PORTLAND, Ore. -- Success breeds separation. That's the thing no one tells you, the thing sometimes you don't realize, the thing that might make a child turn from his own potential. Success is like a pyramid, broad at the bottom, but narrow at the summit; the higher you go, the fewer people go with you.
COMMENTARY
When I was growing up in Colombia many years ago, kidnappings were already becoming common occurrences. The prospect of captivity was terrifying, even if the news of acquaintances and their families falling into that dreaded purgatory became less and less rare.
GUATEMALAN ADOPTIONS
The 24-year-old Guatemalan mother had already given up her baby once. Now, months later, the baby girl was back in her lap, smiling and playing with her mother's fingers.
Newly freed former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt said she began to realize a year ago that Colombia's largest guerrilla group was having troubles when supplies could no longer easily reach the jungle camp where she and other kidnapped hostages were held.
The last time I heard from Dr. David Maehr, about three weeks ago, he invited me to go bear-tracking. Dave was a gung-ho wildlife biologist, and he was always tracking something. I'd met him more than 20 years earlier, when he was catching panthers in the Everglades and collaring them with radio transmitters.
IRAN NUCLEAR IMPASSE
Drug traffickers in well-armed desert convoys roll across the border from Afghanistan. Standing in their way are Iranian soldiers and drug agents trying to choke off one of the world's busiest pipelines for opium and heroin.
OPINION | LEONARD PITTS JR.
In the 17 months that Barack Obama have been pursuing the presidency, the senator has faced a crude and shameless campaign from conservative pundits, GOP functionaries and assorted ignoramuses in the peanut gallery to prove him a secret Muslim.
AIDS IN AFRICA
Farai Mahaso was studying accounting in London when he received the dreaded call from Harare, Zimbabwe: His mother had died. At that point, Mahaso's future work became clear.
NORMAN BRAMAN
I strongly object to and filed suit against the Global Agreement because I believe voters have a right to be heard and to vote on $3 billion of grandiose schemes. These deals were negotiated in secret. I also am opposed to public expenditures for privately owned sports businesses. I also believe the agreement violates the law.
GEORGE BURGESS
In coming weeks, decisions will be made pertaining to a package of projects that have the capacity to change the face of Miami-Dade County and, perhaps more importantly, spur a new era of economic development in our urban core. It is unfortunate that there are a multitude of misconceptions surrounding the construction of a seaport tunnel, a museum complex along Biscayne Bay and a baseball stadium where the Orange Bowl once stood.
OMBUDSMAN
What to do with The Miami Herald? The announcement last week that The Miami Herald will cut 17 percent of its staff raises questions about what kind of product the newspaper will become for readers like you and me. Of The Miami Herald's more than 1,400 employees, some 190 will lose their jobs. The cuts affect all divisions, but we'll focus on the newsroom.
As Islamists continue to gain strength throughout the Middle East, many Americans ask: ``Where are the Arab moderates?'' For an answer, I recommend an important new book called The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation, written by one of the most thoughtful analysts in the region, former Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, who played a key role in drafting the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative and the Middle East ''road map'' backed by the White House.
Someone is going to think this column is racist. That person -- he or she will be white -- will be unable to point to so much as a semicolon that suggests I believe in the native superiority of my, or any other, race. Rather, the accusation will be based in the fact that the column discusses race, period. It's a phenomenon I've seen many times, most recently when a friend of mine told me that a friend of hers regards me as racist because I write about race. To which I gave my standard answer: If...
JORGE M. PEREZ
A new type of urban living is emerging in Miami. Downtown is becoming a place that doesn't shut down at sunset. It is a place where people live, as well as work and play. Lively neighborhoods are emerging along the river, to the south of the Design District, adjacent to the performing arts center and in the Brickell area.
MIAMI HERALD OMBUDSMAN
One of the most treacherous stories for The Miami Herald to cover is Israel, not because of the wars and terrorism there, but because of the passions among readers here.
Martin Luther King's final campaign in Memphis was a march into a violent maelstrom of hatred and righteous defiance. Share your thoughts below on our coverage of the anniversary of the assassination and see what other readers are saying.
All bets are off in the Republican presidential primary. Frontrunners become underdogs, longshots become contenders, and the winner at the end of the race may come down to the candidate with the best timing.
Mike Huckabee would later write about that day in 1996 as his ``crucible moment.'' Jim Guy Tucker, the Democratic governor of Arkansas and a newly convicted felon, was reneging on his earlier pledge to resign. His I'm-staying-after-all phone call came as Huckabee, a Republican and then lieutenant governor, was rehearsing the speech he had planned for later that day, when he expected to become the state's chief executive.
He spoke out against putting dope dealers in federal prison, opposed a bill to crack down on child pornography and voted against the Iraq War. Then Ron Paul announced that he was running for president -- as a Republican.
When Mitt Romney was 14, Dwight D. Eisenhower came to his family's house for dinner. Ike had just finished his eight years as president -- it was around 1961 -- and he came because he knew Mitt's father, George, then the chairman of the American Motors Corp.
