless

On first hearing the news of the Aug. 4 massacre in Wisconsin, I immediately thought of my neighbors down the street, particularly remembering a young man I first met when he was 10 years old.

I watched Kulvir Singh Bhogal grow up. He made his parents, teachers and everyone who knew him very proud. | 08/18/12 06:09:33 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Looking for terrorism in all the wrong places

Can we finally say the thing we have not said so far?

Last week, a white supremacist shot up a Sikh temple near Milwaukee, killing six people and wounding three. It is considered likely that the shooter mistook the Sikhs, whose men wear beards and turbans, for Muslims. The massacre came a few weeks after a characteristically baseless charge by Michele Bachmann and several other conservative legislators that a Muslim aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has ties to Islamic extremism. | 08/17/12 06:01:44 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Don't blame EPA for enforcing laws on coal industry

We curse the cop when we see lights flashing in our rear-view mirror.

Kentuckians are an independent people. We have good reasons to speed! Besides, speed limits restrict our "freedom" and take away our "liberty." They are downright un-American, forced upon us by politicians and government bureaucrats. | 08/17/12 06:09:13 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: We all receive government assistance

I live my life in a way that makes life harder for poor people because the government has favored me above them.

It’s true of most of us, though many people feign ignorance or deny that reality. | 08/16/12 06:04:04 By - Issac J. Bailey

Commentary: Latin America falls behind on innovation index

It shouldn’t come as a big surprise that most Latin American countries ranked towards the bottom of a new United Nations index of innovation. What’s surprising — and depressing — is that, with a few exceptions, they are not even making the list’s sub-group of “innovation learners.” | 08/16/12 06:04:19 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Let the free market break up the banks

Hey, let’s break up the big banks. Yeah! That would show those Wall Street fat cats and solve a lot of problems to boot — especially the risk that taxpayers could be tapped again in a panic under the “too big to fail” doctrine. The banks wouldn’t be too big, right? One reason we had the last crisis was deregulation, namely repeal of the Glass-Steagall law separating commercial and investment banking. | 08/15/12 06:01:28 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: How the Arab Spring might help Israel

A few months ago, as I was speaking to a non-profit group about how developments in the Arab world would affect Israel, I noticed the faces in the crowd looking back at me with deep skepticism. I understood the reason. | 08/15/12 06:06:35 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Gun violence spills off the big screen

The media seem to move on from mass killings more quickly nowadays than they used to, and within three days of the Aurora, Colo., cinema massacre the killer’s first appearance in court didn’t make the front of The New York Times. Denying him notoriety is fine with me, but once the stories of heroism and sacrifice were told and the dead were memorialized, there seemed little interest in learning anything from the shooting of 70 people who had little in common beyond the movie they had come to watch. | 08/14/12 06:02:49 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Those plain talkin' politicians

What is it that makes some politicians, despite being well-educated, silk-stockinged and pedigreed, try to speak like a field hand – or at least as though they’d never set foot inside an English class? | 08/14/12 06:05:54 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Missouri Christians play 'victim' card over 'right to pray'

Last week was an active one for religious bigots.

Six Sikhs were slaughtered on Sunday by a gunman while peacefully going to their house of worship in the outskirts of Milwaukee. The gunman killed himself, so we may never learn the full story of his motivation, but it is clear that he considered his victims’ religion alien to his idea of America, and it’s quite possible he was unaware of the distinction between Sikhism and Islam. | 08/13/12 06:14:44 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: No Labels' quest to elect problem-solvers

Are you a NObama voter?

Or will you say Mitt-No! in November? | 08/13/12 06:12:43 By - Linda P. Campbell

Commentary: Conservative begin to doubt David Barton's revisionist Christian history

Four years ago, Christian history writer David Barton was a Republican kingmaker lobbying to leverage then-unknown Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin onto the presidential ticket. | 08/12/12 06:06:24 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Party politics tops U.S. cyber-security

And down it crashed.

Not the nation’s electrical grid — not yet anyway — but rather legislation intended to protect it and other vital U.S. infrastructure from cyber attacks by hackers or terrorists. | 08/12/12 06:35:40 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Congress must toughen up work rules for welfare

Welfare reform, signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996, was fiercely opposed by many on the left.

The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan called it the most “brutal” law since Reconstruction. Several officials in the Clinton administration resigned in protest. The Children’s Defense Fund called it an “outrage.” The New York Times said it wasn’t reform. It was “punishment.” | 08/11/12 06:17:36 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Brazil's anti-graft battle could break the mold

You have to give credit to Brazil for what it’s doing to combat corruption and solve the worst political scandal in the country’s recent history. | 08/10/12 06:02:16 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: NRA prevents funding for studies on gun violence

There was nothing unusual about the University of Colorado's grant to its once-promising student, James E. Holmes. | 08/10/12 06:06:17 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Chick-fil-a day only fattened Cathy's wallet

You know all those people who made last Wednesday the most profitable single day in Chick-fil-A’s history?

I’m still trying to figure out how they managed to eat the thousands of chicken sandwiches they bought – while simultaneously patting themselves on the back with both hands in honor of their political stand. | 08/09/12 06:06:35 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: U.S. must take lead role on human rights

In the years immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, one would frequently hear worried musings about the sudden role of the United States, left alone on the world stage as the “World’s Only Superpower.” Some referred contemptuously to the American “hyper-power.” | 08/09/12 06:06:46 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: On gay marriage, a younger, wiser generation will lead

Rule No. 1 in business is know your customers.

And with that, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy has poked the power base that will trounce his opposition to same-sex marriage. | 08/08/12 06:01:04 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Medicare for everyone

Medicare turned 47 years old last Monday. Bill Mahan celebrated by setting up a booth on Main Street to try to convince passersby that America's health insurance crisis could be eased considerably if everyone had Medicare. | 08/07/12 06:09:02 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: Focus on Gabby's accomplishment, not her hair

There are people out there criticizing gold-medal-winning Olympic gymnast Gabby Douglas for not paying more attention to her hair. | 08/06/12 13:40:34 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Romney's tour de farce won't hurt him at home

Aspiring presidential candidates are required to go through many rites of passage on the road they hope will lead to the White House. Writing a heartwarming book on their life story or an inspiring tome on their political philosophy is one. Taking a world tour to meet with foreign leaders is another, especially for those with few stamps in their passport. | 08/06/12 12:48:52 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: A solution to the problem of roaring mouths saying nothing

Truth is, there are few things more fully bipartisan than ducking a question. The art of making sound while saying nothing has become so ordinary and ubiquitous a part of politics as to defy notice, like wallpaper. | 07/31/12 10:21:11 By - By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: In Colorado, ordinary people display true heroism

In a place of escapism, where people had gone to enjoy the fantasy of a man who could fight what we cannot, hell broke loose and chaos reigned. As, periodically, they must. In a gun-besotted nation where the right of each citizen to possess as many weapons of mass destruction as he or she wants is considered sacred and inviolable, who can expect otherwise? We are all vulnerable, always. | 07/25/12 07:19:10 By - By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Olympic fever should extend to math contests

But when we focus our entire attention on sports competitions and virtually ignore math tournaments, we create only one kind of role models, and fail to glorify those who are the most likely to make the scientific discoveries that can improve our living standards or conquer diseases. | 07/23/12 15:58:54 By - By Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Texas GOP wages war on thinking

The Texas GOP has set itself explicitly against teaching children to be critical thinkers. Never mind the creeping stupidization of this country, the growing dumbification of our children, our mounting rejection of, even contempt for, objective fact. | 07/22/12 06:00:00 By - By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Food stamp debate brings out the haters

It didn't take long for the more hard-hearted of the small-government crowd to respond to the news that the feds spent about $75.7 billion on their food stamp initiative last year, which is double what it spent four years ago. | 07/19/12 14:34:25 By - By J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Let's get serious about voter suppression

The name of the game, remember, is not voter prevention, but voter suppression, i.e., bringing down the numbers. In the last presidential election, only 63 percent of eligible voters voted - and that was the best showing in 48 years. Clearly, Americans are not overly enthusiastic about performing this civic duty as it is. | 07/18/12 10:28:16 By - By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Black Americans silent as efforts to suppress the black vote grow

An open letter to African America: There is a sustained effort to suppress the black vote as we approach this pivotal election. And what is our response? Silence. | 07/15/12 06:00:00 By - By Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Here's why expanding Medicaid makes sense

What's more important in Texas: politics or money? When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act last month, it also gave states the right to opt out of the expansion of Medicaid, the program that could provide healthcare for up to 2 million more low-income Texans, starting in 2014. | 07/13/12 06:03:09 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: Ronald Reagan and the art of compromise

There's a move afoot to place a statue inside the Capitol honoring Ronald Reagan, the most consequential politician ever to come from this state and the only California governor to become president. It's a great idea, so long as it teaches a lesson about the vanishing art of compromise. | 07/12/12 06:04:46 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Using aid to fight corruption

