It has been 16 months since debate began in earnest on changing America's health care system to reach more people, to protect those who are ill and need insurance, to hold down upwardly spiraling costs of drugs and coverage, and to control the long-term expense in Medicare and Medicaid programs on which so many Americans depend.

If mass transit has a semi-glamorous side, most people would give that distinction to rail service. The Triangle is reaching that grown-up age where rail should be part of the transit mix.

Editorial:  Not only would the Democrats' health care plan be bad policy, it's downright unconstitutional. So say some reform-bill opponents who object to the plan's proposed mandate that individuals buy health insurance.

Editorial:  The can smell it. They can taste it. They, being the Capitol Hill Democrats who are attempting to jockey health care reform down the home stretch to passage. What a monumental achievement it would be, and the nation will be a better place if they succeed.

Editorial:  It's a pattern as old as ... well, as old as state government itself: A business person with a product that a state agency needs has good connections within the agency and with those involved in certifying his product as purchase-worthy.

Editorial:  The Raleigh Police Department is holding on to Greg Taylor's clothes, the ones he was wearing on a now-infamous night in 1991 when a woman was murdered in Southeast Raleigh. Taylor wound up charged with the murder.

Editorial:  It calls to mind those old stories about raw "classified" FBI files containing newspaper clippings about some nefarious character. The stories could be looked up at any public library in the United States.

Editorial:  North Carolina's valued public employees need advocates in high places to look out for their interests.

Editorial:  No one is surprised when a new governor appoints some old friends and political supporters to high-level posts in state government.

Editorial:  Just as North Carolina's close-to-the-vest state personnel law makes it difficult for the public to track patronage hiring abuses, so does it also allow information to be concealed about a state employee's misconduct, even if that misconduct led to the person being fired.

Editorial:  T o such an inoffensive and impressive creature as the loggerhead sea turtle, it must seem as if the world - particularly man's world - conspires against it.

Editorial:  Evidently, some people think the U.S. Coast Guard doesn't have enough to do.

Editorial:  At 85 years of age, Reid Towler of Raleigh has read too many obituaries of friends who have shared his path in a long and full life.

It's that time once again. Whether we like it or not, our leaders have told us we've got to get up an hour earlier. This reminds military veterans of the bugler's signal known as reveille, sounded at sunrise.

Michael Steer can't say a lot about the work he did for the United States military, but that's OK. It's really enough to say that thanks to the N.C. State University professor's work, many troops' lives have been saved in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The big question facing two former FBI officials is this: Was the manipulation of evidence that tainted the 1993 murder trial of Gregory Taylor an aberration?

North Carolina has made some progress in at least refining its dubious custom of electing judges. Statewide judicial candidates who agree to fund-raising limits can gain access to public funds.