Americans bent on fighting threats that don't exist

It should've been the shot heard around the world. Chances are, you didn't hear it.

You can run, but (even in Key West) you can't hide

Brenda Heist went missing from her Pennsylvania home in 2002.

Nice to see Witherspoon get her comeuppance

This is for the rest of us. Meaning the ones who don't have personal chefs, gift-wrapping rooms or hired sycophants, who don't hobnob or rub shoulders, and who drive the same car every day of the week.

Can our nation withstand such divisive contempt?

Ordinarily, I'd thank you for writing. But truth is, I am not grateful you wrote; your note last week was one of the more troubling things I have read. I do not blame you for leaving it unsigned.

Rand Paul's clumsy 'outreach' at Howard U.

Rand Paul did just fine at Howard University, thank you very much. Or at least, that's how he remembers it.

Leonard J. Pitts: 'Oh, my God': In Boston, those 3 words say it all

A flag waves over the chaotic scene after two bombs exploded during the Boston Marathon.

The president forgot: No one roots for Goliath

Dear Barry:

Song celebrating date rape is beyond unbelievable

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Or, at least, that's Rick Ross' story and he's sticking to it.

Forgiveness sought and granted; the 2 men wept

A few words on the death of Elwin Wilson. He passed last week in a South Carolina hospital at age 76. Wilson had endured heart and lung problems and had suffered a recent bout with the flu.

With time's passage, grace, gratitude, laughter

Really? Bobbie Smith, too? Geez. This is what I was thinking when word came that the lead singer of the Spinners died a couple of weeks ago. It came a month after Richard Street and Damon Harris, who sang on "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" with the Temptations, passed away just days apart. Now Sm…

This human's spirit crushed by robot DirecTV customer service

Dear Whoever is in Charge of Customer Service for DirecTV:

Every gay and lesbian person is someone's child, Sen. Portman

Let there be no cheers for Rob Portman. The Ohio senator is, pardon the tautology, a conservative Republican, and last week he did something conservative Republicans do not do. He came out for same-sex marriage. This is a man whose anti-gay bona fides were so pronounced that his 2011 selecti…

Right to counsel is a myth if you're poor

"Make me wanna holler, way they do my life."

Far left, right end up face to face on extremism spectrum

Mayor Bloomberg as Dr. Doom fighting supersized sugary drinks.

Yahoo's new chief is wrong - and I am proof

It's not just a women's issue. Granted, that's how many of us are framing last month's decision by Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo Inc., to end telecommuting and require all employees to report to the office. It ignited a firestorm of controversy over whether Mayer, a working mother herself, has…

Some gay athlete needs to kick down the closet door

"Now is the time…"

Why the Voting Rights Act is no 'entitlement'

One day, many years ago, I was working in my college bookstore when this guy walks in wearing a T-shirt. "White Power," it said.

Going beyond 'edgy' - and falling off the cliff

The tweet went as follows: "Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhane Wallis is kind of a (expletive), right?"

It's easy to be smug in the wake of real courage

Dear David from Georgia:

Finest of hairs are split on killing of US citizens

If it is true, as the writer Samuel Johnson once said, that "patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel," then the dictionary must be the first.

Can the GOP abandon its alternate universe?

Maybe the party is finally over. Meaning not simply the Grand Old Party, but more specifically the bacchanal of the bizarre and carnival of crazy to which it has lately devolved. So obvious has this devolution become that even Republican stalwarts have been heard to decry the parody of a par…

Gun debate should be about facts, not fantasy

You remember that serious conversation we were going to have about guns? Here's how serious it has turned out to be.

On guns, conservatives show ignorance of black history

Rush Limbaugh thinks John Lewis should have been armed.

Furor over Beyoncé comes a generation too late

Barack Obama was inaugurated for his second term last week.

President, poet stand in light of new American dawn

How fitting that Richard Blanco chose the sun. A 44-year-old poet raised in Miami, the first Cuban-American and the first openly gay person ever to deliver a presidential inauguration poem, he used the earth star to frame his composition "One Today" at Monday's ceremony before the U.S. Capit…

End war on drugs to honor MLK's legacy

Dear Mr. President: Congratulations on your second inauguration. Let's talk about drugs.

Debating whether torture 'works' misses the point

Does torture work? It is a Bush-era debate that has found Obama-era relevance because of a new movie, "Zero Dark Thirty," in which torture seems to work quite well.

Paper was off-base revealing gun-owner addresses

Exposed. That, in a word, is how you feel when someone broadcasts your home address without your knowledge, against your wishes. Your correspondent speaks from experience. Six years ago when white supremacists published my home address and phone number on their websites, the first thing I fe…

God's will rises above those who try to hijack it

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways." - Isaiah 55:8

Future President Martinez now lies in an incubator

I, too, sing America.

