With tour lined up, Palin's looking more like a candidate

Since former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin shot to fame after her 2008 vice presidential bid, she's kept her intentions — if not her ambitions — closely held. But on Thursday, Palin's ambitions began to look increasingly presidential. Her political action committee announced that she'd launch a multi-state tour over the Memorial Day weekend, beginning at a motorcycle rally in Washington and winding its way up the East Coast to New Hampshire, the site of the nation's first presidential primary.

IN MY OPINION

Don't censor Mark Twain's N word

While intentions to delete the N word from 'Huck Finn' are good, the fix is profoundly wrong. Here's why.

TO OUR READERS

A year’s worth of agony, hope, courage in one-hour documentary

This Tuesday, on the eve of the first-year commemoration of the earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000, The Miami Herald will have a premiere screening of Nou Bouke: Haiti’s Past, Present and Future, a one-hour documentary that is a collaboration between The Herald, El Nuevo Herald, award-winning filmmaker Joe Cardona and WPBT Channel 2, one of South Florida’s PBS affiliates.

IN MY OPINION

Stadium plan a 'bifurcated rip-off'

The Dolphins will seek a new state law that could increase bed taxes in both Miami-Dade and Broward, and would allow Broward officials to send its revenues across the county line to help renovate the football stadium. This is what you call a bifurcated rip-off.

CULTURE WARS

The politics of coming out of the closet

George W. Bush's 2004 campaign manager announced recently that he is gay. The reaction has been a primer on the politics of sexual identity.

GAYS IN THE MILITARY

Gay sailor Keith Meinhold, who fought for his career, is still vigilant

Keith Meinhold of Miami Shores doesn't want to be known simply as the ``gay sailor.'' But he is gay, he did serve in the Navy, and he played a pivotal public role in the events leading up to today's rekindled debate over whether gays can serve openly in the military.

ISSUES AND IDEAS

In Haiti, funerals become eulogies for a nation

Death in Haiti takes a twisted turn for the Miami Herald's Caribbean correspondent Jacqueline Charles.

Budget cuts: Where the hurt is

Miami-Dade Commission budget cuts are affecting more than the bottom line.

TO OUR READERS

New series explores 50 years of events that bound U.S., Cuba

From the day she landed on one of the Freedom Flights as an excited, frightened 7-year-old, Luisa Yanez has been fascinated by the massive U.S. airlift that brought her and 265,000 other Cubans to the United States four decades ago.

NORTHWESTERN HIGH GRADUATION

Mom attends killed son's Northwestern High graduation

A young victim's mother made the difficult decision to attend a graduation ceremony in his place.

OVERTOWN

Overtown grandmother haunted by loved one's violent death

A grandmother who thought she'd always live in her neighborhood has lost two loved ones and now just hopes to get out.

VIOLENCE CLAIMING YOUNG BLACKS

Bound in grief as violence continues

It's a club nobody wants to be part of: parents of killed children who come together to comfort one another and try to end the cycle of senseless violence.

Four decades later, men recall King's last campaign

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.

Glimpses of 2007

The Miami Herald's photographers share a trove of images that they find memorable and personally remarkable.

Moore gives the accused little say in `Sicko'

In many respects, Michael Moore's new movie, Sicko, is like a trial for those who oversee healthcare in the United States. The industry -- doctors, drug makers, hospitals, insurers -- is charged with greed and putting personal interests above patients'. Moore heard from thousands of people who had maddening and heartbreaking brushes with this system.

HEALTHCARE

Grieve for the U.S. health system

It isn't surprising that critics of Michael Moore's Sicko are desperate to quibble with his finer points. After all, denial is the first stage of Elizabeth Kübler-Ross's model of dealing with grief, and the tragedy before us is, of course, the agonizing death of an inadequate medical system.

We should all have an ex like this one

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.

Mayor Diaz discusses 'House of Lies: Miami's Crisis'

City of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz and a few members of his staff met with the editorial board, editors and reporters at The Miami Herald on Tuesday to discuss the "House of Lies: Miami's Crisis'' articles that appeared on Sunday, June 3.

At Harvard, a move to test how well students are learning

The federal government wants to start tracking how well the nation's colleges teach. This could spur some of the biggest changes campuses have seen in decades -- and perhaps threaten the very idea of a liberal education.