Daniel Yohannes has a tough job – he has to give away about $900 million in U.S. foreign aid each year, but only to countries that fight corruption. | 07/11/12 06:02:53 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: This column was made in the USA

I’m only me. Never mind the rumors. These words were not assembled by a sweaty cabal of cut-rate journalists, working out of some east Asian boiler-room. “Fred Grimm” has not yet been outsourced. It’s just me. (Or, as a sneaky pretender from Manila or Mumbai might write, “It is only I.”) | 07/11/12 06:10:38 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Chief Justice John Roberts isn't just a neutral umpire

Chief Justice John Roberts is brilliant and quotable. That doesn't necessarily make him right. He deferred to congressional power to tax with one hand, but with the other laid the groundwork for constraining the regulation of interstate commerce. And that's an open invitation to those who have long wanted to rein it in. | 07/11/12 06:10:41 By - Linda P. Campbell

Commentary: Our perfectly imperfect Constitution

Since the Supreme Court's ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act -- "Obamacare," as many call it -- political operatives and pundits have been throwing around the Constitution like it was a baseball in a Little League game. | 07/10/12 06:00:22 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Health care law ruling wasn't a 'conservative victory'

Call it the stupidity of hope. A lot of conservatives are twisting themselves into knots in an attempt to portray last week’s Supreme Court decision on Obamacare as a victory. Their reasoning: Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion rejected the Obama administration’s arguments that the clause in the U.S. Constitution granting Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce gives the government the right to force individuals to buy healthcare. | 07/10/12 06:10:52 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Time to fill California's Eastern District judicial vacancies

Last week, the federal judiciary marked significant milestones when United States District Judge Garland Burrell of the Eastern District of California took senior status following two decades of valuable service. | 07/09/12 15:51:02 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Health care view depends on where you sit

How you reacted to the pretty darned historic U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act might depend upon the lens you look through.

Is it a primarily a constitutional issue, a political issue or a public policy issue? | 07/09/12 06:05:57 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: End the death penalty

While others have been analyzing and debating the U.S. Supreme Court's most recent divisive decision, I have been thinking about another landmark case handed down 40 years -- almost to the day -- before the court's ruling to uphold the controversial Affordable Care Act, or "Obamacare." | 07/09/12 06:05:08 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Health care law will benefit small businesses

In health insurance, size matters way too much.

In this marketplace, the sharpest dividing line between the haves and have-nots hinges on the size of your employer. Among Texas companies with at least 50 workers, 95 percent offer health insurance to employees. Among smaller companies, 31 percent offer coverage. | 07/08/12 06:09:10 By - Mitchell Schnurman

Commentary: North Carolina must make eugenics wrong right

North Carolina has determined that doing the right thing is too inconvenient and too expensive.

For some time now, the state has been on a seemingly noble quest to right old wrongs. | 07/08/12 06:06:59 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: 'Fox & Friends' gets Texas town's flag 'ban' wrong

A Fox & Friends Weekend host's words jarred America awake Sunday.

"There is this city council in Texas," host Alisyn Camerota began, "and they're saying no more American flags!" | 07/07/12 06:23:59 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Having it all

Among vivid memories retained from two trips my wife and I took to southern Africa are encounters with elephant herds. Few experiences compare with being within yards of those lumbering creatures, watching them munch saplings like a teenager eating potato chips. | 07/07/12 06:17:01 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Phoning it in vs. self-plagiarism

Jonah Lehrer is a science writer who at age 30 is at the top of his game. He has written three books, two of them bestsellers, his articles and columns run in the country’s best newspapers and magazines and he has parlayed his publishing success into online celebrity and star billing on the speaking circuit. | 07/07/12 06:03:31 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: 'Obamacare' and the voice of 'the American people'

After the U.S. Supreme Court basically supported the legality of what Republicans have come to call “Obamacare,” the GOP’s bombastic leaders went on and on and on about what an outrage it was and how disastrous it was going to be for “the American people.” | 07/06/12 12:40:19 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: Immigration debate harbors plenty of misconceptions

Last week, I wrote that we have nothing to fear from immigration and many readers responded as if in the same voice: They said I don't get it. | 07/06/12 06:07:42 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Holding Glenn Beck's Mercury One charity accountable

Author and entertainer Glenn Beck brings his circus to Arlington on July 28.

Fine.

Just don't fib about it. | 07/06/12 01:40:00 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Chief Justice Roberts' clever move on health care law

A clever one, Chief Justice John Roberts.

While Roberts saved the Affordable Care Act and gave Democrats and liberals a big victory, he also gave Republicans and conservatives lasting weapons in their fight to rein in big government. | 07/05/12 07:12:28 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Founding Fathers should have given us a three-day Independence Day weekend

Had John Adams been a bit better at predicting the future, we’d all be coming off a three-day weekend. | 07/04/12 06:00:48 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: If the pundits say it, it must be true

Woe is us, fellow Missourians.

We are exposed. | 07/04/12 06:06:38 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Real people suffer when health care is mixed with politics

Amid the white-hot political rhetoric in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to declare that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional, I remember Devin Pate of Aynor, South Carolina. | 07/03/12 06:05:22 By - Issac J. Bailey

Commentary: Fast and Furious? How about plodding and pointless

Rep. Darrell Issa’s joke of an investigation into Operation Fast and Furious needs a name. | 07/03/12 06:01:49 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: 'Obamacare' will be good for the U.S.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina is not happy about the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare." | 07/02/12 06:06:11 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Unintended consequences wrought by the NRA

Greyston Garcia pretty much owed his freedom to the political might of the National Rifle Association. And maybe his death. | 07/02/12 06:03:28 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Scalia's politics show too much in Arizona dissent

If Justice Antonin Scalia wasn't already the darling of immigration hardliners in Arizona and out, he made sure of it on Monday. | 07/01/12 06:07:26 By - Linda P. Campbell

Commentary: Children in the shadow of the immigration fight

I knew a young lady for four years before she had the courage to come out to me.

I never suspected her secret.

She was smart.

She worked hard.

She stayed out of trouble. | 07/01/12 06:05:43 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: There is nothing to fear from immigrant families

On Tuesday, I spoke to a group of retirees who I thought would love me, but some clearly didn't because we disagreed on the issue of immigration. In fact, some in my audience seemed to have no idea what to make of me. | 06/30/12 06:05:37 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Hopefully, Reille Hunter has said her last word on Edwards affair

On Tuesday, Rielle Hunter announced that she and John Edwards were no longer a couple. This determination apparently came after publication of her book, which chewed over intimate details of their relationship. | 06/30/12 06:17:44 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: Texas must stop messing with Planned Parenthood

Texas needs to stop messing with Planned Parenthood.

To the self-serving politicians who use the organization as a target to help rally their conservative base I say: Leave it alone. | 06/29/12 06:05:53 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Problems, abuse continue to plague for-profit juvenile lockups

Yet again, a judge has been tasked to sort through wrenching allegations of abuse and neglect and violence at a privatized juvenile lock-up. | 06/29/12 06:08:21 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Who comes up with these Super PAC names?

Nineteen weeks before the elections, and already the airwaves are clogged with competing political commercials.

Many are funded by so-called Super PACs, political action committees that are allowed to collect unlimited sums from companies, unions and individuals, and then spend that money supporting or attacking candidates. | 06/28/12 06:07:48 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: When Mitt Romney addresses the NAACP...

Dear Mitt Romney:

I was pleased to hear that you have accepted an invitation to speak in July before the 103rd convention of the NAACP in Houston. In anticipation of that event, I have taken the liberty of writing a speech for you. It’s only a beginning, space limitations being what they are, but it should get you off to a solid start and you can take it from there. | 06/28/12 06:07:06 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Dump the politics and fix the U.S. health care system

The U.S. Supreme Court will rule soon on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law that is often called "Obamacare" but just as easily could be called "Romneycare." | 06/27/12 06:02:28 By - Tom Eblen

Commentary: Hidden stories tell us much about our presidents

Americans are drawn to explore the hidden, inner lives of their political leaders; the more mysterious and complex the better.

A new biography Barack Obama: The Story, by David Maraniss, taps into that drive to get inside the heart, the mind and the soul of the man leading the nation, a quest fed partly by human curiosity — a wish to understand an interesting human being — and partly by a compulsion to obtain special insights into the political man. | 06/27/12 06:09:58 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: Mexico's elections could resurrect the PRI

With virtually all polls showing that soap opera star-looking candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, 45, is likely to win the July 1 elections, the big question is whether his victory would mean a return to Mexico’s corruption-ridden, authoritarian ways of the past. Although times have changed, that may very well happen. | 06/26/12 06:15:28 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: To survive, unions must evolve

After the Wisconsin beat-down, an existential wail arose from shattered union leaders, members and their friends.

Ritual moaning about the array of forces aligned against labor accompanied second-guessing over tactics and strategy. | 06/25/12 06:04:54 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Marco Rubio as GOP's hope and change candidate

Meet the GOP candidate for hope and change. Just not for the 2012 elections, and maybe not even 2016.