'Tough on crime' sentencing ignores justice

So the people got sick of it, all those criminals being coddled by all those bleeding-heart liberal judges with all their soft-headed concern for rights and rehabilitation. And a wave swept this country in the Reagan years, a wave ridden by pundits and politicians seeking power, a wave that …

GOP's party-above-country mind-set needs fixing

And another one bites the dust. But Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar did not go quietly. After last week's defeat in the GOP primary, the veteran legislator issued a remarkable statement warning of the dangers of continued partisanship. Lugar, a conservative who embraces "the Republican principles…

US is greatest jailer on Earth - with tragic results

I promised Russell I would ask you something. We met last week in a medium-security correctional facility. There, I spent a couple hours talking with a group of men who are studying for their GEDs. I stressed to them the need for long-term goals, the criticality of education in an era where …

Trayvon Martin was killed by a persistent stereotype

I don't care about George Zimmerman's MySpace page. Granted, it was gratifying to read recently in The Miami Herald about his crude animus toward Mexicans ("soft ass wanna be thugs") and his reference to a former girlfriend as an "ex-hoe." Given the way white supremacists and other Zimmerman…

'The Bible and Homosexuality' is a masterwork

Sometimes, people hide inside the Bible. That is, they use the Christian holy book as authority and excuse for biases that have nothing to do with God. They did this when women sought to vote and when African-Americans sought freedom.

'No justice, no peace' is a fact -justice delayed is not justice at all

Twenty years ago today, my hometown burned. I had moved to Miami the year before and there is, let me tell you, something surreal about watching on television from a continent away as places you've been and streets you know are smashed and burned.

Nazis: go-to image for political demonization

John Raese is feeling persecuted. Raese, a West Virginia businessman running for the Senate, declared in a recent speech that he doesn't want the government telling him what to do "because I'm an American." Specifically, he lamented that he is required to place a "huge sticker" on his buildi…

Obama is naive if he thinks drug war can be won

If President Obama had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin. So the president famously said.

Finally, someone has gutsy comment on Muslim issue

Barack Obama himself has never had the guts to say it.

Let's be opponents, adversaries, never 'enemies'

Meet Nathan Fletcher, candidate for mayor of San Diego.

A rush to avoid judgment in Trayvon's killing

Once upon a time in the late '90s, a certain black newswoman was awarded her own column. She wrote 12 pieces, three of them about race. That was too many for her boss, who told her to tone it down. Confused, she went to a white colleague for advice. He explained that, being black, she lacked…

Words ban gives sensitivity a bad name in New York

Warning: This column contains language some readers may find unsuitable for children. Parental guidance is suggested.

One month after slaying, many still don't get it

One month later, some of us fail to understand what this is about. One month later, some of us are using the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin to advance their own selfish aims or are throwing up smoke to divert our attention from what matters. One month later, a reminder seems sadly necessary.

Springsteen's musical state of union eloquent

It begins with big drums, a guitar seesawing beneath like a deck rolling in high seas. It ends with a fuzz of static and feedback, a hiss of promises broken and a mortgage on the future.

Not made of cellophane, nor simply air, but invisible

They do not see you. For every African American, it comes as surely as hard times, setback and tears, that moment when you realize somebody is looking right at you and not seeing you - as if you had become cellophane, as if you had become air, as if somehow, some way, you were right there an…

No president can claim right to be judge, jury, executioner

"Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." - from the 14th Amendment

'We thought we were white,' the man lamented

A few words on what American Muslims need. We were discussing this, an olive-skinned Muslim man and I, at a banquet last year, when he said a wistful, poignant thing that has stayed with me ever since. "We thought we were white," he said.

Today's conservatism: what a dump

If you think Rush Limbaugh is fatally wounded, think again. By way of explanation, let me tell you how a certain subset of my readers will react to this column. Experience dictates that once I've taken my last swipe at their dear leader, Limbaugh's followers will well … rush to fire off angr…

You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube

A few days ago, a U.S. Marine returned to the States after six months in Afghanistan. Spotting his new honey among the people waiting, he rushed forward and planted an enthusiastic kiss - their first kiss, as it turns out. A friend snapped a picture and posted it on Facebook.

Social conservative's obsession: fear of Girl Scouts

Bob Morris is scared of Girl Scouts. If you are waiting for the punch line, sorry, but there isn't one. Morris, an Indiana state legislator, recently attacked the Scouts in a letter to his colleagues urging them to vote down a nonbinding resolution honoring the group on its centennial. There…