MiamiHerald.com: Opinion

We can control our energy

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

There is no shortage of threats to our economy. America's unemployment rate recently hit its highest mark in more than 25 years and is expected to continue climbing. Worries are widespread that even when the economy finally rebounds, the recovery won't bring jobs. Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented.

Why should GOP go along?

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The hardest question in the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor is one the nominee can't answer. Not because she doesn't know the law or can't offer a satisfactory explanation for a phrase in a speech. Rather, it's because this question doesn't really involve her, although it has everything to do with the number of votes she will get.

City finances judged sound

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The city of Miami faces serious financial challenges for the next budget year. Our city, just like hundreds of municipal governments in the country, will have to make tough choices in order to continue providing the service our residents deserve.

Vets due care

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Four years ago, the Department of Veterans Affairs was facing a $1 billion shortfall. Veterans were having to wait months for routine exams. News reports about the dreadful conditions and subpar treatment of veterans at Walter Reed Army Hospital sparked more controversy.

Schools at risk

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Gov. Charlie Crist keeps hailing the federal stimulus package as a magic job-saver -- on Wednesday he pointed to $2 billion of the money helping 26,000 teachers stay employed in Florida.

Government must find a way to save homes

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The Great Recession, as the economic crisis has been dubbed, started with a housing bust. Today, the housing failure is still driving the economy down, with the unstoppable foreclosure machine gobbling up properties at an astonishing rate.

The Daily ?

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 17:03 EDT

Don't bend the law when giving foster kids drugs

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Gabriel Myers was a 7-year-old boy whose world was collapsing when he hanged himself in a foster home in Margate. He was among 268 children between the ages of 6 and 7 medicated while in state care.

Sonia Sotomayor should be confirmed

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor got off to a running start on the first day of her confirmation hearing on Monday. ''Unless you have a complete meltdown, you're going to get confirmed,'' said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

Public employees must find ways to help taxpayers

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Miami-Dade's circuit court handles 265,000 food stamp benefit cases, which is about 25 percent of the state's caseload. The circuit's case maintenance unit -- a 19-member team -- found $42,000 in over-issued food stamps in 266 referrals.

Approving imported drugs is good medicine

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The U.S. Senate took an important step to make prescription drugs more affordable by approving a measure that would permit buyers in the United States to order lower-cost drugs from Canada over the Internet.

Kids shouldn't be pawns in Homestead power play

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

What's wrong with the Homestead Housing Authority? It seems as if every year there must be a stand-off between the authority and the Miami-Dade school district over programs at the Redland Center and other South Miami-Dade labor camps that help migrant children succeed.

Crash course

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

A new law sending bad drivers back to school was approved with little fanfare by the Legislature this spring. There are obviously good intentions behind the law, but how much it will improve highway safety depends on how well it's implemented.

Jaw-dropping Marlins stadium deal

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

As Wall Street seals its financing deal with Miami-Dade County for the Florida Marlins' new stadium at the old Orange Bowl site, jaws keep dropping -- as well they should.

Local perspectives

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Cities in South Florida and other parts of Florida filed suit this week in Tallahassee claiming that Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature violated the state Constitution with a new growth-management law. Good for them.

No justification for coup

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 16:40 EDT

As a Honduran human-rights activist, it has been disturbing to hear the drumbeat of voices in the U.S. media justifying what is taking place in my country. While the Organization of American States, the United Nations and heads of state from countries across the political spectrum worldwide have condemned the coup, commentators in The New York Times, Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have called it a ''democratic'' coup, while others have blamed exiled President Manuel Zelaya for it happening...

Crist thinks cash, Rubio thinks big

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Charlie Crist will likely be the Republican Senate nominee next year, but winning the nomination will not be the cakewalk that the conventional wisdom supposes. Marco Rubio, brainy but underfunded, will take a bite -- several of them -- out of the frontrunner before it's over.

Let's find consensus

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Our immigration system has been broken for too long, and the costs of that failure are growing. Getting immigration policy right is fundamental to our national interests -- our economic vitality, our diplomacy and our national security.

U.S. can repair democracy, not settle scores

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Early on Sunday, June 28, soldiers burst into Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's residence and dragged him into exile in his pajamas. An old-fashioned Latin American coup thrust upon our leaders a familiar dilemma: How to respond to the overthrow of a democratically elected leader often at odds with America and critical of our policies?

Cheating on kids, too

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Four boys for Steve McNair. Four boys for Mark Sanford. Four children for David Vitter. Three daughters for Eliot Spitzer. Three children for John Ensign. Three children for John Edwards. Three children for Kwame Kilpatrick. Those two dozen children are enough, without even reaching back a decade for Chelsea Clinton, to demonstrate the impressive swath of psychological destruction for the dalliances of dads.