Marco Rubio, the junior senator from Florida, has been bantered about as a possible running mate for Mitt Romney for months now. Romney finally conceded that Rubio was being vetted. But don’t take that as an endorsement, or even the truth. | 06/25/12 06:02:09 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Citizens United and the return of the 'copper kings'

Then as now, oligarchs were making their desires known.

A massive corporation controlled legislators and judges, and a commentator observed that "local folks now found themselves locked in the grip of a corporation controlled from Wall Street and insensitive to their concerns." | 06/24/12 06:03:24 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Repealed helmet laws have been good for organ recipients

Okay, okay. I was wrong about motorcycle helmets. | 06/24/12 06:20:36 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: More fighting with enemy swords

A few days ago I felt like I stepped on a land mine.

I wrote an article suggesting that to defeat some of the terrorists stalking us and our allies around the world we may have to borrow their methods of fighting and arm insurgent groups to harass governments like Iran that threaten us. | 06/23/12 06:07:35 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Corporate secrecy, not spending is Citizen United's biggest problem

The Kansas City Council approved a resolution on June 14 denouncing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the infamous Citizens United campaign finance case.

“Only human beings, not corporations, are endowed with constitutional rights,” the resolution read. | 06/23/12 06:11:31 By - David Helling

Commentary: Politicians as 'bath salt' pushers

I’ll bet none of Miami’s city commissioners has ever heard of Gabi Price. That’s sad for many reasons, including the fact that knowing her story might have saved the commissioners from elevating their ordinary jackassery to international levels last week. | 06/23/12 06:13:29 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Title IX protections go beyond the playing field

On June 23, 1972, Congress passed Title IX of the Education Amendments, which requires that all students have equal access to educational opportunities, regardless of their sex. No one can deny this groundbreaking measure has changed the lives of women and girls. But the work begun 40 years ago is hardly finished. | 06/22/12 06:02:30 By - Lenora Lapidus

Commentary: Rodney King asked the question others would not

There was always something hapless about Rodney King.

He entered the nation's consciousness — and its conscience — as a shambling drunk, an unemployed black construction worker who tried to outrun L.A. police rather than be arrested for drunk driving. The result was a police beating, surreptitiously captured on video, so profoundly vicious that the chief of police himself said it made him sick. In 1992, when a suburban jury, conspicuously bleached of black jurors, acquitted four white police officers of any crime, the City of Angels went to hell, erupting in one of the worst urban riots in modern American history. | 06/22/12 06:05:38 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: A cheer for NYC Mayor Bloomberg's soda policy

For lunch one day this week, Kansas City Mayor Sly James savored a salad with an “unidentifiable dressing,” fish, and some kind of “mystery meat.” He did not clean his plate. | 06/22/12 06:05:45 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Rodney King wasn't a role model but that doesn't matter

When parts of Los Angeles erupted in violence in 1992 after four cops were exonerated for beating Rodney King like a candy-filled piñata, an oft-asked question went something like this: Why are y’all so upset over what happened to him? He wasn’t any kind of hero. | 06/21/12 06:04:01 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Yearning to fly

“When once you have tasted flight,” Leonardo da Vinci is reported to have said, “you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” | 06/21/12 06:01:13 By - C.W. Gusewelle

Commentary: Filling Eastern District of Pennsylvania judicial vacancies

This week, the federal courts pass important milestones when United States District Judge Berle Schiller of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania assumes senior status after twelve years of dedicated service. | 06/21/12 13:19:55 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: Obama's immigration stance still has a way to go

Leave it to a reporter to spoil the party.

“So what’s the political advantage of the president’s decision?” was the query poised by a colleague Friday as immigration activists swooned and critics stomped over the Obama administration’s decision to give a break to some undocumented children. | 06/20/12 06:04:13 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Freeing journalists from their online muzzle

To the mainstream news business, social media are both an opportunity and an irritant. They enable reporters to learn more and learn it more quickly, and furnish them with spiffy new channels to people they wouldn’t otherwise reach. New media accelerate the creation and spread of news, and enrich the news diet by welcoming nontraditional sources to step up and tell what they know. | 06/20/12 06:05:44 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: A Florida voters 'bumble-fest'

First of all, it’s not really a purge. Purges are organized, thorough and ruthlessly efficient.

Bumble-fest is a more precise term for Gov. Rick Scott's effort to cull non-citizens from the voter rolls. | 06/19/12 06:03:19 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Romney's immigration stance? What Would Rubio Do

Mitt Romney has a more nuanced immigration stance these days.

Call it WWRD, an abbreviation for What Would Rubio Do? | 06/19/12 06:02:45 By - Marc Caputo

Commentary: The Rio+20 Earth Summit: A chance to set our planet in the right direction

We are two aging environmentalists with more than 80 years between us spent advocating for a cleaner planet and healthier economy. Even from our well-worn perch, what will be taking place at the Rio+20 Earth Summit in Brazil this week has the makings of a potential game changer. | 06/18/12 13:39:03 By - Brent Blackwelder and Randall Hayes

Commentary: What could top kindergarten graduation?

I’m between graduations and have been thinking of how best to balance the message.

I want to be celebratory and congratulatory without acting like they just won the Nobel Prize. | 06/18/12 06:01:28 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: The dollars and sense of addressing hearing loss in the workplace

Hearing loss doesn’t win many headlines. Nor does it win much time in the doctor’s office. But maybe it should. And perhaps America’s employers should be the first to listen up. | 06/18/12 06:00:19 By - Sergei Kochkin, PhD

Commentary: Add rising sea levels to the list of banned terms

It must be frustrating for our guys in Tallahassee. The governor and the legislative leadership have made it plenty clear that they have no use for this global warming stuff. Yet climate scientists keep dumping water on Florida’s future. | 06/17/12 06:09:00 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: With friends like Pakistan, does the U.S. need enemies?

To speak of Pakistan as America’s partner in the war against global terrorism is both an abuse of fact and an insult to the public’s intelligence. | 06/17/12 06:08:13 By - C.W. Gusewelle

Commentary: Fighting with the enemy's sword

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States and our Western allies from England to Israel to Indonesia have been fighting with one hand tied behind our backs while our anonymous and amorphous enemies launch suicide bombers, kidnappers, roadside bombs, car bombs, truck bombs, airplane bombs and other sneaky attacks. | 06/16/12 06:00:59 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Texas congressional race becomes an extreme Obama hate-fest

Roger Williams has gone extreme, and he had to.

After years as a genial local car dealer, he's knee-deep in a Central Texas congressional runoff that amounts to an Obama-hating contest against a Tea Party leader aligned with the John Birch Society and Constitution Party. | 06/16/12 06:04:56 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: NameItChangeIt gives women in politics a way to fight innuendo

Adoring parents of this generation, intent on uplifting their young daughters, tell them that no goal is too high. No profession, no position of power, no political office is off limits to them. | 06/16/12 06:23:22 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Florida Gov. Scott's voters purge has flawed process, politics

The hurricanes forming in the Atlantic aren’t the only stalkers Floridians face heading into summer and fall. There’s another brutal season brewing: Presidential elections. | 06/15/12 06:03:27 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: In the end, the bullies lost

As soon as the school bell rang for class break, my heart started to pound. I knew what was coming: my Calvary. A group of schoolmates who used to bully me daily surrounded me in the classroom. They mocked my behavior and feminine gestures. They called me a gay slur. I couldn’t comprehend why they made fun of me tirelessly. I was unaware of my sexual orientation. I was only 14. | 06/15/12 06:06:48 By - Daniel Shoer Roth

Commentary: Cleaver's quest to clean up ethics committee

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s latest cause has nothing to do with Kansas City or even Missouri, and he knows it’s not going to win many points with some voters. | 06/14/12 06:06:41 By - Steve Kraske

Commentary: GOP could learn a lesson from Jeb Bush's 'grand bargain'

A little self-deprecating, forthright about the future — both his and the nation’s — and putting a kinder face on his party, Jeb Bush’s recent TV chat with Charlie Rose reminds us why the former Florida governor remains so popular. | 06/14/12 06:00:19 By - Myriam Marquez

Commentary: Ray Bradbury and the gift of imagination

The movie version of "Fahrenheit 451" came out when I was a teenager, and had the virtue of most movies you remember most vividly: It isn't quite like anything else you've ever seen. It's directed (in English) by legendary French filmmaker Francois Truffaut, and stars Oskar Werner and a young Julie Christie in what might be the best performance of her career, a dual role as both a victim of mind control and a free-spirited rebel against it. | 06/13/12 06:04:48 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: Preparing for a political season of discontent, anger

A throng of demonstrators clustered on the sidewalk along the north side of Broward Boulevard, waving their signs, clamoring for attention from the passing motorists. | 06/13/12 06:06:23 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Romney should take advantage of rising GOP tide

Like a change of momentum in a big game, the last two weeks have brought an almost palpable shift — and for President Barack Obama, a long-running nightmare of bad news. The economy, which had been strengthening, suddenly downshifted. The jobless rate ticked up. Growth estimates were revised down. | 06/12/12 06:02:13 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Seeing Jesus in a cheese sandwich

Chyanna Richards saw Jesus in her bathroom.

