LETTERS

Promote healthy lifestyles Our entire political system has it wrong on health care. Once again, powerful industrial lobbies have coerced and paid our politicians to get their way so they can pad the greedy pockets of the rich few at the expense of the citizenry.

Fort Hood, Part II

It’s times like these when we wish we were clairvoyant. The New York Times is reporting that another police officer, Sgt. Mark Todd, may have been the one who put down the clear and all-toopresent danger at Fort Hood the other day, not Kimberly Denise Munley.

Reconsider plight of juvenile lifers

It was a remarkable coincidence. While the U.S. Supreme Court this week was considering whether teenage criminals deserve to be sentenced to life in prison without parole in cases that do not involve homicide, three South Florida teens were charged as adults for setting fire to another teenager.

Medicalizing mass murder

What a surprise—that someone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” (the “God is great” jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre downplaying Nidal Hasan’s religious beliefs.

Prized noodles

When phrases jump from the page

IT’S NOT so strange that Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs would both have stories on North Korea this month. After all, what’s more foreign, and what might affect American policy and affairs—in a great big flash—more than North Korea?

A cultural requiem:

We’re not going back to the moon

When almost the first word a child says, as she points to the night sky, is “moon,” you feel duty-bound to cultivate that interest, if not to start putting aside tuition money for Young Astronauts Camp. So on the 40th anniversary of the first Apollo landing, I was happy to watch, with my granddaughter Julia, age 9, NASA-channel films of the manned moon missions.

COLUMN ONE Letters Dept.

Dear Old Politician, It was wholly a pleasure to hear from you, as always, for you remain as eloquent and concise as ever. It makes me miss the bad old days when I got a chance to tear you apart every day—and viceversa.

EDITORIALS Payback time

Target: Mike Ross (again)

THE FIRST thought that occurs is that maybe Adam Green, whoever he is, should lay off the caffeine. When you start addressing emails to yourself, then signing them at the bottom after you’ve completed your rant, something is outta whack. Can he be referring to himself in the third person in a weird sort of way?

COLUMNISTS A true Arkansas traveler

Hillbilly comedian Bob Burns has been on my mind lately. I have been reading a fine new book by Arkansas historian Brooks Blevins on the bipolar history of the state’s image, Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State (University of Arkansas Press). Bob Burns receives considerable attention from Blevins.

In plain sight?

Hints of potential trouble from Maj. Nidal M. Hasan were there for all to see. There was his troubling presentation at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Islam and the U.S. military, and questions among colleagues about the psychiatrist’s competence and even his sanity.

LETTERS

Tort reform doesn’t work I’ve continued to read letters from people spouting the party line about tort reform. They need to do a little research. Tort reform doesn’t work. According to a report by Citizens for Corporate Accountability & Individual Rights, legislation in 41 states limited the liability of wrongdoers, placed caps on damages and made obtaining representation against insurance companies difficult for consumers.

News from long ago

Down in Houston, Texas, the oldest living veteran of the Civil War had just celebrated his 117th birthday with demands for more hot coffee, visitors and music.

The obstinate voter

I have long considered myself a supporter of gay marriage, with certain caveats. The most important of those is that I’ve never accepted the liberal image of gay marriage opponents as knuckle-dragging troglodytes filled with hate for gays (and blacks and Hispanics and Muslims).

Setting a record

It was no surprise to me when, as head of the United Way Committee at FedEx Freight in Harrison, Timmy Dougan and his group decided to shoot for a new Guinness world record.

COLUMNISTS How to try terrorists

Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who by his own account came to this country most recently in 2001 to help organize a second wave of attacks after the September 11th atrocities, received a jail sentence on October 29 that could free him within six years.