Opinion - USATODAY.com

The two No. 1 female athletes who abruptly announced their retirements this week sent a welcome message: Dedication and drive to get to the top are important — but life has more than one note, and one act, to it. Having the instinct to know when and how to follow a different path is rare. But, quite clearly, golfer Annika Sorenstam and tennis star Justine Henin have it.

The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, in an editorial: "As she struggles to keep her presidential campaign alive and relevant, Hillary Clinton is trying to convince the unelected superdelegates who will decide the Democratic presidential nomination that her better than 2-1 victory over Barack Obama in Tuesday's West Virginia primary marks a turning point in the race and underscores her argument that he cannot win in November.

"This bill makes clear that those who have served us honorably since 9/11 deserve the same opportunity at a first-class future as our veterans of World War II."

I was raised in the 1960s by parents who were the third generation of African-American civil rights leaders. In those turbulent times, my brothers and I learned to select the proper focus for our protests to achieve the desired effect; to always seek out reasoned discourse in a peaceful setting; and to avoid trying to exchange one person's rights in favor of another's.

When a robust man in a blue windbreaker, identified by an announcer as "Dr.

In 1997, the federal government opened the door to direct-to-consumer advertising on TV because it believed that public health would be better served by allowing pharmaceutical companies to communicate directly with consumers about the risks and benefits of their medicines.

Republicans were already on red alert after they lost "safe" GOP congressional seats to Democrats in Illinois in March and Louisiana earlier this month. But Tuesday's win by Democrat Travis Childers in a solidly Republican district in north Mississippi was devastating. The party spent $1.3 million, flew in Vice President Cheney and still lost by eight points.

Cal Thomas is a conservative columnist. Bob Beckel is a liberal Democratic strategist. But as longtime friends, they can often find common ground on issues that lawmakers in Washington cannot. They co-wrote the book Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That Is Destroying America

China, struggling to cope with its own worst natural disaster in three decades, might not seem the obvious potential savior for up to 2 million Burmese facing unimaginable new horrors in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

It sounds like the opening line in a Tonight Show monologue, but it actually happened: A dozen or so nuns were turned away when they tried to vote in last week's Indiana presidential primary.

As U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., has said, "It should be easy to vote and tough to cheat." We want every eligible voter to be registered to vote, to cast a ballot and to be confident that their vote was accurately counted. We also want all voters to know that they were not disenfranchised by vote fraud schemes.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. —I hadn't lived in the state long before I heard about the sign on the outskirts of Cullman, a small town 54 miles south of here on Interstate 65. Its message was for black people: Be gone by sunset or else. The sign, it turns out, has been down for many years, but its lore still lives in the black community.

A year ago, I had the privilege of getting to know Mark Lunsford at a candlelight ceremony for the National Crime Victims' Rights Week. Mark, a truck driver, has a quiet nature and is as typical as any American I have ever met. But Mark's life changed forever on Feb. 24, 2005, when his 9-year-old daughter, Jessica, was taken from their home. A repeat sex offender confessed to kidnapping, raping and murdering Jessica.

To put himself through Virginia's Radford University, Chris House works 35 hours a week at a local Pizza Hut. During summers, he takes a second job as a farm hand.

There is no argument in Washington that the Montgomery GI Bill has not kept pace with rising college costs — it provides for less than 70% of public tuitions and 30% of private — but there is debate on how to improve the benefit. That is where two Senate colleagues and fellow Vietnam War veterans — James Webb, D-Va., and John McCain, R-Ariz. — are at odds.

In January, the political climate on climate change will itself change. The next president, Democrat or Republican, will undoubtedly be more attentive to the issue than President Bush, who for most of his tenure has reflected skepticism over whether global warming is real and correctable.

In West Virginia, where Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama waged a quiet skirmish in their War Without End, the noisy ghosts of a political battle 48 years ago echoed through the Appalachian hollows.

It was the political equivalent of a roundhouse punch — a blow that was easy to see coming, but one that its intended target knew would do great damage if it landed.

In print, the Pentagon's policy on women in combat looks like this: Women shall be excluded from assignment to most units "whose primary mission" is "direct combat on the ground."