SAMMY SOSA

Has it made you happy, being white?

Dear Sammy Sosa:

Are you happy with yourself now? Are you more confident and self-assured? When you look in the mirror, do you like yourself better, now that you are white?

Reflections on the execution of D.C. sniper

They killed a killer last week.

I kept waiting to feel something when news came that John Allen Muhammad had been executed in Virginia. As a staunch opponent of capital punishment, I wanted some nugget of remorse at the knowledge that the government had taken his life.

AT LARGE

U.S. Muslims also have died to defend us

A sampling from the web:

``Why are these Muslim invaders allowed to carry on freely in this country -- protected by outreach, Obama, and PC mental illness?''

An act of appalling cowardice

We don't know why Faleh Hassan Almaleki came to this country in the mid-1990s, and it's unlikely he'll be able to tell us anytime soon. He's in jail in Maricopa County, Ariz., at this writing, in lieu of a $5 million cash bond. It hardly seems far-fetched, however, to suppose he emigrated from his native Iraq for the same reason immigrants typically seek these shores: America promises opportunity and freedom.

AT LARGE

Injustice compounded in McKinney case

Anthony McKinney got a life sentence for running down the street.

Sisters, your natural hair is beautiful to me

An open letter to African-American women:

It's about the need to be beautiful, I know.

As goals go, that one is neither extraordinary nor gender-specific. But it's different for women, isn't it? A man's sense of self worth is seldom endangered by crow's feet. On him people will say they convey ``character.'' On a woman, they convey wear.

POLITICS

Party trumps country?

You figure the White House is probably feeling pretty good about itself right now.

IN MY OPINION

Party trumps country?

You figure the White House is probably feeling pretty good about itself right now.

After spending much of the summer as a punching bag for conservatives, Team Obama has begun throwing punches of its own. It has unleashed its marquee figures to tee off on high profile GOP personalities and institutions in a coordinated effort to marginalize the opposition.

Balloon hoax exemplifies perverse era

For hours, the fear was that the boy would be found smashed to jelly somewhere, so my first emotion upon learning that 6-year-old Falcon Heene was actually safe in his family's Fort Collins, Colo. attic, was relief.

AT LARGE

As you sow, so shall you reap, brother

We are gathered here today in sympathy with our brother, Rush Limbaugh.

Get ready for conservative Bible

So we may soon have ourselves a conservative Bible. Besides Fox News, I mean.

This new Bible is from Conservapedia, a website that bills itself as a conservative alternative to the perceived liberal bias of Wikipedia, the user-edited online reference.

Be the better America

So I guess now he's a socialist-terrorist-secret-Muslim-radical-Christian-Hitler-clone and Nobel Prize winner?

Desert cross becomes court's burden

Christmas is probably unconstitutional.

I'm no lawyer, but the logic seems unassailable to me. Consider: Santa Claus aside, Christmas is an explicitly Christian holiday and the only holiday of any religion to be observed by the federal government. Which would seem to violate the First Amendment edict that Congress ``shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'' Yet to the best of my admittedly-limited knowledge, no one has ever sued Christmas before the Supreme Court.

AT LARGE

Being famous has nothing to do with it

Somebody please help me with this. Obviously, I'm missing something.

Fox shows serve as GOP echo chamber

Perhaps you are familiar with an old saying: Even a broken clock is right twice a day. I've found that maxim valuable as I wade through the recent hand-wringing and recrimination among journalists and their critics over the fact that most mainstream media were slow to pick up on the story of corruption at ACORN.

AT LARGE

A colossal failure to grasp reality

Isn't it obvious?

If you believe you're the object of a witch hunt, the first thing you do is stop hanging around with witches. You'd think that'd be common sense, but then, the paradox of common sense is, it's not all that common.

Gotta love Tom DeLay's cha-cha-cha

``Do you love me, now that I can dance?'' -- The Contours, 1962

Well, no.

HEALTHCARE REFORM

Calling liars to account

``Thou shalt not bear false witness. . .'' -- Exodus 20:16

Jim Wallis wants to take Glenn Beck to Sunday school.

Fake rebels are pitiful, not shocking

I blame Elvis.

With Chuck Berry, Little Richard and other icons from rock's first generation, he pioneered an incendiary idea: that music could be more than a medium of entertainment, that it could and should also be a tool of cultural revolution. It was not, after all, just music that moved town fathers to ban rock concerts and angry men with sledgehammers to smash jukeboxes containing rock records.