editorials

Sept. 30 -- House should proceed with formal inquiry (ARN Editorial): The U.S. House of Representatives should proceed with a formal impeachment inquiry, even though President Clinton and his allies seem to think they have finally found a way out of their troubles.

Sept. 30 -- Finding decency in the time of Starr (Sara Eckel): This isn't the column I intended to write. After reading the Starr report in the New York Times and watching the president's testimony on CNN, I wondered what had happened to Congress' outrage over the preponderance of sexually explicit materials that they said were saturating the media.

Sept. 30 -- Didn't children deserve compassion? (Bob Greene): CHILTON, Wis. - Judge Steven Weinke runs a dignified courtroom. He treats everyone who comes before him with the greatest of courtesy. He clearly respects the decorum of court.

Sept. 29 -- Perhaps Perot not best man to judge Clinton (ARN Editorial): Talk about the thief calling the burglar guilty. Texas' favorite little nutcase, Ross Perot, has looked under the hood of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and furnished his carefully reasoned judgment: "The part of (President Clinton's) brain that controls morality and honesty never got connected,"

Sept. 29 -- Rushdie gets a reprieve (ARN Editorial): Iran's new moderate leaders could see what the old religious hard-liners could not: how morally repugnant the Western world found Iran's government-backed efforts to have author Salman Rushdie murdered.

Sept. 29 -- No more waiting for Wonder Woman (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - On the door to my office, I have a poster of a classic "Wonder Woman" comic that dates back to 1943. On it, the star-spangled gal in full regalia - lasso, wristlets and all - is standing in the center ring of a national political convention.

Sept. 29 -- Civil War, civil rights both long finished (George Will): WASHINGTON - Some good news has gone unremarked: The Civil War is over. So is its once invaluable echo, the anachronism still called, with a nostalgia impervious to the passage of time, "the civil rights movement."

Sept. 28 -- Playing politics with the census doesn't help us (ARN Editorial): Responding to recent editorials in the Abilene Reporter-News about how politics is affecting the way the 2000 census should be conducted, callers have asked for more information about the two methods under debate.

Sept. 28 -- Patients' rights haven't wasted Texas (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - Sorry, Congress can't be bothered to do anything about abuses by HMOs and other managed health-care plans - too busy reading the Starr report. The House did pass a bill concerning health maintenance organizations, but it's so bad it would actually erode patients' rights, and President Clinton has already said he'll veto it. In the Senate, they're still bickering about how to debate the issue.

Sept. 28 -- Our nation needs a bath after Clinton (Cal Thomas): The Clinton strategy is clear. He seeks to wear us down. He wants to spend so much time on what boxing champion Muhammad Ali called a "rope-a-dope" strategy that we tire of the fight and either give up or become vulnerable to a right cross or, in Bill Clinton's case, a double cross.

Sept. 27 -- The year of the education campaign (ARN Editorial): If you're against public education in Texas, you're going to have a hard time finding someone to vote for in November.

Sept. 27 -- Jefferson's 'wall of separation' intact: The Library of Congress, regarded as a fastidiously temperate institution, has fired a volley on the wrong side of America's culture war.

Sept. 27 -- Preparing to face the Y2K car curse (Dale McFeatters): For those with dark views about how the century will end, there were some disturbing reports in the news recently.

Sept. 27 -- Aviary friends, among others, make it lively (Sharon Randall): When I went out to get the paper this morning, I had a revelation. The street was quiet with the usual sounds of fog dripping from trees, the distant roar of the ocean, the muffled barking of sea lions and an occasional passing car.

Sept. 26 -- We should pay U.N. dues to keep promises (ARN Editorial): A country club has a member, a valuable member, a club founder, active on committees, a can-do guy. Unfortunately, the member is years behind in his dues and assessments and the arrears are really beginning to hurt the club.

Sept. 26 -- Glimpse of a dream (ARN Editorial): Local high school football fans probably wish they had a vote on the San Angelo school board.