A few days ago, Richards, who lives near Houston, told a local TV news station she saw the image of Christ in a splotch of green mold on the wall above her tub. “People say, ‘Your house is blessed,’ ” Richards said. | 06/12/12 06:08:13 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: How innocent people land in prison

David Quindt can't escape the 15 months he spent in Sacramento County jail for a murder he didn't commit. He moved all the way to Hawaii for a fresh start, yet he doesn't want to completely forget. Each semester, he tells his story to law school students to "open their eyes" about how criminal justice in America can go terribly wrong. | 06/12/12 06:05:53 By - Foon Rhee

Commentary: Miami attack highlights need to defend the homeless

It is well known that life can end at any moment, under any circumstance. We also know that life can lead us through a peculiar path — one day we are overwhelmed with glory, then something happens that submerges us into misery. Likewise, we are aware of the degradation of some human beings who become capable of committing bestial acts. | 06/11/12 06:04:11 By - Daniel Shoer Roth

Commentary: Why would anyone want to be U.S. president?

As the November elections approach, one question jumps to mind: Why does anyone want to be president? Taking the rudder of the United States has never been anything but an enormous challenge. The difficulties confronting the winner of the next election will prove no exception. | 06/11/12 06:06:49 By - Frida Ghitis

Commentary: 'Taxmageddon' on the horizon for U.S. economy

Warnings have been ringing for months now about the fiscal cliff the U.S. might tumble down on Jan. 1.

The calamity has also been tagged “Taxmageddon.” | 06/10/12 06:04:59 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Demand, not business incentives, drives job creation

I’ve always dreamed of owning a Lamborghini.

It would cost more than my house. Its maintenance fees would likely be more than my monthly mortgage payment. | 06/10/12 06:11:56 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Leaders tell blatant lies about OAS Human Right Commission

All politicians lie, or sometimes play games with the truth, but the presidents of Bolivia and Ecuador were so off the mark when they asked the Organization of American States to effectively kill its Human Rights Commission that one can only wonder whether they were being ignorant or blatant liars. | 06/09/12 06:55:34 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Droning on and on

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering words of a constitutional law professor who promised us he was going to put an end to the callous disregard for the law of that bring-‘em-dead-or-alive cowboy George W. Bush. | 06/09/12 06:09:23 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: In time, N.C.'s marriage amendment will disappear

We have been there before. After I voted in my first election in 1972 (the voting age had changed to 18), I overheard some folks saying, “I’m ashamed. I’m going to move out of North Carolina.” | 06/09/12 06:05:20 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: Don't put much stock in June presidential polls

I’m a man of unusual tastes. So when I tell you that I spend way too much time piddling around with those interactive maps of the Electoral College, you begin to get the idea: I spend time on arcane stuff that you probably don't. | 06/08/12 06:07:34 By - Steve Kraske

Commentary: Gloria Allred's valiant publicity stand against cannibalism

Finally, someone — someone right here in Miami — had the courage to take a stand against the great scourge of our time. | 06/08/12 06:06:22 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Regulating the media

The idea of “regulating” the news media plays quite differently on the two sides of the Atlantic. In the United States it’s unthinkable: Press regulation of any sort would inevitably trample sacred freedoms and unleash state apparatchiks to badger and stifle the media. | 06/08/12 06:02:47 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Big Gulps vs. the Founding Fathers

There are things the law cannot do.

And if that seems a self-evident observation, well, you may want to think again in light of last week’s headlines out of New York City: It seems the mayor wants to ban the Big Gulp. | 06/07/12 06:08:25 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Latin America's response to Syria massacre was too weak

Latin America’s response to the massacre of more than 100 civilians, including 49 children and 34 women , in the Syrian town of Houla has been, with a few exceptions, shockingly tame for a region that has suffered gross human rights violations in the past. | 06/07/12 06:10:32 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Has the tea party dumbed-down Congress?

U.S. Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-S.C., says no, even though a new study concludes that he speaks at less than an eighth-grade level. He scores lowest among 545 congressmen, including seven other Tea Party freshmen in the bottom 10. | 06/06/12 06:04:33 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Former beer lobbyist knows little about Florida voting

Dark mutterings about voter suppression and underhanded politics have been dogging Florida’s bungled campaign to excise non-citizens from the voter registration rolls. | 06/06/12 06:07:58 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Should government tell us we can't drink soda?

Sometimes my live-free-or-die libertarian instincts collide with my desire to help President Obama establish a socialist state like the one in Canada. The latest move by New York City to induce people to lead healthier lives by government fiat is a case in point. | 06/05/12 06:05:41 By - James Werrell

Commentary: When Snow White is smarter and stronger than politicians

The war on women rages on in the political arena.

No, really. We’re targets: House Republicans are dragging their feet over expanding the Violence Against Women Act. If they don’t sign off, they’ll deny new protection from domestic violence for women who are lesbians, Native Americans or immigrants. | 06/05/12 06:04:08 By - Jenee Osterheldt

Commentary: Mitt Romney's pitch to Latino voters won't work

If presumptive Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s first major speech to a Hispanic audience in this campaign was an indication of his strategy to win over Latino voters, he is in big trouble. | 06/04/12 06:01:07 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Some new and old ideas for banks

Let’s just junk the Dodd-Frank bank regulation act and its unruly child, the Volcker rule.

Though the $2 billion-and-counting trading loss by JPMorgan has spurred on those who want tough implementation of the two measures, other voices are saying the debacle should bring focus on better ways to carefully watch our banks. | 06/04/12 06:09:43 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: State Dept. promotes freedom abroad but supresses whistleblower here

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton forcefully intervened recently on behalf of Chen Guancheng, the blind Chinese dissident, who has been hounded by his government for criticizing official policy. It's too bad she won't afford the same consideration to the employees of her own department. | 06/03/12 06:25:33 By - Dennis Jett

Commentary: Taking a cue from Sweden on taxes and spending cuts

There's little argument that the $800 billion-plus stimulus bill that was President Barack Obama's first "accomplishment" soon became one of his biggest political liabilities. The recovery that began in mid-2009 has been the weakest since World War II in terms of GDP growth and nearly the weakest in terms of job growth. | 06/03/12 06:16:25 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Honoring the other veterans

Amid the celebration of the annual Memorial Day holiday, we have largely ignored the other veterans. | 06/02/12 06:04:25 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: The Watergate scandal at 40

Stories, even the ones about the biggest political scandal of them all, put on a little age like all the rest of us. With Watergate, the break-in of break-ins, the coverup of coverups, the one that brought down a president, a 40th anniversary (the break-in happened on June 17, 1972) is to some degree about absent friends. | 06/02/12 06:08:09 By - Jim Jenkins

Commentary: Stains left by George Wallace haven't faded

The death last month of Nicholas Katzenbach, a key member of both the John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson administrations during the 1960s, brought fresh to mind two moments in my early career as a young reporter covering the civil rights struggle in the South. | 06/02/12 06:13:07 By - C.W. Gusewelle

Commentary: Sometimes the internet brings out the worst in us

Steve Blake of the Los Angeles Lakers missed what would have been the winning shot in a critical game. His wife got death threats.

Singer John Legend’s fiancée, Chrissy Teigen, criticized singer Chris Brown’s performance on an awards show. She got death threats. | 06/01/12 06:00:16 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Closing the border won't stop Mexico's drug cartels

A time-tested method of tracing malfeasance back to its origins is "follow the money." Corporate scams, insider trading or, as former presidential candidate John Edwards is learning, even sex scandals fall to such tracking. | 06/01/12 06:05:03 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: 'Miami Zombie' is just another story that could only happen in Miami

You’d think a face-eating naked man shot dead along the postcard blue landscape of the MacArthur Causeway would be bad for tourism, but not in our steamy Magic City. We’ve developed crocodile skin when it comes to police news, no matter how dehumanizing, and now we embrace our wackiness. | 05/31/12 06:11:33 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: An unvarnished look at wars' toll on soldiers

Whether by tacit consent or official coercion, U.S. news organizations did not publish pictures of American World War II dead until a LIFE magazine spread in 1943 showed fallen Marines on the wet sands of a Pacific island beach. Such images were considered too painful, too stark, too graphic, too hazardous to home front morale and national resolve. | 05/31/12 06:03:09 By - Dusty Nix

Commentary: No justice when the real crime victim goes to jail

The "victim," in this twisted tale of Florida justice, was Rico Gray, a 245-pound Jacksonville truck driver with a proclivity for domestic violence. | 05/31/12 06:02:54 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: A remote salute to Eugene J. Polley

We are gathered here today to memorialize a man who revolutionized our lives.

