Editorials & Opinion

Whenever an organization has five words in its name, watch out for complications in its pronouncements. Don't suppose, for instance, that when the National Bureau of Economic Research says we've been in a recession since last December that it means we've been wallowing in misery all that time.

The Supreme Court has declined to hear an emergency appeal seeking to have Barack Obama declared ineligible to be president because he is half British and thus has dual citizenship and, therefore, is not a "natural born citizen."

Thousands of words were spoken Monday during an unusual joint session of the Legislature on the state's budget crisis, but the two most important were uttered by the state budget director, Mike Genest, when he quietly told lawmakers that the deficit will be "substantially worse" than the current figure, as staggering as it may be.

Blackwater is bad news, currently quite literally. The sizable corporation, established in 1997, has evolved into one of the most prominent - and profitable - of a growing array that provide military services, including firepower.

President-elect Obama has disclosed a few more details of his plan to rescue the economy, but left out key specifics -- like how much it will cost.

One of the enduring blemishes on the Bush administration's record is its shabby treatment of then-Army chief of staff Eric Shinseki. Shinseki's sin was twofold: In the run-up to the Iraq war, he contradicted the received wisdom of President Bush's top civilians at the Pentagon and he was proved right.

As a parting shot from the Bush Administration, courtesy of the gun lobby, those who seek the solitude and beauty of some national parks and wildlife refuges will face the fact that the visitor standing next to them just may be packing heat and is ready to use it at the first sign of any unfriendliness, such as an argument over a camping space.

When I moved to St. Petersburg in 1994 and began working at the St. Petersburg Times, I quickly found my way to Williams Park. I thought it was a wonderful green space in the middle of the city, a true urban park complete with a band shell and statues and plaques honoring the war dead.

The official party line -- from both parties -- is that the state has an $11.2 billion hole in its current budget and faces an additional $17 billion deficit in 2009-10.
Those numbers, however, are almost certainly too low, which is one of the many complications in the frantic search for a political solution.

Sometimes you encounter two ideas so bad that it's hard to tell which one is worse. Put them together and the over-used "perfect storm"metaphor seems perfectly apt.