Sept. 26 -- What has happened to the children? (Bob Greene): CHILTON, WIS. - Michael and Angeline Rogers - spared from any time at all in state prison by Judge Steven Weinke - have begun their attempt to take back the children they abused.

Sept. 26 -- Politics blocks early Clinton decision (Morton Kondracke): The videotapes leave no doubt President Clinton perjured himself before the Starr grand jury, so Congress ought to be able to reach a quick decision on whether to impeach and oust him. But it won't, of course.

Sept. 25 -- City well served by process of narrowing focus (ARN Editorial): Whether a bond issue vote is held this year, and whether specific items pass or fail, the city of Abilene has gone about the process of zeroing in on capital improvements in the right way.

Sept. 25 -- Dancing in the streets (ARN Editorial): If you're planning to drive downtown this evening or Saturday, you'll want to pick another route besides North 1st or else be prepared to dodge thousands of merry-makers.

Sept. 25 -- Madame Defarge's X-rated knitting (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - It was the most surreal of Mondays. On the world stage the president of the United States was speaking about the perils of terrorism. On the television set, he was being asked to define sexual relations.

Sept. 25 -- Where's Bennett's outrage about B-2, buying of Congress? (Donald Kaul): William Bennett, the Virtue Police Chief, has written a book entitled The Death of Outrage. It's subtitled "Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals," which pretty much tells you what it's about.

Sept. 25 -- Ripken displays our everyday decency (George Will): BALTIMORE - In the top half of the first inning Sunday night, as the Yankees' leadoff man batted, Derek Jeter, the Yankees' 24-year-old shortstop, crouched in the on-deck circle, looking across Camden Yards. He was smiling quizzically at a man in the Orioles' dugout.

Sept. 25 -- Now is a time for Abilene to be saving, not spending (Guest Columnist): Break open the white grape juice everybody, the boom is back. That, at least, is the going line at City Hall.

Sept. 24 -- Delay's call for FBI probe is chilling move (ARN Editorial): Tom DeLay says, "I have suspicions." So do a lot of people. But as a member of the House Republican leadership, DeLay is in a position to badger the FBI into investigating his suspicions.

Sept. 24 -- 'Streak' of showing up for work is over (ARN Editorial): Cal Ripken finally took a night off, and that made this exceptional baseball season even more extraordinary.

Sept. 24 -- Recession likely to lie dead ahead (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - Watch the House pass a bad bill. Watch the Senate make it worse. Watch the banking industry dig its own grave. Watch supposedly smart people set up a financial disaster. Can we see President Clinton veto this mess? Veto, Clinton, veto.

Sept. 24 -- The race panel: lies in black and white (Cal Thomas): As President Clinton's "race panel" concluded its work with the predictable lament that blacks have trouble getting anywhere solely because of "white privilege," Washington Mayor Marion Barry said the November election could produce a majority-white D.C. City Council, which he thinks would be bad for the city's 63 percent black majority. Why?

Sept. 23 -- Making your business better with literacy (ARN Editorial): Reading this editorial uses skills most of us learned so long ago that we're not even conscious of having them, let alone using them.

Sept. 23 -- Just for letter writers (ARN Editorial): Readers are encouraged to participate in the public forum of the Opinion Page by submitting letters to the editor.

Sept. 23 -- Clinton masters art of believability (Linda Chavez): For a moment, as I watched President Clinton's videotaped testimony on Monday, I thought he might actually be telling the truth when he said he didn't lie in his original deposition in the Paula Jones case and didn't encourage anyone else to lie either. He seemed so darned earnest.

Sept. 23 -- Girl is compared to a 'prisoner of war' (Bob Greene): CHILTON, WIS. - "If the human spirit can be broken," the people who break that spirit can then tell themselves that they "are dealing with a sub-human human" who can be more easily managed.

Sept. 22 -- Most of us not willing to face issues of dying (ARN Editorial): A generation of Americans that boasts of its openness and willingness to talk about anything will not talk about death, except in such Victorian euphemisms as "passed on" and "gone to heaven."

