OBAMA/GOP

What matters most? Reelection or country?

Come now, let us reason together...'' Isaiah 1:18

Public silence greets poor's powerlessness

If he'd said it of Jews, he would still be apologizing.

If he'd said it of blacks, he'd be on BET, begging absolution.

ACHIEVEMENT

Everybody has a shot at being an athlete

Don Lewis thinks white men can't jump.

What else explains the bizarre statement he issued last week? According to the Chronicle newspaper of Augusta, Ga., Lewis is the commissioner of something called the All-American Basketball Alliance, which hopes to set up shop in 12 cities. ``Only players that are natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league,'' his statement said.

COLUMNISTS | LEONARD PITTS

Jesus and gun sights don't mix

Have you heard about the Jesus rifles?

Islam.

In the third place, the coded scriptural references provided a recruiting tool to warlords and terrorists who could truthfully tell followers they were being shot at by Jesus guns.

CONSERVATIVES

An `obscene' view of Haiti tragedy

As babies were being pulled, crushed and broken, from the rubble.

A year after Obama: blacks more hopeful

One year later.

One year after that icy Washington day when Aretha Franklin sang and John Roberts muffed his lines and Barack Obama raised his hand and swore the oath that made him president of the United States, it turns out something fundamental has changed.

Cruel as it is, we somehow go on

Sometimes, the earth is cruel. That is ultimately the fundamental lesson here, as children wail, families sleep out of doors, and the dead lie unclaimed in the rubble that once was Port-au-Prince.

RACE

Reid got it right

Somebody please tell Harry Reid there are no Negroes in America.

Listen up, NBA players: Guns are not funny

AT LARGE

Priority is stopping terrorists, period

On Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a student from Nigeria, allegedly tried to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit. He failed due to some defect in his explosives and the quick reflexes of passengers who subdued him. As you might expect, this close call has some of us asking hard, but necessary questions:

DECADE

Oh boy, they're almost over

Afew days from now and not a moment too soon, we say farewell to the Ohs.

Dreadful 0hs -- when things fell apart

Afew days from now and not a moment too soon, we say farewell to the Ohs.

Once upon a time, it was common to debate names for this first decade of the new millennium. We'd seen the Gay Nineties, the Roaring Twenties, the Swinging Sixties, we'd endured the Me Decade, the Greed Decade, The War Years, and people wondered what nickname should be attached to the Ohs.

GALLUP POLL

The racial divide, again

You'd think it would be a simple question: How popular is Barack Obama?

Sosa's choice -- not just cosmetic

Please indulge me as I answer an e-mail from a guy named Dunbar. It says in part:

``Your column on Sammy Sosa's skin cream use is off base and sends a wrong message. The issue is the man's character -- not the color of his skin. Your column seemingly assumes he lightens his skin color out of shame and fails to recognize that he may simply be doing it out of vanity or his own sense of personal style. Plenty of fair-skinned people use skin-darkening creams, sun baths, tanning beds for that purpose and the only criticism leveled at them is vanity and stupidity for ignoring skin cancer warnings. The same should hold for Sammy.

AT LARGE

Criticism of `Precious' unjustified

I wanna say I am somebody. I wanna say it on subway, TV, movie, LOUD. I see the pink faces in suits look over top of my head. I watch myself disappear in their eyes... I talk loud but still I don't exist.'' -- Precious

We can still afford to act like America

``We [should] wrap him in bacon and deep fry him at a state fair while Lee Greenwood stabs him in the face.'' -- Jon Stewart of The Daily Show on confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed

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.

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.