So what did Eugene J. Polley do? What was the nature of his great leap forward? Did he invent the PC? Did he invent the cell phone? Did he invent the Internet? | 05/30/12 06:06:20 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Obama administration missed the memo on Castro

Of the simple rules in Florida elections, few stand out like this one: Don’t look wobbly over Castro — especially in an election year.

President Barack Obama’s administration didn’t seem to get the memo. | 05/30/12 06:04:11 By - Marc Caputo

Commentary: School teachers and the enduring life lessons they teach

Try as I might, I cannot conjure up one defining moment that occurred in a classroom during my years of public schooling. This does not mean that important lessons weren't learned from teachers. It's just that the jewels that stayed glued in my crown of knowledge have little to do with parsing sentences, calculating the area of a triangle or knowing who was fighting whom during the War of 1812 -- and a lot to do with respect, courtesy and teamwork. | 05/29/12 06:07:15 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Another reason to drink coffee

I have never fully trusted grownups who don’t drink coffee.

Drinking coffee is one of the key privileges of reaching adulthood. Failure to avail one’s self of that privilege is suspicious. | 05/29/12 06:09:21 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Romney filling his coffers in California while dissing it

National politicians are delighted to come to California to raise campaign money. As Mitt Romney showed recently, some of them are perfectly happy to take shots at the Golden State once they leave. | 05/28/12 06:16:46 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: The demographics of poverty

Frederick Douglass, one of America’s great thinkers, in the “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass,” told a story of how he became educated enough to not only escape the actual bonds of slavery, but the mental ones as well. | 05/28/12 06:06:05 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: This is hardly disco's 'Last Dance'

Forget Donna Summer, for a minute. The real disco diva was Sylvester. Yeah, Sylvester was a dude, but he was as glamorous and self-appreciative as any female singer of the era who pulled on a sequined dress and moaned or yelped into a microphone. | 05/27/12 06:08:37 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: Obama administration reneged on its secrecy pledge

There were no cameras around to record whether President Obama was winking when, on his first full day in office, he signed an executive order and two presidential memorandums declaring that “every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known.” | 05/27/12 06:17:07 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Compiling the soundtrack of our lives

We were driving down the road when the old Eurythmics song “Sweet Dreams” came on the radio.

I turned it up.

Some of them want to use you! I sang along loudly. | 05/26/12 06:02:02 By - Suzanne Perez Tobias

Commentary: Union support has declined for a reason

Lockheed Martin reports that the four-week-long Machinists' strike hasn't put much of a dent in productivity at the Fort Worth aeronautics plant.

Factory operations continue with salaried employees handling critical tasks. As of May 14, the company reported that the flight line completed 33 ground engine flight run tests, almost double the 17 planned for the period. | 05/26/12 06:04:14 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: Goofy GOP plans to stop Obama's re-election

I , too, sing America.

So wrote Langston Hughes, the unofficial poet laureate of the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes, whose 65 years spanned the lynch mobs of the early 20th century and the race riots of the mid-1960s, intended a defiant reminder to a nation too often content to include him out, a nation quick to regard him as the eternal Other, separate from and threatening to, what they saw as the “real” America, i.e., the white America. | 05/25/12 06:06:53 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Survey says this government spending cut is ill-considered

Here’s a fiscal mess in the making that has slipped by most Americans. This one is pushed by the folks who claim that government is too big and intrusive. | 05/25/12 06:05:24 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Romney must be more than a Mr. Fix-It

I’d guess that about now it’s panic time at President Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters. Last week, a poll showed Republican Mitt Romney edging ahead of Obama 46-43 percent, but what really stood out was Romney’s support among women. The former Massachusetts governor had surged ahead, 46-44. | 05/24/12 06:08:38 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: How politics cripple Latin American universities

The appointment of Venezuelan-born Rafael Reif as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week raises an interesting question: why are so many Latin Americans excelling in the world’s best universities, but not in Latin America? | 05/24/12 06:06:59 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Joe Ricketts' good move in backing away from anti-Obama hatefest

Joe Ricketts has decided not to spend $10 million on hate. Good call. Ricketts is a billionaire, having founded TD Ameritrade, a company that promotes online stock trading by ordinary folks. You’ve seen the commercials on television. | 05/23/12 06:02:58 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: There are no traditional marriages

I’m a man married to a woman raising two young kids under the same roof.

Our children weren’t conceived until a couple of years after we walked down the aisle. | 05/23/12 06:00:28 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: U.S. demographics are shifting but we're all Americans

The U.S. Census Bureau says I won't be a minority in California within three years, if not sooner. It also said last week that for the first time in American history, minority births have surpassed white births. | 05/22/12 06:01:41 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Mitt Romney and prep school bullying

If Mitt Romney had bullied a classmate in South Carolina today, he might be facing a rap for assault and battery by a mob, formerly known as lynching. Jail time might have sharpened his memory of the incident. | 05/22/12 06:01:25 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Time to fill Ninth Circuit vacancies

On May 7, the Senate finally confirmed U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Nguyen 91-3 for the Ninth Circuit five months after her unopposed Judiciary Committee vote. However, three of 29 judgeships remain vacant on the nation’s largest appellate court. | 05/21/12 11:43:07 By - Carl Tobias

Commentary: The Massachusetts senate race Indian War of 2012

The race for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts has taken a turn toward the absurd. | 05/21/12 06:00:10 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Quit texting and drive

Looking back, it was such a quaint little crusade, a futile gesture against the indomitable lure of technology that never got much beyond a bumper sticker slogan: “Shut up and drive.” | 05/21/12 06:05:39 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: $40 billion in foreign aid may be wasted each year

About $40 billion in global foreign aid may be wasted each year – failing to reach the poor people of the world – due to inefficient, political and nationalistic obstacles set up by aid donors, top aid officials have admitted. | 05/20/12 06:04:57 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: When enough is enough

I admit it. I winced when I saw the Time magazine cover of a defiant-looking young mother nursing her almost 4-year-old son, posed standing on a kiddie chair and appearing uncomfortable as he suckles her left breast.

That poor child, I thought, is being used as a weapon in a manufactured war. | 05/20/12 06:07:17 By - Burgetta Wheeler

Commentary: How will black voters react to Obama's gay marriage stand?

Black people know what it’s like to feel invisible, as though you exist only in the dark recesses of other people’s imagination.

They know what it feels like to be marginalized, put upon, spit on. | 05/20/12 06:05:15 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Is society to blame for making us fat?

Over the weekend, on a family day trip to a Bay Area amusement park, it was stunning to see so many people in one place who've lost control of their weight. There were obese people of all races and ethnicities, but most poignant of all were the kids who virtually waddled as they walked. | 05/19/12 06:12:44 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Courageous move or cynical political ploy?

There they are again, back at the corner table speaking at volumes that only those who are too caffeinated or too confident could be comfortable with. | 05/19/12 06:03:22 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: Don't blame Democrats for hyper-partisanship

And another one bites the dust.

But Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar did not go quietly. Following last week’s defeat in the GOP primary, the veteran legislator issued a remarkable statement warning of the dangers of continued partisanship. | 05/18/12 06:01:12 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Obama's gay marriage stand detracts from his accomplishments

When President Obama takes the stage in Bank of America stadium in Charlotte late this summer to accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, he’ll be standing roughly 20 miles south of Davidson College. | 05/18/12 06:00:40 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Who will N.C. marriage amendment backers target next?

OK, who’s next?

C’mon, now. Surely you didn’t think the people and groups that fought so hard to add the marriage amendment to North Carolina’s constitution were going to stop if they won Tuesday, did you? | 05/17/12 06:06:05 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: 'Life of Julia' is a life without ambition

The right-wing blogosphere has been having a fine time with the “The Life of Julia,” the Obama campaign’s attempt to show, through a series of USA Today-style illustrations, how the policies of President Obama come to the aid of women at every important moment in their lives. | 05/17/12 06:09:40 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: How Sweden and Switzerland handle debt, taxes and spending

It’s just never-ending, this standoff in America over taxes, spending and deficits. For three decades, we’ve stood firm on our particular ideological ramparts, seeing any solution that tilts even slightly toward the opposing philosophy as total surrender. | 05/16/12 06:07:58 By - Keith Chrostowski

Commentary: Republicans or Democrats? Who lost Latin America?

If President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney spend any time talking about Latin America during the campaign for the November elections, I can already see the thrust of their discussion — who lost Latin America? | 05/16/12 06:06:31 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Understanding the Camp David Accords and Muslim Brotherhood's threat

The Muslim Brotherhood Party in Egypt has stated that if it is elected to power it will 're-examine' the Camp David Accords. The Camp David Accords between Egypt President's Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Begin were brokered by American President Jimmy Carter in 1978 and led directly to the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979. Egypt and Israel, which had fought five wars in the proceeding 30 years, have been at peace for the 34 years since signing the Accords. | 05/16/12 06:02:47 By - Scott Sigmund Gartner

Commentary: A slow march to gay marriage

One day, voters in North Carolina enshrine in their constitution that gay men and lesbian women shall not enjoy the same privileges as heterosexual couples. | 05/15/12 06:06:55 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Obama's timing on gay marriage

So apparently, Barack Obama is finally done evolving.