Sept. 22 -- Keeping kids out of jail (ARN Editorial): Much of the happy talk about "nontraditional families" turns out to be blather.

Sept. 22 -- Loop plays same for men, women (Ellen Goodman): WASHINGTON - Oh my gawd. Stop them before they hug again. Here comes Bill. There is Monica. See the back of Bill's head. See Monica's beaming smile. See them embrace. Freeze frame. Start again.

Sept. 22 -- American people being asked to decide: The Starr Report makes it crystal-clear that President Clinton committed perjury, both in his deposition in the Jones case and in his Aug. 17 testimony before the Washington grand jury.

Sept. 21 -- Scaled-down GOP tax cuts still bad idea (ARN Editorial): The House Republican leadership has scaled down its grandiose plans for a tax cut of $600 billion to $700 billion over 10 years to a more modest $70 billion to $80 billion over five. It's still a bad idea.

Sept. 21 -- Making waves on moon: A NASA space probe, the Lunar Prospector, has found water on the moon, as much as 10 billion tons of it, more than enough to sustain a colony.

Sept. 21 -- Just a slight effort at understanding (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN -- As politics increasingly becomes a game of "gotcha" -- almost the only reason anyone watches political debates anymore is to see if one of the candidates will say something spectacularly stupid -- we invariably get a crop of controversies over "racial insensitivity."

Sept. 21 -- Stopping Clinton before he sins again (Cal Thomas): It can be dangerous to be a leader's religious counselor. In the case of Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More was executed after he refused to grant Catholic Church approval so the king could divorce Catherine of Aragon and to acknowledge Henry as the supreme head of the Church of England.

Sept. 20 -- McCaleb has made Abilene a better city (ARN Editorial): Mayor Gary McCaleb has presided over a remarkable transformation in the city of Abilene.

Sept. 20 -- Social Security lessons from abroad: We interrupt the Monica Lewinsky saga for a brief discussion of something with far more impact on the typical American's life: Social Security.

Sept. 20 -- Lewinsky affair adds to scandal lexicon (Dale McFeatters): Previous political scandals have enriched the American vocabulary with such words as "gerrymander," "stonewall" and the recondite "modified limited hangout route" from Watergate -- gate itself being an all-purpose suffix for scandal.

Sept. 20 -- Antidotes to bad news and cynical views (Sharon Randall): One day a friend and I were talking about the news: a kidnapping, a terrorist attack and yet another massacre at a school, plus the usual hate crimes, domestic violence and pit bull-mauls-toddler stories.

Sept. 19 -- Polls suggest Clinton faces rising danger (ARN Editorial): The latest New York Times-CBS Poll shows President Clinton's job-approval rating at a remarkably high 62 percent, a figure not much different from those found in other polls and cheering news for those Clinton defenders who cite it defiantly.

Sept. 19 -- Carry me, Spanish caravan: Music director Shinik Hahm lifts his baton to begin his sixth season with the Abilene Philharmonic tonight at 8 with a colorful, exotic program called "Spanish Gold" that will waft listeners south of the border to romantic Mexico and across the ocean to ancient Spain.

Sept. 19 -- Clinton needs a ‘Kissinger' for crisis (Morton Kondracke): Fending off impeachment is not the kind of presidential disability envisioned by those who wrote the 25th Amendment, but it is time for Vice President Al Gore to step in and manage U.S. foreign policy.

Sept. 19 -- Before you start packing those bags (Bob Greene): SOUTHFIELD, MICH. -- Last week, we gave some examples of ways that travel is, against all expectations, actually better and more pleasant today than it ever has been.

Sept. 18 -- Aviation news lifts Abilene's jetway hopes (ARN Editorial): The good news about air transportation in Abilene has been arriving faster this week than you can say "jetway."

