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June 30 -- Clinton makes China summit success so far (ARN Editorial): The stakes for President Clinton in the China summit are clear: His policy of engagement with Beijing, in the face of a skeptical and suspicious Congress, was riding on the outcome.
June 30 -- UFO panel out of sight (ARN Editorial): A panel of reputable scientists has concluded there is something to those UFO reports and, whatever it is, it's worth studying. Boy, will they be sorry.
June 30 -- Need a new book with your caffeine? (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - The true moment of cross-cultural convergence came to my neighborhood this year when the local Starbucks started selling books. Not any books, mind you. Oprah's books. Books that came with Oprah's seal of approval.
June 30 -- NBA confronts 'Hollywoodization' (George Will): WASHINGTON - Once upon a time, becoming "like baseball" was the aspiration of other professional sports. Now it is the National Basketball Association's nightmare.
June 29 -- Congress needs restraint with no line-item veto (ARN Editorial): President Clinton, like his predecessors, thought the line-item veto was a good idea and included it in his campaign. Republicans thought so, too, and included it in the Contract With America. Congress agreed and in 1996 enacted the line-item veto into law.
June 29 -- IRS reform welcome (ARN Editorial): Americans are about to be living with a new version of the IRS. That will not make all of our tax miseries go away or even make many of us feel entirely comfortable about this overwhelmingly powerful agency in our midst, but its reform is good news that can be chiefly attributed to congressional Republicans.
June 29 -- Save us from those who know truth (Donald Kaul): A lot of people seemed shocked -- shocked! -- a couple of weeks ago when the Southern Baptist Convention anointed Man as official leader of his family and called on Woman to "submit herself graciously" to her husband's leadership. Actually, it rates no more than a 1.5 on the Shocking News of the Week Richter scale.
June 29 -- Not 'sugar, spice and everything nice' (Cal Thomas): People looking for causes of the cultural decline -- including why girls are engaging in sexual activity at ever-younger ages -- might wish to consider the Spice Girls.
June 28 -- Iraq suffering tunnel vision over weapons (ARN Editorial): Perhaps that unhappily loaded phrase "light at the end of the tunnel" is a jinx.
June 28 -- Health care tomfoolery (ARN Editorial): House Republicans have drafted a health-care package, and some of it -- such as increased availability of medical savings accounts -- makes sense. The rest may sound wonderful but isn't. It aims to establish a so-called patients' bill of rights, an idea of the Clinton administration.
June 28 -- Those lies we told about Washington (Dale McFeatters): The Boston Globe and the New Republic have recently dismissed star writers for fabricating stories, people and quotations. It is with deep shame and regret that this column must confess to the same crime.
June 28 -- Could Clinton be telling the truth? (Sandy Grady): WASHINGTON -- Is it possible that when Bill Clinton said, "I never had sex with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky," the president was telling the truth?
June 28 -- An old family story about passion for cars (Sharon Randall): My brother had a driving passion for cars. So to speak. Fords in particular. He was especially fond of speed.
June 28 -- The Winters Freeway underpass issue revisited (Norman Gooch): On Jan. 8, 1995, the Abilene Reporter-News published my guest column concerning the proposal to remodel the Buffalo Gap/Winters Freeway underpass. I urged that we postpone this project and instead that we build at least one new underpass before tearing up the existing one. I suggested one of two locations -- Sayles Boulevard or Ridgemont Drive.
June 28 -- As we approach another Fourth of July, the American Dream is still alive (Maxwell Davis): The United States has properly been called the land of opportunity. To understand why, we must examine several aspects of our heritage. The country was populated by people who wanted to get away from the effects of European feudalism. They wanted to be free. This was the basic principle on which the Constitution was written.
June 28 -- It's not just the heat, it's also the stupidity (Danny Reagan): I'm sick of the wind.
June 28 -- Learning hard lessons of how to be safe with guns (Charles Russell): Thirty-two years ago this September will mark the time since I attended the very first of the local police training programs to be offered in Illinois. Southern Illinois University in Alton was the place where it had been offered to new officers through their local communities' sponsorship.
June 27 -- Misguided try to control teen buying habits (ARN Editorial): While President Clinton may be frustrated at failing to pass a tobacco bill, his latest response to the tobacco industry is baffling.