That, you will recall, was the president’s word for the process of reconsidering his opposition to same sex marriage. Last week, after being publicly and inadvertently (?) prodded by his vice-president, Obama announced the results of all that cogitation. He told ABC News he has “just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” | 05/15/12 06:06:54 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Gay marriage sermon isn't surprising

The marquee outside a church in Wilmington, N.C., last week made it clear how godly folk were expected to vote on a proposed constitutional ban against same-sex marriage and civil unions: “A true marriage is male and female and God.” | 05/14/12 11:10:06 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: As Mexican immigration hits standstill, will political winds shift?

For many Californians 50 and younger, the state's tortured relationship with Mexico has been a constant.

That's because the last 40 years saw a massive migration of 12 million immigrants from Mexico, which spawned years of political discord and ethnic bashing. | 05/14/12 06:02:24 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Chen Guangcheng's one-child policy fight must outlive the news cycle

This is the kind of thing that happens in the age of YouTube.

A blind Chinese dissident escapes from house arrest by climbing over a wall and somehow eludes several cordons of minders. Then he manages to make his way to Beijing and into the American embassy. A video appears on YouTube in which he accuses government officials of brutalizing members of his family and demands that the responsible parties be punished. From the safe harbor of the embassy, he demands that he be allowed “to live like a normal Chinese citizen.” | 05/13/12 06:08:36 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Lawyer for Staff Sgt. Robert Bales shifts focus away from the real victims

Noted national defense attorney Alan Dershowitz titled his autobiography “The Best Defense,” leaving readers to fill in the rest of the sports cliche.

The best defense, it is said, is a good offense. | 05/13/12 06:07:46 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: California can blame tax breaks for rising deficits, soaring profits

In California, corporate profits are not merely up. They are "booming," the Legislative Analyst's Office reported not long ago.

Apple reported profits of about $1 billion a week and is the world's most valuable company. Twitter expands rapidly, and the fabulously successful Facebook is on the verge of going public, creating large numbers of new millionaires. | 05/12/12 06:04:58 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Media has been too silent when Obama administration targets sources

When President Obama addressed the American Society of News Editors convention last month, the real news was what didn’t happen. The watchdogs didn’t bark. No discouraging word from the gathering of 1,000 of the country’s top news people, facing a president whose administration has led a vigorous attack on journalism’s most indispensable asset — its sources. | 05/12/12 06:03:01 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Endless punishment in the U.S. justice system

I promised Russell I would ask you something.

We met last week in a medium security correctional facility. There, I spent a couple hours talking with a group of men who are studying for their GEDs. I stressed to them the need for long-term goals, the criticality of education in an era where good-paying, low-skill jobs are going away and the importance of refusing to allow oneself to be defined by whatever box of race or class society has placed you in. | 05/11/12 06:01:24 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Eighty-five percent of college grads moving back home? It's a myth

We parents of college students had better get the basements fixed up. According to none other than Karl Rove and his political action group, chances are better than eight in 10 that the kids will be hauling themselves and their ratty belongings back home after graduation. | 05/11/12 06:04:20 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: How is it that Ahmadinejad Is still Iran's president?

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced on April 28th that it would resume discussions with Iran on May 14-15, the first in two months since the last meeting over concerns about Tehran's nuclear activities ended in failure. | 05/11/12 06:05:58 By - Alireza Jafarzadeh

Commentary: President Obama won't be 'swift-boated' on Bin Laden's death

President Barack Obama is determined not to get swift-boated. He's not going to let Republicans turn one of the crowning achievements of his first term into a negative. | 05/10/12 06:03:10 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Cluelessness - even on Wall Street - isn't a crime

The author Michael Lewis (“Moneyball”) popped up on CNBC last week and the hosts asked him about an earlier book, “The Big Short.” It was about the few individuals who foresaw the housing bubble’s collapse and became rich after making big bets to profit from it | 05/10/12 06:00:04 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Marco Rubio faces a new test

Sen. Marco Rubio, the 40-year-old rising star of the Republican Party and among top contenders to be Gov. Mitt Romney’s running mate, is trying to rebrand himself from a right-wing Cuban-American politician to a center-right Hispanic one. | 05/10/12 06:01:39 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Florida A&M drum major's death went far beyond hazing

Eleven of the 13 people who allegedly participated in killing Florida A&M drum major Robert Champion have been charged with “a hazing resulting in death,” a low-grade felony. The two others are accused of misdemeanors. | 05/09/12 06:05:40 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Big Tobacco gets an unlikely ally for California ballot initiative

Wearing a lab coat and speaking from an exam room, La Donna Porter looks every bit the wise physician, even as she does the bidding of the tobacco industry, which contributes to the deaths of 443,000 Americans every year. | 05/09/12 06:08:40 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Violence Against Women Act must also protect immigrants

Sandy Adams was a high school dropout married at 18 to a man she describes as a “violent alcoholic,” but she later mustered the courage to grab her 3-year-old daughter and flee from her Jacksonville home. | 05/08/12 06:06:25 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: Trayvon Martin and death by stereotype

I don't care about George Zimmerman's MySpace page. | 05/08/12 06:02:43 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: A better use for tax dollars than trial of John Edwards

Remember how in the Bible, Moses’ punishment for disobedience was being denied entry into the Promised Land?

And how in “The Godfather,” Carlo was told his punishment for his role in Sonny Corleone’s killing was not death, but to be kept out of the family business? (Of course, the fat guy in the backseat killed him anyway.) | 05/07/12 06:03:57 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: What about rights of women in the abortion debate?

Sometimes I get the feeling that many of those who insist that life begins at conception and call abortion of any kind murder forget that the pregnant woman has a life, too, one that needs to be honored, to be loved. | 05/07/12 06:06:15 By - Issac J. Bailey

Commentary: Evolutionary monkey laws

Evolution has been voted down in the Tennessee legislature. School kids there need not be bothered by confusing allusions to homo erectus, homo ergaster, homo antecessor, homo heidelbergensis, homo neanderthalensis and other ancestral contradictions to that Old Time Religion. | 05/06/12 06:03:22 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: If Trayvon Martin had been your son, how would you react?

A 17-year-old boy was shot dead not far from the home where he was visiting his father.

He was carrying a bag of Skittles and a drink.

He wasn’t breaking into a house. | 05/06/12 06:03:14 By - Issac J. Bailey

Commentary: Gay marriage hurts no one

In case you’ve missed the debate, welcome back to Earth, and let’s get you caught up: Amendment One states that marriage between one man and one woman is the only valid domestic legal union in North Carolina. If you approve of gay marriage, you’ll be against Amendment One.

I approve of gay marriage. I’m against Amendment One. | 05/06/12 06:07:54 By - Tommy Tomlinson

Commentary: Has Brazil become a disoriented giant?

Bad news for Brazil: its magic moment as the world’s most promising emerging market in the eyes of international economic elites is waning, and replaced by a wave of gloomy forecasts. | 05/05/12 06:17:34 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: Hiding behind the Bible in gay marriage debate

Sometimes, people hide inside the Bible.

That is, they use the Christian holy book as authority and excuse for biases that have nothing to do with God. They did this when women sought to vote and when African Americans sought freedom. | 05/04/12 06:03:01 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: TSA needs to check kids too

The last time I was in a really good strip club – and franky, it’s been too long – my cousin and I had to pass through a metal detector and get patted down. | 05/04/12 06:05:05 By - Barry Saunders

Commentary: The Spratly standoff

The heat is rising in Southeast Asia as China and the Philippines are in the third week of a naval standoff in the strategic South China Sea. | 05/03/12 06:03:00 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: North Carolina is a battleground state for 2012

When President Obama visited Chapel Hill last week, the theme running through national media stories was how difficult it is going to be for the president to win North Carolina again. | 05/03/12 06:07:38 By - Rob Christensen

Commentary: Should Marco Rubio's Dream Act be adopted by Congress?

Democrats and Republicans are offering very different versions of the DREAM Act, involving the legal status of young people raised in this country, but whose parents came to the country illegally. U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is proposing "DREAM ACT 2.0" which would offer them temporary non-immigrant visas. | 05/03/12 06:03:39 By - Ben Boychuk and Pia Lopez

Commentary: Business or bribery for Wal-Mart in Mexico?

Poor Mexico! So far from God and so near the United States. The words are attributed to Mexican President Porfirio Diaz, who governed for a 35-year period ending in 1911.