Sept. 18 -- Conception of cloning goes to Seed (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - Well, well. And you thought your son was a chip off the old block. That your daughter was a gal just like the gal that married her dear old dad. You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Sept. 18 -- Impeachment's purpose civic hygiene (George Will): "It should not be surprising that there are graphic details. Nobody should be surprised to find gambling in a casino."

Sept. 17 -- White House lawyers playing a foolish game (ARN Editorial): On the one hand, President Clinton is tearfully apologetic for the misdeeds that have landed him in such hot water, but on the other, he isn't. His lawyers continue to split hairs about whether he really committed perjury in a civil case deposition, and that's a way of denying transgressions the president simultaneously says he is sorry for. The president really ought to tell the lawyers to cut it out.

Sept. 17 -- Cans and cats at the Fair (ARN Editorial): In case you've forgotten, or haven't noticed the cooler temperatures and cloudy skies, the West Texas Fair & Rodeo is under way this week, and tonight is traditionally one of the Fair's most popular occasions - Cantastic Night.

Sept. 17 -- When the system isn't working for us (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - As our grotesque national soap opera continues, the most important issue to be debated during this session of Congress appears to be dead on the Senate floor in a blizzard of indifference.

Sept. 17 -- Repenting now that the end is near (Cal Thomas): Watching President Clinton being "baptized" with forgiveness by a carefully chosen group of theologically and politically liberal clergy last Friday recalled a similar event 25 years ago.

Sept. 16 -- Wallace will be remembered as racial figure (ARN Editorial): Former Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace left his mark on history as a politician of protest. When he was in his prime, there was no better stump speaker in politics. Put him before a friendly crowd and Wallace could play its emotions like a musical instrument. If a few hecklers were present, so much the better.

Sept. 16 -- Keep the lawyers out of Washington (Linda Chavez): Impeachment? Resignation? Censure. Forget about it. What America needs to end our current national nightmare is a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution barring anyone who has ever attended law school from serving as president.

Sept. 16 -- What do you tell those children now? (Bob Greene): CHILTON, Wis. - That little boy - the child who walked alone and barefoot in the dark to the Brillion, Wis., police station last November, hoping against hope that he would be able to find someone to save his sister.

Sept. 15 -- Starr Report slows e-mail in Washington (ARN Editorial): The Internet apparently handled the Starr Report, but it's having problems with the aftermath.

Sept. 15 -- When baseball was fun (ARN Editorial): In an era when pro athletes talk about their sports in gloomy, apocalyptic terms, Sammy Sosa brings something back to baseball that has been too long missing: a sense of fun.

Sept. 15 -- Somewhere we need a line of privacy (Ellen Goodman): BOSTON - Not that Helen Chenoweth was ever high on my dance card. The right-wing "poster girl for the militia movement" isn't my kind of gal, let alone my kind of congresswoman.

Sept. 15 -- Media's assault on First Amendment (George Will): WASHINGTON - Even more scandalous than the political class' continuing assault on the First Amendment is the journalistic class' complicity in this assault.

Sept. 14 -- Crisis in Asia should hasten fast-track OK (ARN Editorial): If the Asian financial crisis accomplishes no other good, it at least ought to acquaint America's economic isolationists with an inescapable fact, namely that this country is at least partially dependent for its prosperity on exports to other lands.

Sept. 14 -- The cost of counting (ARN Editorial): Taxpayers may want to perk up and take an interest in the debate over how the 2000 census will be conducted.

Sept. 14 -- Hatred level that will lead to killling (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - What a jumbled week we've had, marked by brilliant sports and miserable politics. There was Mark McGwire, so classy, so terrific - the lovely gestures to the Maris family, his joy in his son, his delight in the birthday present for his dad, so grateful to St. Louis. You couldn't have asked for better.

Sept. 14 -- Showdown over 'faithfully executing' (Cal Thomas): A somber and, if properly done, cleansing moment is about to occur in America.

Sept. 13 -- Case against Clinton more than just legal (ARN Ediotrial): Much of Kenneth Starr's report on William Jefferson Clinton has now been shared with the public, and the question is whether the weight of the accusatory narrative and its evidentiary details will be sufficient to sink the presidency.