Insanity still rules the debate

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

For a moment this week, it looked like a bit of sanity might be restored to federal policy on illegal immigration. The Obama administration announced plans to discontinue a Bush-era rule that sought to force employers to fire workers whose Social Security numbers didn't match up with records in federal databases. The reason for the reversal? Those databases are riddled with too many errors.

OAS turns a blind eye to violations by left

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

There's been no formal announcement yet, but I think Woody Allen must be remaking Bananas, his old comedy about Latin American politics. Really: When Argentine president Cristina Fernandez tells the Organization of American States that the miliary coup in Honduras amounted to ''kidnapping the democratic restoration in Latin America,'' how could it be anything but a punch line? And the joke -- a very sad and expensive one -- is the OAS.

Will Rumfeld do like McNamara?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 18:52 EDT

Late in his life, Robert McNamara became a sad study in what can happen when a Pentagon leader eventually regrets taking a country into a disastrous war and attempts to atone. His belated acknowledgment of doubts and error in managing the Vietnam War came too late for many, and after his death last week he was remembered as a tragic and sorrowful figure.

Reno and Elián

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

I agreed with everything in Myriam Marquez's July 12 column, History should trump celebrity in naming schools, except her reference to former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno's controversial status in the Cuban-exile community for taking Elián González by force to return him to his communist Cuban minders.

Probe torture

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Re the July 11 story AP source: Holder considering torture probe: I am heartened that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is thinking of launching an investigation into our engagement in torture under President Bush.

Crash of Flight 401

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The July 13 story Survivors unite, seek public memorial brought to mind the dedication and professionalism of the medical and nursing staff of Palmetto General Hospital in the crash of Eastern Flight 401 37 years ago.

Planned Parenthood filling education void

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

It was just last March that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed teen pregnancy rates had risen for the second consecutive year, reversing a 14-year trend. Now a new article in the Journal of Adolescent Health confirms what common sense already tells us: When teens use contraceptives, teen pregnancy rates decline, and when teens are kept in the dark about sex education, teen pregnancy rates rise. We are now seeing the results of a decade of harmful abstinence-only programming...

Healthcare not free

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Re the July 13 letter Healthcare options: This is to clarify the writer's assertion about free healthcare provided to members of Congress, federal employees and retirees which I am.

Obama should voice strong support for Iranians

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

As a Persian American, I find it appalling that through the ensuing chaos and bloodshed in Iran recently, President Obama has done nothing but call this a ''troubling situation.'' Instead of his lawyeresque statements, Obama should publicly acknowledge our support for the Iranian people. Such a message doesn't need to be expressed in terms of a U.S. endorsement of Mir Hossain Mousavi but instead about rejecting election fraud.

Real heroes

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

I thank Fred Grimm for his insightful July 9 column Fame awarded to inventors has disappeared. It was a pleasure to read. We are a great country with all of our innovations and inventions. But what a shame that we don't realize it daily and don't recognize greatness when it passes from our lives -- or, for that matter, realize it when we are surrounded by it.

Catch of the day

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

It's Friday night and on the way home you stop to pick up a couple of steaks. Or, how about an exotic alternative like iguana? Yes, iguana. Here in South Florida we have Central American iguanas cavorting around our properties eating every plant and flower in site.

The education of Sonia Sotomayor

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:54 EDT

The first time she walked into my office in Princeton University's Dickinson Hall, Sonia Sotomayor was holding a paper she'd written for my Contemporary Latin America course. It was marked up with my corrections in red ink. Spanish was her first language, and many of her errors reflected its syntax. Where she had written ''dictatorship of authority,'' I had scribbled ``authoritarian dictatorship.''

Ouster of Zelaya was a legal act

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:44 EDT

Honduras, the tiny Central American nation, had a change of leaders on June 28. The country's military arrested President Manuel Zelaya -- in his pajamas, he says -- and put him on a plane bound for Costa Rica. A new president, Roberto Micheletti, was appointed. Led by Cuba and Venezuela (Sudan and North Korea were not immediately available), the international community swiftly condemned this so-called ``coup.''

The beginning of Palin's end in politics

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 10:52 EDT

Sarah Palin's career as governor of Alaska is over. So is her barely begun career as a serious presidential candidate. The road map to the White House doesn't include a stop at ``I quit.''

Obama's strategic blind spot

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:40 EDT

''Are there not other alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in Flanders?'' During the bitter winter of 1914-15, the first lord of the Admiralty posed this urgent question to Britain's prime minister.