June 27 -- Peru's travesty of justice (ARN Editorial): Peru's new prime minister, Javier Valle Riestra, has called for a pardon for a young American woman serving a life sentence in a remote prison 13,000 feet up in the Andes.
June 27 -- A straightforward (Wonder) bagel (Bob Greene): COLUMBUS, OHIO -- The fragrance as you drive by the Wonder Bread plant on Fourth Street is the same as it was 40 years ago: delicious. It smells like ...
June 27 -- Going to great heights to get there (Rheta Grimsley Johnson): I went to see the popular IMAX movie "Everest" the other day -- because it is there -- and came away astounded at the lengths, and heights, humans will go to for a thrill.
June 26 -- Bigger surplus won’t pay for GOP tax cuts (ARN Editorial): One reason Washington so often gets into awkward fixes is this: If the numbers don’t support the desired policy, simply change the numbers.
June 26 -- Disintegrative forces defining future (George Will): WASHINGTON -- As the president of the world's most powerful nation visits the world's most populous nation, note the future is being defined by disintegrative forces, worldwide.
June 26 -- Tobacco moguls sure can blow smoke (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON -- You have to hand it to the tobacco moguls. These guys really know their business. Which is, of course, the advertising business.
June 25 -- High court's harassment ruling correct (ARN Editorial): A majority on the Supreme Court has ruled that a student sexually harassed by a teacher cannot collect damages from a school district unless officials knew what was going on and failed to act. The justices in the minority are beside themselves. It seems to be their view that the flood wall has just been bulldozed, that the inundation will soon be upon us and that untold numbers of the innocent will drown.
June 25 -- A prince among teens (ARN Editorial): When the gracious, gorgeous and estranged Princess Diana died last August, many Windsor-watchers believed the future of the British royal family died with her.
June 25 -- Telecom Act hit by corporate greed (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN -- As though determined to prove that the film "Bulworth" has not an ounce of exaggeration in it, the powerful telecom lobby is now putting pressure on members of Congress who owe it a lot to get the industry out of the only redeeming feature of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
June 25 -- Perry opposed technology to China (Cal Thomas): As President Clinton departs for China, no one should wish him ill because he carries the prestige and interests of the United States with him. Yet he leaves behind the matter of missile-technology transfers to Beijing and the question of whether they have damaged American security interests as part of a trade-out with contributors to his 1996 reelection bid.
June 24 -- Court opens gate for suits against prisons (ARN Editorial): The U.S. Supreme Court, in ruling the other day that the Americans With Disabilities Act applies to inmates in state prisons, has thus opened the spigot for a gush of lawsuits and has assured that state taxpayers will have to fork over many millions for major renovations benefiting felons whose chief hardship is the confinement they went out of their way to earn.
June 24 -- Doomsday -- at the top of the hour (Bob Greene): COLUMBUS, Ohio ---- In the airport on the way here, they were changing the Doomsday Clock.
June 24 -- Sen. McCain takes leave of his senses (William Rusher): A lot of Republicans are beginning to wonder what has happened to Sen. John McCain.
June 21 -- Management of cancer pain needs attention (ARN Editorial): It's unacceptable and inexcusable that large numbers of elderly cancer patients in nursing homes are receiving no medication for their pain, but that's what is now happening, according to a recently completed study.
June 21 -- The habit of safety (ARN Editorial): For many Texans who are old enough to have been driving most of their lives, using seatbelts has been an acquired taste. One measure of how hard it has been for "old" drivers to develop new habits is that the Texas Department of Public Safety announced earlier this month it will no longer issue mere warning tickets for failing to buckle up, even though the state's mandatory seatbelt law has been on the books for 13 years now.
June 21 -- Fatherhood's challenge has changed: NEW YORK -- Father's Day is unusual among our important holidays because of its lack of an ancient heritage. Unlike Mother's Day, which can trace its origin to celebrations for the goddess Cybele, Father's Day is strictly modern.
June 21 -- Smoke, mirrors and the tobacco bill (Ann McFeatters): WASHINGTON -- Some are still pretending to see a wisp of life, but the tobacco bill is dead, a victim of the blue smoke and two-way mirrors of politics.