Sept. 13 -- Prepare for a long, painful process (Ann McFeatters): WASHINGTON -- There is no joy in Mudville.

Sept. 13 -- Public shows healthy sense of outrage (Morton Kondracke): Congressional critiques of President Clinton and the new Battleground survey indicate moralist Bill Bennett has been worrying needlessly that Americans have lost their sense of outrage.

Sept. 13 -- Remembering Burt at his dead level best (Sharon Randall): I never really knew the man. What I'm about to tell you is secondhand at best, except for one encounter, the night I met him. It's a night I'll not soon forget.

Sept. 12 -- Baseball brings exciting story that gets better (ARN Editorial): Mark McGwire, who has been making the impossible look like everyday stuff, is unabashed in his joy. He says it is all fabulous, that it is sweet, that he felt like he was floating when he ran the bases the other night, that he hoped he didn't look like a fool but that, heck, history is going on here.

Sept. 12 -- Names in the news: During the next several days, you're going to see a lot of names in the Abilene Reporter-News, and you might not want to skip over them so fast.

Sept. 12 -- Andro use puts record in dispute: Like it or not-- and I don't like it at all because I'm a fan of "Big Mac" -- baseball's record books should reflect a qualifier for Mark McGwire's surpassing Roger Maris' single-season feat of 61 home runs.

Sept. 12 -- Some pleasant turns along the road (Bob Greene): SOUTHFIELD, MICH. -- As the summer of 1998 waves goodbye -- don't be too depressed about this, but you now have one less summer left in your life -- the season of heavy travel also comes to an end.

Sept. 11 -- Public should be able to see Starr's report (ARN Editorial): As things come to look gloomier and gloomier for President Clinton, he has grown more and more contrite, but not so contrite that he has instructed his lawyer to stop his game of delay and undue interference.

Sept. 11 -- Cash in on the millennium (ARN Editorial): Now the august Federal Reserve has joined in the year 2000 nonsense.

Sept. 11 -- Cursing the sheer waste of it all (Ellen Goodman): CASCO BAY, Maine - The sunflower in my garden has chosen this morning to finally bloom. The sole survivor of a planting lost to birds, rain and wind, it stands alone like a punctuation mark at the end of the summer sentence.

Sept. 11 -- Regime, not Constitution, faces crisis (George Will): WASHINGTON - The dynamic of the Clintons' scandals is driving Democrats to draw swords against Bill Clinton and throw away the scabbards.

Sept. 10 -- Fair promises fun, rainfall, summer's end (ARN Editorial): The only thing that kept some old timers around here going through the summer's heat and drought was knowing the West Texas Fair & Rodeo was just over the horizon.

Sept. 10 -- A 'Nobel' occasion (ARN Editorial): McMurry University kicks off a new lecture program today in a notable manner, with Dr. Stanley Cohen, 1986 Nobel Prize winner in medicine and a distinguished professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, headlining the first Nobel Laureate Lecture.

Sept. 10 -- Lieberman is Democrats' conscience (Cal Thomas): Statesmanship doesn't happen often in Washington these days, so when it is on display, as it was when Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) took to the Senate floor to chastise President Clinton for moronic behavior, lying and dissembling, people take notice.

Sept. 10 -- Rising crisis of financial inequality (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - Say, here's a dandy idea: Let's privatize Social Security and have everybody put their retirement money in the stock market, where it will be so safe and profitable, eh?

Sept. 9 -- The difficulty of changing the subject (ARN Editorial): Any number of members of Congress would just as soon change the subject. Enough of this talk about President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, they're saying. Let's get on to other matters, to things like Social Security and managed health care and campaign finance reform.

Sept. 9 -- 15-cent burgers, water under the bridge (Bob Greene): COLUMBUS, Ohio - Fifteen cents. That's what a hamburger at McDonald's cost when my friends and I were growing up here.

