By JOHN M. CRISP, Scripps Howard News Service

I'm no big fan of capital punishment, but it's hard to argue that John Allen Muhammad didn't deserve to die last week. Much more than most murders, his were particularly meaningless.

Here's a question that all thoughtful college professors must ask themselves occasionally: Beyond the football and fraternities, the manicured lawns and the book-lined shelves in their own offices, beyond the binge drinking and parties and networking and casual sexual liaisons, beyond term papers bought and sold and sometimes actually written, beyond all of the genuine hard work and study and e

The proper term took a while to come to the surface, but how about "willful disbelief"? It might be useful to describe the pose that we embrace when we're confronted with a proposition that we really, really -- really! -- don't want to believe is true.

If I imagined a grand reunion of all of the students who have enrolled in my college classes during some 25 years of teaching, I would also go to the trouble of imagining the commodious lecture hall that would accommodate all 5,000 or 6,000 of them at the same time.

A conservative writes to upbraid me -- semi-politely -- for assuming that the right, in its resistance to President Barack Obama's push toward health-care reform, wants merely to preserve the status quo. I'm not sure that I'm guilty of that generalization, but his point is well taken.

I'm glad that the National Football League has reinstated quarterback Michael Vick and allowed him to join the Philadelphia Eagles this season.

Down here in Texas, the state legislature meets every two years and passes a set of new laws, some good, some bad, some peculiar.

Texas House Bill 2504 fits in the last category, but it's worth consideration for the light that it reflects on our attitudes toward higher education in our nation as a whole.

Call me a socialist -- and certainly someone will -- but in light of President Barack Obama's diminishing insistence on a public option in the health care reform package that is developing in Congress, it's worth noting that, despite the noisy support for the status quo arising from the right, many Americans would welcome significant change in our health care system, which even some Republicans

The handwriting on the wall of the local post office is not hard to read: the United States Postal Service, established at about the same time as our country, 1775, is probably on its way out. I'll miss it.

Here's Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., speaking recently in opposition to government involvement in health care reform: "We've never seen the government operate a plan of any kind effectively..."

This sentiment is a regular refrain on talk radio and at conservative rallies, but even granting some overstatement for political purposes, can it be anywhere close to the truth?