June 21 -- Kiowa Ann's first genuine Father's Day (Sharon Randall): Kiowa Ann is 2 years old and she's about to celebrate her first "Otter's Day."
June 21 -- Some fathers are there, and some fathers are not (Aleta Hacker): Happy Father's Day. The new tie looks great, the greeting card is funny, and your favorite dinner is delicious. So settle back in your favorite chair, and let's talk ... about fathers.
June 21 -- Abilene Crime Stoppers has proved its value as a crime-fighting tool (Verle Englerth): You may have read Tanya Eiserer's recent Abilene Reporter-News story, "Property crime increase sparks jump in '97 crime rate."
June 21 -- Rodeo's critics should go behind the scenes (Tracy Deadman): I am writing in reference to the June 20 letter about glorifying rodeos. Well, in a few short words, yes, we should.
June 21 -- Martin family appreciates caring spirit of Abilene (Hale Martin): I would like to write a sincere note of thanks to the city of Abilene and the surrounding communities, and this seems the best way to do it.
June 20 -- U.N. must still monitor Iraq's weapons cache (ARN Editorial): Richard Butler, the chief U.N. arms inspector in Iraq, is no patsy. He has faced down Saddam Hussein and withstood the subtle importunings of France and Russia that sanctions against Iraq have gone on long enough.
June 20 -- The arrival of summer (ARN Editorial): Mother Nature, ignorant of the importance of our social calendar, says summer officially begins Sunday at 9:03 a.m., the solstice when the sun is as far north of the equator as it's going to get this year.
June 20 -- Scotty will always be their coach (Anthony Wilson): There's no crying in baseball. Tom Hanks said so.
June 20 -- Down the middle with grace and class (Bob Greene): Basketball, for self-evident reasons, has been dominating the sports headlines in recent days, and soon enough the major league baseball pennant races will take over.
June 19 -- Juneteenth -- an observance for all races: If you're new to Texas, or if history wasn't your best subject, you might not understand what Juneteenth is all about. It's an important date for African-Americans in Texas, but many Anglos probably don't know why.
June 19 -- Labors of mixing pregnancy, politics (Ellen Goodman): BURLINGTON, Mass. -- This is Career Day at the Foxhill Elementary School, and the students have already heard from the police officer, the hairdresser, the cake decorator and the soldier. Now it's Jane Swift's chance to turn them on to politics.
June 19 -- Academic culture diluting seriousness (George Will): WASHINGTON -- Without an intellectual anchor, cultural institutions are carried along by prevailing intellectual winds, which blow from the left. Familiar exhibits of this process are universities, where various subjects are enveloped in fogs of politics and abstractions.
June 18 -- Zapruder film belongs to our national legacy (ARN Editorial): History happening on camera is commonplace now, but it was not on Nov. 22, 1963, when President Kennedy was assassinated.
June 18 -- Wage survey misleading (ARN Editorial): Women are catching up ever so slightly with men in the wages they earn, and the Clinton administration would credit that to its enlightened policies. The bad news, according to the Labor Department's latest survey, is that women are still paid just 76 cents for every dollar men are paid.
June 18 -- Home health care takes a big blow (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN -- Bad governance is, in its own way, an interesting study -- not unlike those monsters in sci-fi films that start as small blobs and then turn into something that eats Chicago. You start with just a li'l ol' bill to deregulate the savings and loans, and before you know it, it's a screaming horror that costs taxpayers $500 billion.
June 18 -- The president's rocky road to China (Cal Thomas): China's Communist leaders have President Clinton just where they want him -- coming to Tiananmen Square in the anniversary month of the slaughter of pro-democracy demonstrators and believing what he does will have a positive impact on China's actions. American foreign policy and prestige are in a sorry state.
June 17 -- We've pushed 'addiction' to cover too much (ARN Editorial): A Pittsburgh psychologist has come up with the theory that some people are addicted to the Internet. She has written a book about the problem, of course, and even treats patients on -- guess what? -- the Internet.
June 17 -- 'E' is for 'eternity' (ARN Editorial): Now that it is almost impossible to call anybody, thanks to voice mail, e-mail is closing in on the telephone as the favored form of electronic communication between adults.