Sept. 9 -- Fathoming the depths of corruption (Linda Chavez): Bill Clinton has talked his way out of every mess he's ever been in his whole life, but suddenly words fail him. The more he says, the deeper his problem becomes.

Sept. 8 -- U.S. crowds flock to wait for Van Gogh (ARN Editorial): Just about the time you thought there was no cultural hope for America, that this great land was irrevocably addicted to vulgarity and schlock in its entertainment fare, you pick up a newspaper and read about a couple of thousand people waiting in line for hours and hours in temperatures as high as 97 degrees Fahrenheit, and for what?

Sept. 8 -- Maintaining the right not to appear ignorant (ARN Editorial): More American teen-agers can name the Three Stooges (Curly, Bill and Newt) than the three branches of government (Executive, Judicial and Moe), claims a new survey.

Sept. 8 -- Killing the independent counsel office (Joseph Spear): Sometime after the turn of the year, Congress will take up the question of whether to reauthorize the Independent Counsel statute. If it is not renewed, it will expire on June 30, 1999. I say let the sucker die.

Sept. 8 -- Depressing hazards of technology (Donald Kaul): Researchers have found that surfing the Internet depresses people and makes them feel lonely. And the more they surf, the more depressed and lonely they get.

Sept. 7 -- Prosperity still depends upon U.S. workforce (ARN Editorial): On this Labor Day, if you happen to take some time from shopping or picnics or the summer's last dip in a nearby swimming pool to reflect on the union movement, you might consider one of the strikes that has been in the news recently.

Sept. 7 -- War on drugs is ripping up liberty (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - And in other news ... the War on Drugs is ripping up the Constitution, endangering American liberty and encouraging law enforcement officers to act like bandits. The unpleasant ramifications of the War on Drugs are too numerous for one column, but the area of asset forfeiture deserves special consideration.

Sept. 7 -- Faustian bargain haunts Democrats (Cal Thomas): Ten years after Ronald Reagan addressed students and faculty at Moscow State University, President Clinton spoke to a new generation of students at the same school. What a difference!

Sept. 6 -- 'Old' year gets new start, just in nick of time (ARN Editorial): Just at that point in the year when we need a breather, a fresh start, a new year -- along comes the Labor Day weekend, right on schedule.

Sept. 6 -- Football or soap opera? (ARN Editorial): Which Dallas Cowboys will show up for today's season opener? The "old" Cowboys -- an undisciplined, rag-tag bunch of losers such as they became under former coach Barry Switzer -- or the "new" Cowboys -- spruced up, cleaned up and headed, with a brand-new playbook and a shotgun offense, to reclaim Super Bowl glory under Switzer's replacement, Chan Gailey?

Sept. 6 -- GOP resorts to tawdry sex scandal: As the Monica Lewinsky scandal unfolds, many conservatives are crowing that it demonstrates the moral emptiness of the Clinton administration. What it really reveals, however, is the moral emptiness of today's conservatives.

Sept. 6 -- Education contracts get out of hand (Dale McFeatters): I don't remember when the first kid brought a "contract" home from school. I do remember it was a novelty, causing me to meditate on the wisdom, in our litigious society, of introducing first-graders to the knottier points of Blackstone on contracts.

Sept. 6 -- Risks, comforts while watching sun set in Texas (Sharon Randall): We are lying by her Olympic-size pool, soaking up the setting rays of a warm Texas sun, two 50-year-old women reminiscing about the way we were way back when.

Sept. 5 -- U.S. is facing use of force in several areas (ARN Editorial): The United States is facing several critical areas where it may have to use force beyond cruise missiles fired at a safe remove. The choice of force may be inevitable, but it should not be taken lightly.

Sept. 5 -- Off base and on target (ARN Editorial): Our local officials speak often of the close ties between the Abilene community and Dyess Air Force Base and how each benefits from the other. Here's a textbook example of what they mean.

Sept. 5 -- Passing the ‘Seriously Average Test' (Rheta Grimsley Johnson): The bumper sticker was one of dozens on the revolving pedestal at the gas station: "My Child Beat Up Your Honor Student."