To achieve green goals we must define green jobs

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 11:25 EDT

Florida's businesses and workforce are weathering one of the toughest economic storms in decades. However, there is a great opportunity on the horizon that our state is poised to seize upon to grow and attract businesses, create and sustain jobs and secure Florida's position as a global economic leader. As states gear up to vie for stimulus dollars to help cultivate their green economies, Florida must define now, more clearly and definitively, our green economy -- and the green jobs that sustain...

The U.S. in Iraq: an audit of the pain

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:25 EDT

Tuesday, the United States ''stood down'' in Iraq, finalizing the pullout of 140,000 troops from Iraqi cities and towns -- the first step on the long path home. After more than six years, most Americans are war-weary, even though a smaller percentage of us have been involved in the actual fighting than in any major conflict in U.S. history. We have relegated the car and suicide bombings to the inside pages of newspapers, accepting at face value that the ''surge'' has calmed things down enough so...

Pakistan seems ready to crack down on Taliban

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:55 EDT

Has the Pakistani government, after years of vacillation, finally gotten serious about eliminating the Taliban threat? Maybe. For the first time since 9/11, Pakistan's army has begun a decisive military offensive to drive the Pakistani Taliban and other extremist groups out of South Waziristan, one of seven tribal agencies that border Afghanistan.

Finding what works in healthcare

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:30 EDT

Congress took an important step for healthcare when it provided $1.1 billion to fund ''comparative effectiveness research'' as part of the stimulus legislation this year.

Please don't paint stadium seats orange

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The site is finally being cleared for a new Marlins baseball stadium, now estimated to cost $634 million. During the long and fractious debate over the project, one critical issue was missing from the agenda: What color should the seats be painted?

Judges and justice should not be for sale

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 03:01 EDT

If Sonia Sotomayor becomes the next member of the U.S. Supreme Court, she'll take a seat among colleagues who are divided into predictable camps that rarely agree on anything.

Camping? Don't forget to bring your gun

Sun, 31 May 2009 03:01 EDT

Like many other Americans, every time I take my family to a national park I find myself thinking: Wow! If I only had a gun . . . Now, thanks to Congress and President Obama, all of us will soon be able to carry loaded firearms into national parks and wildlife refuges. Even concealed weapons will be allowed, for those who have state permits.

U.S. prisons even tougher than Gitmo

Sun, 24 May 2009 03:01 EDT

President Obama's promise to shut down the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba has hit a snag because he hasn't figured out what to do with the 240 detainees.

Crist launches yet another thrilling quest

Sun, 17 May 2009 03:01 EDT

Ah, Charlie, we hardly knew ye. The lad was but a bronze blur, streaking across the bright Tallahassee firmament . . . OK, streaking isn't exactly the right word.

`Give the poor padre a break'

Sat, 09 May 2009 03:01 EDT

The bad news for the Roman Catholic Church: Father Alberto Cutié, the widely popular priest at St. Francis de Sales in Miami Beach, was photographed cavorting romantically on a Florida beach.

Miami-Dade commissioners driven to spend

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:01 EDT

When you're a Miami-Dade commissioner, danger lurks at every ribbon-cutting. Just ask Jose ''Pepe'' Diaz. His job is so perilous that he often leaves his county-leased Cadillac Escalade parked at home and, instead, has a gun-toting sergeant-at-arms deliver him to official functions.

We should all have an ex like this one

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:01 EDT

Every divorced guy would love an ex-wife like Barbara Gomez. As the chief of Miami's public housing agency, she helped funnel more than $1 million in city contracts to companies employing one of her former husbands.

What was he thinking, and what with?

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 00:25 EDT

I have a proposal. Next time some politician goes before the cameras with his figurative pants down around his metaphoric ankles and says, ''I made a mistake,'' let's form a mob and drag him from the podium. You bring the lanterns, I'll bring the pitchforks.

Scorned, admired -- and mourned

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Sometimes, death is a blindside hit. When it comes at the end of a long life as it did last week for 86-year-old Ed McMahon, you are saddened by it but not particularly surprised.

'Thriller' was greatest triumph, greatest tragedy

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:53 EDT

I got to interview Michael Jackson only once, at the family home in Encino, Calif. This was on the occasion of his 21st birthday, and I remember thinking that for a guy approaching a milestone, he didn't seem very happy. Truth is, he seemed tired. Not from fatigue or exertion. It was an existential tired, as if he felt worn down by the simple act of being.