June 17 -- Marriage not a private arrangement (Linda Chavez): Love blooms on the job, the item in a glossy magazine announced to the world, with pictures of the saucy, middle-aged couple inset into the story.
June 17 -- The best and truest Michael Jordan (Bob Greene): The best lesson anyone can take from Michael Jordan's life -- the lesson that comes the closest to explaining why he is who he is, and why he has accomplished what he has accomplished -- made itself evident during the brief period of his adulthood when no one thought he was any good.
June 16 -- Baptists' belief of women's role is their right (ARN Editorial): A nationwide furor has arisen in the wake of the Southern Baptist Convention's reaffirmation of the "traditional" family structure, the structure familiar not only to any Bible reader but also to anyone who watches reruns of television shows from an older era.
June 16 -- Marry in haste, pay taxes in leisure (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - I'd like to think that it's just a bit of June madness. After all, this is our nation's bridal month and with an average wedding costing about $17,000 these days, the price of marriage could be on anyone's mind.
June 16 -- Clinton trying to rewrite Constitution (George Will): WASHINGTON - On July 11, 1787, the Constitutional Convention discussed what would become the requirement of a census by "actual enumeration" every 10 years, to revise the allocation of congressional seats among the states.
June 15 -- Public money, private schools hazardous mix (ARN Editorial): The Wisconsin state supreme court has gone a step beyond any other court in the past by ruling that taxpayers' money - public money - can be used to send children to private religious schools.
June 15 -- No election-year raise (ARN Editorial): Congress will not be getting a scheduled pay hike. The reason: It's an election year.
June 15 -- Let children go - to private schools (Cal Thomas): Two businessmen, Ted Forstmann, a venture capitalist, and John Walton, heir to the huge Wal-Mart fortune, have pledged to raise $200 million that would allow at least 50,000 urban poor children to escape from failing public schools.
June 15 -- No 'farewell to arms' around here (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - OK, you can take away my cynic-in-good-standing card, and I'll throw in the cheap irony, too: I'm horrified. I'm shocked and appalled, as they say in letters to the editor, to learn we used nerve gas in Laos during the Vietnam War.
June 14 -- Celebrating a birthday for Old Glory (ARN Editorial): Today is a special day that requires no cards or gifts. It is Flag Day, the 221st anniversary of the Stars and Stripes.
June 14 -- Continuing tradition (ARN Editorial): Making the past present, keeping the old but making it new -- the Fort Griffin Fandangle has become a historical tradition in itself.
June 14 -- Why the 'elite' frown on Christianity (Betsy Hart): One might think the world was practically collapsing the way the news reported the activities of the Southern Baptist Convention.
June 14 -- Quick report could ruin Starr's case (Morton Kondracke): Independent counsel Kenneth Starr may be about to make a fatal mistake in his pursuit of President Clinton by sending Congress an incomplete "interim" report on his investigation.
June 14 -- Early imprints can last for an entire lifetime (Sharon Randall): The first time I set foot in the Atlantic, I was 10 years old, too young to know there would be other oceans, other waters in my life.
June 14 -- When a visit back home changes memories of the past (Judi McMordie): Returning home after 40 years can be a shock to the system and even detrimental to many cherished memories. There are, however, lessons to be learned. Although I have returned to Abilene, my hometown, many times over the years to see family members who still live there, I had never visited the old haunts of my childhood until just recently.
June 14 -- Doom In The Year 2000 (Anna Williamson): Talking to people and businesses about the year 2000 computer glitch, I am amazed at the number who think it's just a computer problem -- one that can be fixed simply by rewriting a lot of lines of software code. However, this is not the case, and the impact on everyone will be staggering.
June 14 -- The national tragedy that follows poor diet (Allen Reynolds): Last week the American people received two powerful wake-up calls about how their diets affect their health and well-being.
June 13 -- News business broadens its 'net' of sources (ARN Editorial): In the communications world of late 20th century America, it's almost as if you can blink your eyes and miss something massive occurring, such as the increasing percentage of adults turning to the Internet at least once a week to catch up on the news.
June 13 -- Realistic China policy (ARN Editorial): Although it is unlikely to do so, Congress could go a long way toward removing an unnecessary irritant in U.S.-China relations by giving China permanent Most Favored Nation trade status.
June 13 -- It will take more than a free toaster (Bob Greene): Who was the most solid citizen in the town where you grew up?