Sept. 5 -- You're the new commodity on market (Bob Greene): DETROIT -- The dinner check came, and the man tossed his American Express card onto the table to pay for the meal. He may not have been aware of it, but he was safe -- at least for the moment -- from being part of a data-base information-swap deal.

Sept. 4 -- Friday night lights blazing forth tonight (ARN Editorial): They call us and draw us into an arena where the expectations are high, the possibilities unbounded. They exert their pull from miles away across the clear nighttime prairie. And they retain their luster long after we have seemingly passed beyond the age when high school football was the hottest ticket in town.

Sept. 4 -- New view of 'Turkey Day' (ARN Editorial): Many parents would file it under What Were They Thinking? When the Abilene school board adopted its budget last week for the 1998-99 school year, it also approved a calendar for the 1999-2000 school year that includes a full week's break at Thanksgiving.

Sept. 4 -- Scandal weakened Clinton abroad (Ann McFeatters): MOSCOW - President Clinton, it turns out, has discussed the Monica Lewinsky scandal with foreign leaders. In broad terms. (He wouldn't want Kenneth Starr to subpoena them.)

Sept. 4 -- Maybe we're just not up to the task (George Will): WASHINGTON - "Maybe Madeleine is the realistic one here," says Scott Ritter. "Maybe she says, 'We're not up to the task.' "

Sept. 3 -- President's future awaits Starr's report (ARN Editorial): Perhaps, when he addressed the nation on Aug. 17, President Clinton stopped short of admitting he lied about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky and asking for forgiveness because he feared some legal culpability for confessing the truth.

Sept. 3 -- As we watch global economy wobble (Molly Ivins): AUSTIN - Some things to think about as we watch the global economy wobble.

Sept. 3 -- Character counting the Boy Scout way (Cal Thomas): If you believe the opinion polls, the public is less concerned about the character of the president than the strength of the economy. That could quickly change as the stock market heads south and Russia unravels economically and politically.

Sept. 2 -- 'Day of Caring' reveals impact of United Way (ARN Editorial): A mere three years ago, it was a novel innovation. Now the United Way of Abilene's "Day of Caring," which takes place today, has become an annual tradition, announcing the beginning of the 1998-99 United Way fund-raising campaign.

Sept. 2 -- 'Down under' comes over (ARN Editorial): If you're eating at a local restaurant and hear English spoken with an unusual twang, the speaker might be someone you want to welcome to Abilene.

Sept. 2 -- Russia poses different nuclear threat (Linda Chavez): A bear is never more dangerous than when it is weak or wounded. And what holds true for Ursus americanus is also true for the weak and wounded Russian bear, which is why President Clinton's summit with Boris Yeltsin poses potential danger for the United States.

Sept. 2 -- Abusers and victims to discover fates (Bob Greene): MILWAUKEE - The day of sentencing for Michael and Angeline Rogers - the Brillion, Wis., couple arrested last November and charged with repeatedly locking their 7-year-old daughter in a basement dog cage overnight, with beating their other children with clubs and a metal pipe, with keeping the children hungry - is coming soon.

Sept. 1 -- Drivateria's closing signals end of an era (ARN Editorial): When the Drivateria at North 1st and Shelton closes this month, Abilene will lose more than a restaurant that has been open four decades. It will also say farewell to a significant landmark of its social history. And Abilenians of a certain age will note its passing with nostalgia and regret.

Sept. 1 -- Cancel Bill's ticket back to Arkansas (Donald Kaul): I no longer think President Clinton should resign. I know I said he should, but I got so many congratulatory comments from conservatives that I've changed my mind. Anything that pleases so many right-wingers can't be all good.

Sept. 1 -- Unspeakable done by unremarkables (George Will): NEW YORK - A courtroom 15 stories above Manhattan recently reverberated with the echo of a rifle shot fired decades ago into a pit dug in Poland's dark and bloody ground.