Straight to the point

REJECT UDB MOVE Will the majority of Miami-Dade County commissioners ever get it? Will they realize that they are elected stewards of the county's natural resources, meaning they should conserve those resources? On Tuesday, commissioners overrode County Mayor Carlos Alvarez's veto of two projects slated to be built outside the Urban Development Boundary. This was the last chance for commissioners to get in sync with residents for whom new development means more traffic, crowded schools and police...

Legislature ends with mixed reviews

Whenever the Legislature convenes a new session, there is anticipation about what will be accomplished. Just as predictably when the session ends, there is disappointment about what was left undone. The 2008 Legislature was no different. Lawmakers faced the daunting task of setting state priorities amid a sinking economy, a $5 billion revenue shortfall and a bruising housing market.

Unacceptable care behind locked doors

The U.S. immigration system has too little oversight and too much impunity. Nowhere is this more evident than in cases where people have died while in U.S. immigration custody. Secrecy is one of the worst aspects of the immigration-detention system. It explains why little is known about medical abuses and deaths in Immigration and Customs En forcement jails and prisons.

HUMANITARIAN AID

We can stop starvation, violence in Haiti

By BARBARA J. JORDAN

You are probably aware that the growing food crisis in Haiti has been the focus of community leaders and Haitian activists in Miami-Dade County for the past several weeks. But, what they have told us in the past few days must be clear to all. It is time now that people of all nationalities and from all walks of life in our community become greatly alarmed and mobilize to act.

60TH ANNIVERSARY

Israel remains true to its mission

By H.D.S. GREENWAY

There is a certain symmetry to the departure of Yossi Harel, who recently died at 90 in Tel Aviv, and the arrival of Israel's 60th birthday. Harel was the commander of a battered, second-hand ship that he renamed Exodus and sailed into legend.

BLACK AMERICA

Modern-day prophet on point

By FROMA HARROP

Around the time that Rev. Jeremiah Wright was fluffing his feathers before the national media, a genuine prophet appeared in Newark, N.J., to deliver a tough look-in-the-mirror message to fellow African Americans. The visionary was entertainer Bill Cosby, and his theme encapsulated in the title of a book he wrote with Harvard professor of psychiatry Alvin Poussaint: Come on, People! On the Path From Victims to Victors.

THE AMERICAS

Free trade could benefit all partners

BY MARIFELI PEREZ-STABLE

Free trade is getting a bum rap everywhere. Long gone is the spirit of the early 1990s when the Americas jointly raised the banner of integration. Held in Miami, the first Summit of the Americas embraced the idea of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). What in 1994 seemed to be a good beginning ultimately went nowhere.

CLINTON AND OBAMA

May's Democratic victories won't be so in November

By DAVID S. BRODER

The endless Democratic presidential campaign has lurched from irrelevance to trivia, triggering a near-universal call to bring it to a halt.

Clinton a fighter

Hillary Clinton out? I don't think so. Americans have to ask themselves whether we need a bulldog fighter in the White House or another glad-hander Democrat. America's future is in peril with the Iranians, Syrians and North Koreans waiting to put on the gloves and go a couple of rounds.

Mourning Eight Belles

Re the May 7 letter Animals in sports: The writer said that she has no sympathy for the trainer and owner of Eight Belles. She does not understand horse racing. My husband is a trainer and had a starter in the Kentucky Derby.

U.S. policies weak, biased

President Bush may be right in his assessment that most of the ''new'' Cuban government's reforms are empty gestures. But if along with touting his accomplishments in Latin America he would only listen to most of our friends in the neighborhood -- and allies worldwide -- Bush might realize that his policy toward Cuba is precisely that, an empty and irrelevant gesture.