June 13 -- Need for a real plan to teach English (Linda Chavez): In the week since California voters overwhelmingly rejected bilingual education for children in their state, I've had some interesting conversations with political leaders, parents, teachers, researchers and journalists on what the vote will mean for non-English-speaking children around the country.
June 12 -- Generous with criticism more than with cash (ARN Editorial): Al Gore gave $353 to charity last year, and by the lights of some that paltry donation makes him a miser, a hypocrite and a lout, all of which names are themselves uncharitable.
June 12 -- Free stuff from space (ARN Editorial): The city council of Monahans has enunciated what may turn out to be an important new legal principle.
June 12 -- Fighting over fields of Gettysburg (George Will): GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- "For every Southern boy 14 years old," wrote William Faulkner, "not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863." It is July 3, with Pickett's brigades poised for a long walk across a field of fire and into legend.
June 12 -- Rembrandt's downfall an inspiration (Rheta Grimsley Johnson): One summer's afternoon on the outskirts of Amsterdam, in Holland, I sat on the grassy canal bank where Rembrandt used to rest and sketch. I swore to myself I would always remember that moment, the privilege of being there, on hallowed ground.
June 11 -- Support grows to privatize Social Security (ARN Editorial): All of a sudden, an idea that seemed to have virtually no support -- privatizing some portion of Social Security -- has support everywhere you look.
June 11 -- Health plan details (ARN Editorial): Back when health costs were soaring further into space than the Hubbell telescope can peer, some health-care organizations and insurance plans responded by holding down at least some costs by holding down at least some services.
June 11 -- Good advice about public prayer (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN -- For bigotry, un-American and un-Christian behavior, it's pretty hard to top some of the lobbying on behalf of the Istook amendment, which failed in the U.S. House on a vote of 224-203 because it was 61 votes short of the two-thirds majority to amend the Constitution.
June 11 -- The newest killing fields of Oregon (Cal Thomas): What's wrong with this picture? Residents along Virginia's beaches are prohibited by the Endangered Species Act from removing dead and rotting sea turtles without a government permit. Meanwhile, Attorney General Janet Reno last week announced the Justice Department will not interfere with Oregon's new doctor-assisted suicide law.
June 10 -- House budget tax cuts both wrong, radical (ARN Editorial): "This budget is not perfect," said House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He got that right.
June 10 -- Very latest sound from Nashville (Bob Greene): NASHVILLE -- Imagine this, if you will: You're walking around Nashville on a fine, sunny day; you have arrived just hours earlier. All of a sudden you feel something going on inside your shirt.
June 10 -- Southern Baptists misapply women (Bonnie Erbe): Southern Baptist (and other) women unite! If ever there were a rallying cry for women of one faith to teach a lesson to their menfolk, it comes this week at the Southern Baptists' annual convention in (of all places) Salt Lake City.
June 9 -- Elderly man's fatal shooting raises doubts (ARN Editorial): Texas Rangers are still investigating the shooting death of 96-year-old William Euell Poynor of Gorman by Eastland County law enforcement personnel, and so final judgments are premature. But on the surface, at least, many aspects of the incident raise troubling questions.
June 9 -- Goldwater was definitely his own man (Jospeph Spear): Thirty-three years and six months ago, a young lieutenant at Fort Dix, N.J., took up a pen, checked the box on an absentee ballot next to the name Barry Goldwater and became a part of history.
June 9 -- Repeating fallacies of 20th century (George Will): WASHINGTON - In the meadow of the president's mind, in the untended portion where foreign policy thoughts sprout randomly, this flower recently bloomed concerning the Indian and Pakistani nuclear tests: "I cannot believe that we are about to start the 21st century by having the Indian subcontinent repeat the worst mistakes of the 20th century."
June 8 -- CIA finds out being there has no substitute (ARN Editorial): Although the exact amount is technically secret, the United States spends about $30 billion a year on intelligence, and the country was justified in wondering what it was getting for its money when India's nuclear tests took our spooks by surprise.
June 8 -- Goodbye gobbledygook (ARN Editorial): Vice President Al Gore, who came out firing the other day at the gobbledygook perpetrated by federal bureaucrats in their written communications, cited any number of examples, such as the regulation referring to "means of egress" instead of "exit routes."
