• A defeat for the far left
THE LIKELIHOOD of the Democratic majority in Congress taking a sharp left turn on national defense diminished Tuesday with Senate Democrats' decision not to expel Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman from their caucus.

• Bigger water, sewer bills are on the way
BEFORE THE Mobile Area Water and Sewer Service starts charging the average residential customer over 30 percent more, it needs to do a better job of explaining why.

• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
Brianna's family

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• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
Don't let ACLU

• NYT kinder this time
LAST MONTH, the Mobile area received some unflattering publicity from The New York Times, which sent a reporter looking for bigoted opposition to Barack Obama in advance of the election.

• Photo IDs can help keep residents safe
PHOTO IDENTIFICATION cards could be an effective weapon in the fight against crime in Mobile's public housing neighborhoods.

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• College reformers in a fight to the finish
NO ONE who follows Alabama politics expected the Alabama Education Association and its allies to go quietly in the struggle over the future of the state's two-year colleges.

• Keep rotating presidency
IN THE next 16 months, we hope Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine will rethink his position that the commission presidency should be a partisan office.

• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
Call it socialism,

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• Bring back the Sunset Limited
Coastal Alabama, in conjunction with neighboring states Mississippi and Florida, has a chance to secure the restoration of the Sunset Limited ? Amtrak's coast-to-coast route that was disrupted 3cm HALF years ago by Hurricane Katrina.

• Fighting the fat in Bama
STATE HEALTH officials in the South are wisely focusing on societal and commercial issues in their fight to tip the region off the "most obese" scale.

• Fresh blood boosts the two-year system
THREE MORE educators from other states have been tapped to head Alabama two-year colleges, reinforcing an encouraging trend of bringing new blood into the beleaguered system as it emerges from recent scandals.

• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
On racism and the

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• ACLU doesn't know what's best for kids
MOBILE COUNTY school officials learned last week that lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union are doing double duty as experts on education and would-be policy-makers for local schools.

• Artur Davis: Is his turn coming?
From the outset of Barack Obama's candidacy, pessimists said a black man could not be elected president of the United States, at least not yet, and even the most optimistic Democrats feared that Obama's primary campaign against Sen. Hillary Clinton might tear their party apart along racial lines.

• Good news for Mobile
IN THE financial storm undercutting the American and Alabama economies, Austal USA's new potential $1.6 billion contract to build high speed transport vessels for the Pentagon provides an encouraging countervailing wind.

• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
Obama to bring

• Low prices come with bad news
In the last few years, pulling into a gas station hasn't been a favorite activity for some of us.

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• Election was a defeat for offshore drilling
ALTHOUGH PRE-ELECTION polls showed almost two-thirds of Americans favored offshore drilling for oil, the election results provided a major victory for anti-drilling politicians.

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Housing ID card

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• A better way to evacuate
WITH THE completion of the Alabama 113 hurricane evacuation route, let's hope the nightmare scenario of Hurricane Opal will never happen again.

• Bailout should not subsidize profligacy
IF SOME members of Congress have their way, part two of the Great Bailout will encourage more of the reckless behavior that caused the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

• Letters, faxes, and e-mail
This Lisa Young

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• Call Joe the Plumber
THE $700 billion federal bailout of troubled financial institutions is beginning to look like a down payment on a much more costly and sweeping government intervention in the economy.

• If you cannot see, you shouldn't drive
ANEW study makes a direct connection between vision testing of older drivers and lower death rates, providing evidence for the argument that such tests should be required.

• Sound Off
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• Sound Off
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