The world witnessed the killing of Neda

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 03:01 EDT

Maybe you were there when Neda died. If you were, you saw a tragedy, of course -- a 26-year-old Iranian protester gunned down in the streets. But I am convinced you also saw the future -- a profound change in the way you and I will henceforth comprehend the world.

GOP blind to its race problem

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:07 EDT

The modern GOP was created in 1965 with a stroke of Lyndon Johnson's pen. If that is an exaggeration, it is not much of one. When Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he made a prediction: In committing the unpardonable sin of guaranteeing the ballot to all citizens regardless of race, he said, he would cause his party to lose the South ``for a generation.''

The Right is not being persecuted

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 03:01 EDT

A reader wants to know why I didn't mention what David Letterman said. John, from Monroe, Wash., wrote in response to a recent column on the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. I argued that high-profile media figures are filling the Zeitgeist with comments hateful of and demeaning to such marginalized minorities as Jews, blacks, Muslims and gays and that this validates people like accused shooter James von Brunn. I quoted a few examples.

The ugly consequences of open hatred

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:01 EDT

''Them Jews aren't going to let [President Obama] talk to me.'' -- the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. ''I hate gay people . . .'' -- Tim Hardaway, former NBA star.

Privacy invasion now a way of life

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:01 EDT

We'll discuss Susan Boyle's mental state in a moment, but first let me show my ignorance. A few weeks back, a reader asked what I thought of ''Jon and Kate.'' I had never heard of them.

OAS turns a blind eye to violations by left

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

The week ahead in movies and TV

Sun, 31 May 2009 17:35 EDT

BIG SCREEN The Hangover (R): May is too early to proclaim any movie the funniest of the year, but for sheer lowbrow, R-rated antics, filmmakers will have a hard time topping director Todd (Old School) Phillips' raucous comedy. It's about four friends (including Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms) who must retrace their steps the morning after a long night of hard partying in Las Vegas and figure out, for example, why there's a tiger in their bathroom.

'Bloody' mission goes awry

Tue, 19 May 2009 03:01 EDT

It may seem a little paradoxical for a journalist to say, but I reallllly hope Robert Gates was lying to us earlier this month when he explained what he's learned about Afghanistan over the past 30 years. ''If there's one lesson I draw from the past, it is the importance of our staying engaged,'' the defense secretary told reporters while visiting an American military base in the country's north. ``And if there's a lesson for Americans and the international community, it's that we don't dare turn...

A lot of talk, too little clarity

Tue, 05 May 2009 07:08 EDT

You know what they say about monkeys, typewriters and Shakespeare. My question is, if you sat an infinite number of Joe Bidens at an infinite number of microphones, would any of them ever say anything that wasn't infinitely stupid? From his reminiscences about Franklin Roosevelt's famous White House television address on the day of the 1929 stock market crash (that is, three years before Roosevelt was president and 20 years before Americans bought TVs) to his campaign-rally exhortation to Missouri...

NBC renews 'Southland' and Amy Poehler, adds six shows

Tue, 05 May 2009 03:01 EDT

NBC unveiled a good chunk of its fall programming Monday, announcing six new series and renewing a couple of others: the spooky Medium, rookie cop drama Southland, and Amy Poehler's The Office clone Parks and Recreation. Still on the bubble: the veteran Law & Order, spy spoof Chuck and karmic comedy My Name Is Earl. NBC says it will reveal the fate of those shows, along with its full fall schedule, on May 19.

Why can't students say 'guns' in school?

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:01 EDT

Media snicker of the day: those crazy gun nuts, worried that the government is out to snatch their constitutional rights along with their AK-47s. 60 Minutes is the latest to have a chuckle, playing a commercial for a Washington, D.C.-area firearms show that that urges viewers to ``Celebrate the Second Amendment and get your guns while you still can!''

Keeping the arts in the picture

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:44 EDT

I recently sent an article to a philanthropic leader about the importance of helping arts organizations during the recession. I thought he might draw inspiration from it, but that was too optimistic.

Oversight warranted on stadium project

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Re the July 12 editorial Jaw-dropping Marlins stadium deal: Kudos to The Miami Herald for calling out the problems with the Marlins stadium deal -- even as the price tag climbs to $2.4 billion before ground has been struck. Such corporate welfare and outright fleecing of taxpayers for the sake of building an already-over-budget baseball stadium is especially dangerous during these foul economic times.

Rickenbacker relief

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 03:01 EDT

Re the July 14 article Causeway conflict: Complaints by Key Biscayne cyclists concerning a proposal to replace the toll plaza at the Rickenbacker Causeway with electronic tolling are without merit.

7/16/09

Wednesday, July 15