They swore blind that there would never be foreign "boots on the ground" in Libya, but as NATO's campaign against Muammar Gaddafi's regime enters its third month, it is getting a lot closer to the ground. It started with Tomahawk missiles fired from over the horizon; then it was fighter-bombers firing guided weapons from a safe height; now it's helicopter gunships skimming the ground at zero altitude. They're getting desperate.

Vermont is a land of proud firsts. This small, New England state was the first to join the 13 Colonies. Its constitution was the first to ban slavery. It was the first to establish the right to free education for all public education. This week, Vermont will boast another first: the first state in the nation to offer single-payer health care, which eliminates the costly insurance companies that many believe are the root cause of our spiraling health-care costs.

You've probably heard that Ohio is facing an $8 billion shortfall. But you may not know that the state budget, which recently passed the House and is now in the Senate, is nearly $5 billion MORE than the current budget.

From time-to-time the name Mumia Abu-Jamal appears in the news. His name almost always appeared in articles written by those more concerned about furthering the anti-death-penalty agenda than with the facts of this particular case.

Tony Kushner will be receiving an honorary degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. This shouldn't be big news. Kushner is a renowned playwright who won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, along with an Emmy Award and two Tonys.

On May 1, the U.S. president addressed the nation, announcing a military victory. May 1, 2003, that is, when President George W. Bush, in his form-fitting flight suit, strode onto the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln. Under the banner announcing "Mission Accomplished," he declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

Ding, dong, the witch is dead. Osama bin Laden, the author of the 9/11 atrocity in the United States and various lesser terrorist outrages elsewhere, has been killed by American troops in his hide-out

The death-penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal took a surprising turn this week, as a federal appeals court declared, for the second time, that Abu-Jamal's death sentence was unconstitutional.

"Punitive" taxes? Good grief. What planet is James Yerian living on (The NEWS, April 21)? If we all bought into supply-side economics, there wouldn't be enough Kool-Aid to trickle down.

More than 10,000 people converged in Washington, D.C., this past week to discuss, organize, mobilize and protest around the issue of climate change. While Tax Day tea party gatherings of a few hundred scattered around the country made the news, this massive gathering, Power Shift 2011, was largely ignored by the media.