June 8 -- Clinton unwilling to tell the plain truth (Cal Thomas): President Clinton has ordered the federal government to start using "plain language" in official documents in order to "send a clear message about what the government is doing." One wishes the president would apply the directive to himself, his staff and his legions of lawyers in their refusal to fully cooperate with the office of the independent counsel.
June 8 -- Squeezing on Texas' welfare system (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - As we all know, when you squeeze the toothpaste tube hard enough, if it doesn't come out one end, it will come out the other. The Texas Department of Human Services has been squeezing mightily on the welfare system - and trumpeting its success in news releases and internal memos.
June 7 -- Best of state's riders, ropers here this week (ARN Editorial): Abilene welcomes to town this week a high-spirited bunch of talented young people -- the nearly 1,000 contestants for the annual Texas High School Rodeo Finals.
June 7 -- Presidential lies, public perception (Ann McFeatters): WASHINGTON -- So here it is June, and we have paid more than $50 million (counting both independent prosecutors and congressional investigations) to probe President Clinton. And the real issue, as we have known all along, still boils down to whether the president lied under oath.
June 7 -- All the news that's unfit to be printed (Dale McFeatters): Buried in an AP dispatch from Moscow was a line that showed Russia has truly shed the last vestiges of its old totalitarian government.
June 7 -- It's funny how good things come from bad (Sharon Randall): I might never have seen Roy and Janet again, let alone heard about Henry, had my laptop not gone out on me, which I'm glad to say, it did. Funny, isn't it, how good things often come from bad?
June 7 -- Nuclear tests, earthquakes might not be so unrelated (Jaymee Colvin): There were two totally unrelated, unpleasant bits of news recently.
June 7 -- Should Social Security Be Privatized?
Yes, partly privatizing Social Security now puts larger payouts in everyone's future: PITTSBURGH -- In 1935, Social Security promised an equitable, minimum benefit level of protection for the elderly and disabled.
No, Social Security is our nation's pension plan; privatizing it would shatter a public trust: WASHINGTON -- Social Security has protected America's families ever since it was created under President Franklin Roosevelt 60 years ago. Because it has been our most important and successful domestic program, our nation must make certain that Social Security remains strong for the next 60 years and beyond.
June 6 -- Today's vote vital to city's prospects (ARN Editorial): Abilenians go to the polls today -- or, at least, we hope they do -- to choose between the Rev. Versie Brown and Billy Enriquez in a runoff for the City Council. There are, actually, encouraging signs that more people might cast a ballot in this single runoff than the paltry total of 4,583 who voted in the first City Council and school board election back on May 2. More than 2,000 early ballots have been cast, easily surpassing the 1,155 early voters from before.
June 6 -- A 'cool' weekend (ARN Editorial): What a terrific weekend for a cold front! We usually greet those two words with dread and disgust. But in June, it's a great relief to see a respite from our recent triple-digit temperatures. Highs in the 80s? Ha -- we can handle that.
June 6 -- Another step until children are safe (Bob Greene): MILWAUKEE, WIS. -- This has been a triumph for the five Rogers children -- a victory for a girl and four boys whose lives, until now, have been filled with torture, degradation, and the kind of meanness that makes you close your eyes in grief.
June 6 -- One woman who overcame the odds (Linda Chavez): Betty Tyson is free from jail, having served nearly 25 years in a New York prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. She was released after a judge found that, during her original trial, prosecutors hid information which cast doubt on her guilt.
June 5 -- Time we asked what we can save for our country (ARN Editorial): Maybe because they're beginning to understand that Social Security by itself is not likely even to keep them comfortable, some 45 percent of Americans say they are at least thinking about how much they need to save for their retirement. That's a boost of 13 percentage points over a similar survey two years ago.
June 5 -- History and the potato (ARN Editorial): Although the development is more than 150 years too late for the Irish, scientists have come up with a blight-resistant potato. It is an important advance because the humble potato has been one of the world's great historical forces over the last 400 years.
June 5 -- Easy access to guns always deadly (Donald Kaul): Have you noticed how quiet the National Rifle Association has been lately? Whenever young people are discovered practicing their marksmanship on their classmates, the NRA clams up. This, it says, is because it doesn't want to take advantage of personal tragedy to make an ideological point. Sure.