The angst-ridden quote feels pertinent today. Our countries are entwined in ways that don’t always redound to the moral credit of either party. | 05/02/12 06:01:06 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: A government conspiracy against Ted Nugent? Hardly

The lengths to which some people will go to avoid taking personal responsibility surprises me. Take, for example, steward of Alaska's great outdoors, the rocker/gun rights activist/reality star Ted Nugent. | 05/02/12 06:04:21 By - Julia O'Malley

Commentary: Are supply and demand behind falling gas prices?

Last week I paid 10-cents-a-gallon less for gasoline than I did the week before, at the same service station. While $3.79 seemed a bargain, it did cause me to wonder.

This weekend, I noticed the price sign at the station showed regular gasoline dropped another 5 cents to $3.74 a gallon. | 05/01/12 06:03:41 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: War on Drugs will change course in 2013

When the recent Summit of the Americas in Colombia decided to commission a study on whether to decriminalize drugs, many thought that would be the end of it, and the whole thing would be quickly forgotten. Well, maybe not. | 05/01/12 06:03:49 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: U.S. should lose the penny menace

A penny for my thoughts? Keep the penny, you can have them for free: Even a country with a coin called a "loonie" is smarter about its legal tender than the U.S. | 04/30/12 06:02:52 By - James Werrell

Commentary: The unwritten rules of baseball, politics

With the dawn of each new baseball season, talk turns to unwritten rules. These are the rules that sanction unseemly behavior such as bunting to break up a no-hitter, stealing bases when your team has a big lead, admiring a long home run for too long. | 04/30/12 06:02:22 By - Peter Callaghan

Commentary: When sound bites bite back

The trouble with sound bites is that they have a habit of biting the one who uttered them in the you-know-what.

This was illustrated recently after Hilary Rosen, a political strategist, criticized Mitt Romney, heir apparent to the GOP presidential nomination, saying his wife had “never worked a day in her life.” | 04/29/12 06:05:54 By - Terry Plumb

Commentary: Forget about the 'Mommy Wars'

Enough of the Mommy Wars. And I’m up to here with the so-called War on Women and soccer moms and any label politicians, with their Machiavellian marketing schemes, dreamed up to grab my attention. | 04/29/12 06:02:57 By - Ana Veciana-Suarez

Commentary: When robots go to war

As a little kid I worried a lot, about everything from marauding robot armies laying waste to Americans with death rays (which I saw in a terrifying old sci-fi movie called Target Earth) to the prospect of starving hordes of old people ravaging the countryside after Social Security broke down (which I heard in an even more terrifying Barry Goldwater campaign speech). My father’s inevitable response to my regular heebie-jeebie attacks was, “Don’t worry, it’ll never happen.” | 04/28/12 06:00:13 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Blowing a whistle on sports cruelty

Inside the nasty question of whether gratuitous mayhem is a strategic element of pro football is a question of a different kind. It involves former New Orleans Saints standout Steve Gleason and a film-maker named Sean Pamphilon, who’s making a documentary about Gleason’s struggle with the degenerative disease that is slowly taking his life. | 04/28/12 06:08:06 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Senate candidate's Hitler comparison a fine example of American political extremism

John Raese is feeling persecuted.

Raese, a West Virginia businessman running for the Senate, declared in a recent speech that he doesn’t want the government telling him what to do “because I’m an American.” Specifically, he lamented that he is required to place a “huge sticker” on his buildings declaring them smoke-free environments. | 04/27/12 06:05:07 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Marco Rubio and the Dream Act

Marco Rubio has cut the Dream Act baby in half, but unlike Solomon’s biblical baby, this 21st century version can survive, maybe even morph into an American citizen. | 04/27/12 06:06:41 By - Myriam Marquez

Commentary: Snow White is a fairytale, not a lifestyle

Someday, my prince will come. — Snow White, 1937

In a hotel in Canada hangs this picture, someone’s mischievous take on Snow White a few years after happily ever after. She is posed in an anonymous suburban den. Behind her, Prince Charming slouches in a chair, slowly going to seed. Snow has a babe in arms and a few other rug rats scattered about the floor. She faces you with an expression that seems to ask, is this all there is? | 04/26/12 06:04:50 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Our unhealthy obsession with body image

Imagine walking around with a tube that goes through your nose and passes through your esophagus, right down into your stomach.

A nasogastric tube, or feeding tube, provides nourishment. It’s usually reserved for patients with medical challenges. But now, feeding tubes are the new dietary rage. | 04/26/12 06:08:20 By - Jenee Osterheldt

Commentary: Trayvon Martin's image is irrelevant in his shooting

Nearly two months after killing Trayvon Martin with a gunshot to the chest, George Zimmerman apologized to his parents.

"I wanted to say I am sorry for the loss of your son," Zimmerman said at his bond hearing. | 04/25/12 12:12:12 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: Charges against George Zimmerman will be tough to prove

It will be astonishing if George Zimmerman is convicted of second-degree murder for shooting 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

Not that Zimmerman was right to the pull the trigger, but that particular charge will be extremely difficult to prove. Why Special Prosecutor Angela Corey didn’t file for manslaughter instead has lots of smart lawyers scratching their heads. | 04/25/12 06:03:43 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: There's nothing new in latest Secret Service scandal

Secret Service agents and military personnel, part of a security advance team in a foreign country for the U.S. president's visit, decide to party hardy. The result? A major "scandal" that has led to an extensive internal review, calls for a congressional investigation, the questioning of the "culture" within the Secret Service and a demand by some for heads to roll, especially the agency's director, Mark Sullivan. | 04/25/12 06:05:15 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Supreme Court must quash Arizona's immigration law

If the 2008 presidential election was nearly derailed by absurd posturing about “God, guns and gays,” look for this year’s contest to ballyhoo illegal immigration. | 04/24/12 06:03:26 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Pakistan avalanche deaths show futility of glacial battle

It took an avalanche that buried 129 soldiers alive April 7, under 200 feet of ice, snow and boulders, to persuade Pakistan's army chief that it is insane to fight India at 20,000 feet in the Himalayas to control the uninhabited and uninhabitable Siachen Glacier. | 04/24/12 06:07:39 By - Ben Barber

Commentary: Catholic Church still has work to do on problem priests

The headline on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reads like good news: "Child Protection Audits Find Nearly All Dioceses Compliant." | 04/23/12 06:00:37 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: If drug legalization is not the answer, then what is?

If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said. And the president’s son would thereby find himself at significantly greater risk of running afoul of the so-called “War on Drugs” than, say, a son of George W. Bush. Depending on what state he lived in, a Trayvon Obama might be 57 times more likely than a Trayvon Bush to be imprisoned on drug charges. | 04/22/12 06:06:00 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Watergate inspired many investigative reporters

June 17 will be the 40th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, investigative journalism's "big bang." It inspired a lot of people in college at the time to become journalism majors, and newspapers began putting more resources into investigative reporting. | 04/21/12 06:06:13 By - Jim Witt

Commentary: Romney has a chance against Obama

What a gift for the Obama campaign — a poll last week showing the president up by 7 points. He’s over 50 percent in a head-to-head matchup against putative Republican nominee Mitt Romney. And look at Romney's showing among women. Wow! President Obama is crushing Romney 57-38. As the poll story dryly put it, "Romney's personal profile needs work." | 04/20/12 06:01:18 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Big Tobacco fires up campaign against taxes

Tobacco is different. In the coming weeks, Californians once again will witness the industry's formidable power. Cigarette makers Altria and R.J. Reynolds will spend tens of millions of dollars telling us why Proposition 29, the latest attempt by anti-smokers to raise tobacco taxes, is a terrible idea. | 04/19/12 06:00:13 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: 'Secret Service' in Colombia

Think of Chevy Chase in "Vacation" telling Christie Brinkley he's ex-CIA. Or Bill Paxton schmoozing Jamie Lee Curtis in "True Lies" by posing as an international spy. The Secret Service agents at the center of the Colombia prostitute scandal actually do work for the government. Whether that makes them more or less buffoonish than the aforementioned movie clowns is a good question. | 04/18/12 11:48:56 By -

Commentary: Will Americans tolerate laws that encourage racial profiling?

When the Supreme Court hears arguments on April 25 challenging Arizona’s notorious anti-immigrant law, SB 1070, it will tackle the legal question of whether states can create a patchwork of separate immigration laws, beyond the control of the U.S. government. | 04/18/12 11:12:51 By - Cecillia Wang

Commentary: The moral of the Titanic story

There is a single shot, just seconds long, in James Cameron’s newly re-released movie, Titanic, that says it all with poignant eloquence. | 04/17/12 06:38:24 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Time for Texas to end the death penalty

Two events -- one in the Connecticut Senate chamber, the other in a Dallas courtroom -- helped once again to focus attention on two of the nation's most glaring flaws: wrongful convictions and capital punishment. | 04/16/12 06:02:04 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: A Republican politician defends the Muslim faith

Indeed, while it is famously difficult to prove a negative, it seems apparent that few people in all of politics and media have had the guts to say it. Did John McCain ever say it? Did Rick Santorum or Bill O’Reilly? | 04/15/12 06:03:12 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: On health care law, Congress deserves a do-over

Last week, President Barack Obama laid down a marker to the Supreme Court: Invalidate the health care law, and the court itself will become an issue in the election. He warned the justices against taking the “unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” | 04/14/12 06:10:52 By - E. Thomas McClanahan

Commentary: Other faces of stand your ground laws

Meet the other faces of Trayvon Martin.

