Opinion

Mr. Tobey, who appears again today to our right, seems not to know that editors, not writers, always write the headlines. Headlines in this and most papers will always be the choice of the editor—we’re happy to clarify that for him. There’s a simple practical reason for this: headlines have to be adjusted to fit into space available. Also, we do try to write headlines to catch readers’ eyes, and “Landmarks Meeting of June 27th” just isn’t a very catchy title. And if Mr. Tobey did predict that a headline writer might combine the epithets “anarchist” and “suicide bomber” into the concept of “terrorist” in a headline, he should have used less, shall we say, “inflammatory” language in the first place. -more-

Wow. How often do you see John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Richard Pombo, Richard Sensenbrenner, Molly Ivins and Debra Saunders playing on the same team? For those of you who have been on vacation the last five years, that’s two best-of-bunch Democratic congresspersons, two out-to-lunch Republican same, and two columnists, both good writers but one wrong on most things we care about. The issue that brought them all together, and fast? The recent Supreme Court decision that it’s fine for local government to take your house and give it to developers. Paul Glusman has already noted in these pages how judges can be all over the map these days, and that’s part of the explanation, but there’s more. -more-