June 5 -- Reflections of a 'cheerful malcontent' (George Will): WASHINGTON -- Barry Goldwater not only represented Arizona politically, he reflected it physically. The geometry of his face -- the planes of his strong jaw and high forehead -- replicated the buttes and mesas of the Southwest, and the crow's-feet that crinkled the corners of his eyes seemed made by squinting into sunsets.
June 4 -- Brief window open to halt new arms race (ARN Editorial): The world, which has a vested interest in seeing that the Indian subcontinent doesn't blunder into incinerating itself, has a breathing space to nip India's and Pakistan's budding nuclear arms race.
June 4 -- Texas tobacco deal's smoky course (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN -- This year's Editorial Writer's Award goes to Gov. George W. Bush, in honor of Murray Kempton's famous observation that editorial writers are those who ride down onto the field after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
June 4 -- In our hearts, we knew he was right (Cal Thomas): On hearing reports that former Arizona Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater had died, I reached for my original copy of The Conscience of a Conservative, published in 1960, and re-read it.
June 3 -- Families show resurgence in past 8 years (ARN Editorial): Back in 1970, married couples with children constituted 40 percent of all American households. Twenty years later, the percentage of households with two-parent families had dropped to 26, while single-parent families had gone from 6 percent to 12 percent of households during the same period.
June 3 -- Small town tragedy: Spencer, S.D., population 300-something and dwindling, was probably doomed anyway by the slow grind of demography.
June 3 -- Money doesn't just talk -- it sings (Bob Greene): RICHMOND, Va. -- "Dance Dance Dance," the great and highly underrated old Beach Boys song, came booming out of the car radio as we rolled down the highway here. The sound of the opening words -- After six hours of school I've had enough of the day -- brought a smile to my face, and I was grateful to the local disc jockey for putting it on his station.
June 3 -- Right-wingers pushing us to the left (Bonnie Erbe): Sometimes this country surprises me. Most recently, it came in the form of one more indication that while as a nation, politically we may be moving to the right, socially we keep moving to the left. A study just released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force shows that acceptance of homosexuality is swelling substantially, despite bias-laden attempts by the Christian Coalition and hate groups to make this country increasingly intolerant.
June 2 -- Report shows welfare reform disaster avoided (ARN Editorial): It's roughly two years now since welfare reform was made law and one year since a program to find work for ex-recipients was started, all of which led President Clinton to do some bragging the other day.
June 2 -- Giving and taking back the car keys (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - "Well, I'm off, wish me luck," says my fellow traveler as he rolls his carry-on bag down the aisle and out of the plane. "I'll come back with the car keys or on them," he adds with an Odyssean touch as he disappears into the terminal.
June 2 -- Hate crimes, criminal states of mind (George Will): WASHINGTON - Meet federal Judge Whittaker J. Stang, who is old, dyspeptic and too good to be true: "I like my clerks smart, young and pretty. And if anybody doesn't like it, they can sue me for sexual harassment, age discrimination, and - I don't know - brains discrimination, how's that? Can they sue me for intelligence discrimination yet? Take note! I've hired black ones five or 10 times at least. They were also smart, young and pretty."
June 1 -- Another pro football league isn't necessary (ARN Editorial): Perhaps in adherence to the old adage that nothing succeeds like excess, NBC and Turner Sports have announced plans for a new pro football league with teams in 10 or 12 cities, play to start in the fall of 1999.
June 1 -- High plains hokum (ARN Editorial): The Montana Freemen claimed they only wanted to be left alone, but they were unwilling to extend this same privilege to others, and that's why the feds have charged them with 40 counts of fraud, harassment, theft and armed robbery.
June 1 -- Gingrich undermines foreign policy (Joseph Spear ): When Newt Gingrich's term as Speaker of the House is concluded, he might find work as a windshield. He has this transparent quality that makes him extremely easy to see through.
June 1 -- Gingrich has insight into Middle East (Cal Thomas): House Speaker Newt Gingrich, touring Israel with a congressional delegation honoring the 50th anniversary of the modern Jewish state, accused the Palestinian Authority of systematically inciting violence among its followers and harming the peace process.