They are young men of different races who died recently in situations where deadly force was avoidable. Their deaths occurred in states with ramped up versions of self-defense laws that permit shooting first, even when the person has the opportunity to retreat. | 04/13/12 06:07:02 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: Glenn Beck's Oval Office

Glenn Beck has been in Texas only a few months, and he's already talking big.

Now, he wants to address America from his own Oval Office. | 04/12/12 06:02:25 By - Bud Kennedy

Commentary: Watergate might be hard to expose in today's media landscape

The shadow of Watergate falls only lightly across the U.S. political landscape. Instead, the epic scandal is discernible mainly in the absence of the evils that engendered it. Even during the panicky post-9/11 era, when the temptation to ignore the law at times overwhelmed good judgment, never were even the most zealous of Bush-Cheney toadies accused of using the machinery of state to punish partisan adversaries. | 04/12/12 06:05:50 By - Edward Wasserman

Commentary: Ozzie Guillen media circus brings out the worst in everyone

I wanted to call in sick today.

I had nothing to add to the loud and obnoxious conversation swirling everywhere you turned about the top news of the day, the kind of incredulous, ridiculous, predictable story that brings out the worst in all us, including the media. | 04/11/12 11:20:53 By - Fabiola Santiago

Commentary: Mitt Romney is hurting himself with Latino voters

Mitt Romney ought to be worried that he is coming down with a bad case of Meg Whitman syndrome. Like his friend Whitman, who spent $162 million on her failed run for California governor in 2010, the more money that Romney and his benefactors spend, the less voters seem to like him. | 04/11/12 06:05:36 By - Dan Morain

Commentary: Today Show should do better in Trayvon Martin 911 call editing scandal

When The Washington Post discovered reporter Janet Cooke had made up a story about an 8-year-old heroin addict, it printed a 14,000-word investigation of what happened by its ombudsman. “She was a one-in-a-million liar,” admitted Post executive editor Ben Bradlee. | 04/10/12 12:51:38 By - Glenn Garvin

Commentary: Why do some in GOP see enemies everywhere?

Meet Nathan Fletcher, candidate for mayor of San Diego.

He will lose, at least if the polls are right. But he has raised a minor stir through a video posted online a few days back. In it, he explains his decision to leave the Republican Party and identify henceforth as an independent. “I don’t believe we have to treat people we disagree with as an enemy,” he says. “I think we can just say sometimes we disagree. . . . I’ve fought in a war,” adds Fletcher, a Marine who served in Iraq. “I have seen the enemy. We don’t have enemies in our political environment here.” | 04/10/12 01:26:59 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: 'Pink slime' and our cheap beef economy

To the legion of Americans running away from a hamburger additive as fast as a startled Angus, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is here to tell you: "It's beef, dude." | 04/10/12 06:08:39 By - Barbara Shelly

Commentary: Stimulus spending and GSA party animals

In a new twist on stimulus spending, the government’s General Services Administration laid out more than $822,000 for a rocking mega-party at a gambling resort near Las Vegas. It was fabulous for the economy of Nevada; not so good for U.S. taxpayers. | 04/09/12 11:11:19 By - Carl Hiaasen

Commentary: Politics shouldn't play into naming U.S. warships

It's been a long voyage from the 2006 letter-writing campaign aimed at persuading then-Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter to name a littoral combat ship after Fort Worth and the countdown that's under way to the ship's commissioning Sept. 22 in Galveston. | 04/09/12 06:05:09 By - J.R. Labbe

Commentary: What role will Sen. Marco Rubio play in 2012 for GOP?

The GOP is launching its secret weapon.

The one with an ethnic persona and an assumed comfort level with a coveted demographic, along with boyish good looks and tea party credentials for added charm. | 04/08/12 06:03:46 By - Mary Sanchez

Commentary: S.C. Gov. Haley got it wrong on contraception

Rest easy, we apparently won’t be seeing a Romney-Haley ticket this year.

Gov. Nikki Haley recently avowed that she would decline any offer to be Republican Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential nominee or, for that matter, to serve in any other capacity in his administration. | 04/08/12 06:27:03 By - James Werrell

Commentary: Finding our better selves in Trayvon Martin tragedy

Spike Lee, the talented yet always-controversial filmmaker, did something incredibly stupid and potentially horrific.

He retweeted what he believed was the address of George Zimmerman, the shooter in the middle of the Trayvon Martin case that has sparked so much outrage, protests and public demonstrations, including one that was scheduled for Saturday in Conway by UPWARD, an anti-violence group. | 04/07/12 06:00:47 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Using Texas taxpayers' money for political ends

Don't be shocked: Texas political figures sometimes use the privileges of their offices, even taxpayer money, to serve political ends outside what they are supposed to focus on.

Stunning, I know, but I have to tell it like it is. | 04/07/12 06:36:59 By - Mike Norman

Commentary: NRA could help stop Mexico's gun violence

When we talk about the violence that has left nearly 50,000 dead in Mexico over the past five years, we usually focus on Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, or the Juárez cartel, but it may be time to include the U.S. National Rifle Association cartel. | 04/06/12 11:31:46 By - Andres Oppenheimer

Commentary: The beauty of the airborne dead zone

Start some geezer talking about air travel and pretty soon they’re telling you that Back In The Day, flying on an airplane was like being borne around in a sedan chair by well-muscled Persian servants cooing at you to sample the finest food and drink. | 04/06/12 06:00:16 By - Mark Washburn

Commentary: Moral cowardice and the Trayvon Martin case

Once upon a time in the late ’90s, a certain black newswoman was awarded her own column. She wrote 12 pieces, three of them about race. That was too many for her boss, who told her to tone it down. Confused, she went to a white colleague for advice. He explained that, being black, she lacked the judgment to decide if a given racial matter merited a column. In the future, he suggested, if she saw some racial issue she thought worth writing about, she should bring it to him and let him decide. | 04/06/12 06:05:04 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Shielding New York's kids from dinosaurs and dancing

Warning: This column contains language some readers may find unsuitable for children. Parental guidance is suggested.

No, seriously, you have been warned. This is your last chance. Turn back now. | 04/05/12 06:05:20 By - Leonard Pitts Jr.

Commentary: Perry's campaign should reimburse Texas $3.6 million

The governor of Texas, while having limited constitutional powers, has many responsibilities that include promoting the state around the country and the world. | 04/04/12 12:58:38 By - Bob Ray Sanders

Commentary: Ethnicity is a red herring in Trayvon Martin case

I suppose my ethnicity could be described as "Hispanic white" just as the New York Times has described George Zimmerman – arguably the most reviled man in America for shooting and killing Trayvon Martin. | 04/04/12 06:03:33 By - Marcos Breton

Commentary: Exercise pays dividends

Everyone knows that regular exercise returns great physical dividends. It reduces our risk of developing many of the most common and costly chronic physical illnesses. And it improves overall health. | 04/04/12 06:02:23 By - Helen Durkin

Commentary: How Sanford, Fla., mismanaged a crisis

Hundreds of protesters marched here on Saturday, waving signs, shouting epithets, making demands, threatening the city with economic ruin. As they heaped ever more derision on Sanford, locals sank deeper into a bewildered despair, wondering how their picturesque town had been transformed these last few weeks into an icon of racism. Somehow, in the national imagination, Sanford, 2012, mutated into Selma, 1965. | 04/03/12 07:00:03 By - Fred Grimm

Commentary: Health care mandate is about personal responsibility

Following the debate over the Affordable Care Act has reminded me of that old saw, everybody wants to get to heaven but nobody wants to die. | 04/03/12 06:04:57 By - Issac J.Bailey

Commentary: Stopping Santorum may be the Rubio-Bush-Ryan plan

Marco Rubio sounds worried. So do Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan. Their candidate, Mitt Romney, is losing to President Barack Obama. The GOP primary is becoming "counterproductive." So when the three Republicans endorsed Romney over the past two weeks, it wasn’t so much about jockeying for a vice-presidential slot on Romney’s ticket. Their underlying goal was more fundamental: Stop the primary. | 04/02/12 06:58:51 By - Marc Caputo

Commentary: Flawed pleas from Kony 2012 and Mike Daisey

In the news have been two unusual stories, both of them exposing outrageous abuse of innocents abroad, neither one broken by what we normally consider the news media. Instead they were launched by zealous outsiders from the edges of the informational ecosystem, and were fiercely embraced, until their claims were scrutinized and found wanting. | 04/02/12 01:35:27 By - Edward Wasserman