Five years after - Pat Lynch - Not much has changed since the worst terrorist attacks on the United States five years ago today. America’s enemies hate us as much now as on the dawning of that distant late summer day. Fear is still the trusted ally of the politically ambitious. Deceit continues to dwell in the heart of man, and the rain falls on the just and the unjust.

Truth in short supply, democracy in danger - Congressional debates on major issues significantly influence the direction of democracy. Ideally, a commitment to truth infuses and informs these debates. The reality appears to be something less than that.

Bush pulling a September surprise? - But President Bush and his team know the value of surprise. He kicked off the post-Labor Day campaign season last week with a bombshell of a speech.

The president acknowledged the existence of secret prisons run by the CIA - where, he insisted, officers used tough, but lawful, “procedures” to obtain information - and he announced the transfer of 14 of the worst-of-the-worst suspected terrorists to Guantanamo.

Arkansas Still Flunking Out On Affordability - An F comes home on a report card, and you expect better things tomorrow. But Arkansas has had two years of tomorrows, and still there’s the F on the report card.

For a state that frets about not sending enough high school graduates to college, Arkansas has made no improvements in making college more affordable to those same students, according to a recent study. Hmm. Wonder if there’s a correlation.

Open Wounds - Sept. 11 will never again be just another day on the calendar. But it will, at some point, become just another day we make a point of remembering. One day, one year, Sept. 11, 2001, will cease to be a raw, open wound, and will become a day much like the original “day that will live in infamy,” as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt so eloquently named it.

Mastermind of attacks remains free five years later - It was a cool morning, a little unseasonably cool for early September in Arkansas. A breeze rattled drying leaves as the sun rose over the eastern half of the United States. We hadn’t even filled our coffee mugs when the buzz flew through the office. A plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center. Unbelievable. We had just begun to ponder the freakish accident when the unthinkable happened — another plane crashed into the second tower.
This was no accident. This was an attack.