NEWS COLUMNIST

• POLITICS

  The `Culture War' is real and scary

  I don't know who coined the term ``culture war'' to describe our political divisions, but I'm reasonably sure he or she intended it only as a figure of speech.

• Hate crime demands justice

  ``Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'' -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Your blues, author BeBe Moore Campbell famously wrote, ain't like mine.

• OUR CHILDREN

  What are we saving the children from?

  Well, that was close.

  Surely, we are all relieved that at least some children were protected this week from the diabolical Barack Obama. It was touch and go there for awhile after the White House announced its plan for the president to give a back-to-school address to America's kids. They might have gotten away with it, too, but for conservative pundits and politicians who spent last week raising a ruckus about this scheme to indoctrinate our youth into the president's socialist cult. They were able to convince an untold number of schools to prohibit Tuesday's speech from being shown on campus and an untold number of parents to keep their children home.

• Get lost? It's a hard thing to do

  Back in May, I flew to Los Angeles. My cellphone did not.

  I left it in the car, a fact I only discovered as I was lining up at security.

• JAYCEE DUGARD

  Only one solution for child predators

  And what should we do with our monsters?

  That we have no answer to that question, that we lack consensus on what to do with sexual predators, is evident from the range of our responses to their crimes. From the Catholic church shielding pederastic priests to the profusion of databases that let you check if your neighbor is a sex offender, to the pseudo celebrity enjoyed by Mary Kay Letourneau when she married her former student Vili Fualaau, whom she raped when he was 12 and she was 34, our responses scream irresolution.

• Luster is off Obama's `high moral ground'

  Back in April, the U.S. government snatched Raymond Azar out of Afghanistan.

  His waist, wrists and ankles were shackled, he was stripped naked and photographed, made to wear headphones, blindfolded, hooded and stuffed into an executive jet for the U.S. Azar says his eyeglasses were taken and he was left in an ice cold room, denied food for 30 hours and told he might never see his wife and children again.

• MICHAEL JACKSON

  Cautionary tale of privilege, tragedy

  You are one of the biggest stars there has ever been, a star so big the mere sight of you causes hysteria and stampedes, a star so big, other stars turn into gushing fanboys when they meet you.
• 

  PRESIDENT OBAMA

  We need a history lesson about Nazis

  I hope this column makes you sick.

• Looking but not seeing

  Please take a good look at Dr. Henry Louis Gates.

  He is five feet, seven inches, weighs 150 pounds, wears glasses and uses a cane. His legs are of unequal length, his mustache and goatee are gray. He is 58 years old and looks it.

• Leonard Pitts Jr.: We'll go forward from this moment

  This column by Leonard Pitts Jr. was published in The Miami Herald on Sept. 12, 2001, and received an extraordinary response from readers worldwide.

• No Leonard Pitts Jr. chat today

  Leonard Pitts Jr. won't be online today. His chat will take place as usual next week, and he will answer your questions then. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

• We know what works -- now let's do it

  This will be the last What Works column.

  I reserve the right to occasionally report on any program I run across that shows results in saving the lives and futures of African-American kids. But this is the last in the series I started 19 months ago to spotlight such programs.

• Separation can be a positive life development

  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.

• In Mississippi, echoes of a summer past

  SUNFLOWER, Miss. -- Joaquin Burse wants to go to Harvard and be a laser tech. You might think that's a lofty goal. Truth is, you have no idea how lofty it is.

• Leave education to the principals, teachers, parents

  As I wandered about looking lost, I chanced upon a teacher who volunteered to lead me where I needed to be. When I told her why I was here -- a series of columns on What Works to change the culture of dysfunction that entraps too many African-American kids -- she told me I had come to the right place: KIPP Gaston College Preparatory and KIPP Pride, two charter schools serving 600 kids here in farm country.

• Schools where students learn

  This, by the way, is the latest installment in What Works, my series about programs that are tackling the challenges faced by black kids. GCP and KIPP Pride certainly qualify, and Caleb Dolan, principal of GCP, wants you to know it isn't because they use selective admission to cull the cream of the crop. As public charter schools, they take students on a first-come basis. Kids come here reading below grade level. Or not reading at all.

• A 'bad idea' becomes wildly successful

  This is a What Works column, part of my series on programs that are successfully attacking dysfunctions that plague black children. The success of East Lake suggests you can win that battle by not isolating poverty.

• Role models help rescue troubled teens

  'I sure hope Timothy doesn't come to school today." It was when that thought came to mind, says Frederica Wilson, surveying the faces at the conference table in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools headquarters, that she knew she had a problem.

• Hear these kids talk about the future

  Last week, I went to Philadelphia to observe a program called YouthBuild U.S.A. This was for What Works, my series of columns about solutions to the problems that plague black kids.

  At one point, I found myself sitting down over pizza with a room full of YouthBuild students. Most of what we discussed didn't make that initial column, but I found it valuable nonetheless.

• They are their own fixer-uppers

  They say the house was a mess. There were holes in the floor. The walls were pulling apart. There were no windows, doors or fixtures. It was filled with trash. The stairs were unsafe. There were dead cats in the basement.

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