With the recent tragic event at Fort Hood, I wonder if anyone will stop and consider the operational tempo our men and women in today's military are faced with. I am retired from the USAF. I have a son in the USAF who just returned from a six-month deployment to Afghanistan. Many of the young men and women at places like Fort Hood have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan four and five times for six to 18 months at a time, facing conditions and dangers that most of us can't even imagine. I hear lots of political rhetoric about how great they are and what a wonderful job they are doing. We now debate a plus-up of the number of troops we have in place. ...more

November 9, 2009

A woman arrived home Wednesday and noticed beer missing from her refrigerator and a broken handle on her liquor cabinet. ...more

November 6, 2009

Your opinion piece "State Lawmaker's Bark Aimed at Wrong Tree" (Our Opinion, Feb. 16) was cutely titled but incomplete and somewhat misleading. Do your editors think putting homeless animals to death is cute? ...more

February 17, 2009

Newly minted nurse Katie O'Bryan was determined to stay at her first job at least a year, even if she did leave the hospital every day wanting to quit. ...more

February 16, 2009

Citrus growers and vegetable growers appeared Thursday to have weathered the statewide freeze better than expected, but tomato growers took a hit as temperatures stayed below freezing long enough to cause damage to some of those crops. ...more

February 5, 2009

He's the laid-back ex-jock. She's the feisty, super-efficient business executive. ...more

December 7, 2008

Public defenders are notoriously overworked, their turnover is high and their pay low. Now, in the most open revolt by public defenders in memory, the government-appointed lawyers say that budget cuts and rising caseloads have pushed them to the breaking point. ...more

November 9, 2008

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain stretched facts, sometimes past the breaking point, as they addressed the financial crisis and more during their second presidential debate. ...more

October 8, 2008

Everyone has an opinion on illegal immigration, and those ideas vary from every extreme to all kinds of shades of gray in the middle. All of these ideas are acceptable and appreciated when debating this issue. It's the basis of our democracy. What's troubling, though, is that racism underlies some folks' take on immigration, although they will never admit it, and it can cloud the debate. ...more

May 27, 2008

A married deputy found in another woman's bed is one tidbit of information among many contained in dozens of pages of internal affairs documents released Friday, one day after it was made public that Bradshaw and Heather Clouser were punished for violating Sheriff Jim Coats' anti-adultery policy. ...more

December 28, 2007