Ford:We've devoted a fair amount of space on this page recently to editorials stating a preference for various candidates in the upcoming elections. Nothing unusual there. But inevitably, our bestowal of editorial "endorsements" raises questions. Here are some of them.

Ford:Ambition, greed, fear, the lust for power -- an ugly mix of motives laid low one of the most powerful figures in North Carolina's state government. And watching former House Speaker Jim Black hauled off to federal prison threw a sufficient chill into

Ford:Unless you're the sort of person who's easily alarmed, the now-infamous William C. Ayers of Chicago, Ill., just doesn't seem like a particularly scary dude.

Ford:If you or anyone in your family figures on ever becoming sick or injured, or stands to benefit from preventive medicine -- in other words, if you're a human being -- then there should be no mystery why the issue of health care hovers over American politics.

Ford:A week ago yesterday, blissfully unaware of what would show up on the front page of the next day's paper, my wife and I happened to motor across the Louis W. Sewell Jr. Bridge in Jacksonville.

Ford:The new Raleigh Convention Center has come alive. Thousands of people by now must have had the thrill -- well, I was thrilled, I'm not embarrassed to say -- of approaching and for the first time entering this handsome edifice.

Ford:This amounts to a very rough paraphrase, with a twist some might not expect, but here goes: Governor Palin, we lived with Dan Quayle in office. We knew Dan Quayle. Dan Quayle was a "friend" of ours. And, governor, you're no Dan Quayle.

Ford:For those of us whose introduction to the cold, cruel world didn't come last week, last month or even last year, America's current economic travails have a familiar feel.

Call it a jubilee. The notion stretches back to Biblical times: a special celebration that takes place every 50 years. It can mark an anniversary. Considering that 50 years ago tomorrow the U.S. Supreme Court finally unlocked the door leading to the end of legal segregation in this country, there's good reason to have worked up a celebratory lather. Even more reason, in fact, when the ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education is seen in the context of a national history that once tolerated far worse than separation by skin color in schools and other public places.

Anyone who's paid a whit of attention to what goes on inside prisons -- not just prisons in war zones, but the ones where we happily ensconce our neighborhood crooks right here in the U.S. of A. -- knows there's always a potential for mistreatment of the "guests." Those guests, of course, are none too pleased with the hospitality they've been accorded. They weren't model citizens in the first place. While it's by no means always the case, they can be stubborn, mean, violent. It takes a firm management hand to prevent escapes, fights, exploitation of the weak by the strong.

for character educators. It's a good thing to have the courage of one's convictions, right? But what about when that courage blinds you to the fact that your convictions are uninformed or downright wacky? Loyalty to your organization -- there's another fine quality. Yet if the organization is embarked on some foolish course -- propelled, perhaps, by the courage of its leaders' convictions -- true loyalty demands dissent. There's where courage really comes in handy.

For the ineffably cocksure Don Rumsfeld, it might have been as close as he's come to a full-fledged mea culpa moment. Sure, he brushed off the actual question, which had to do with whether he could identify any mistakes he had made pre-9/11 (a period now revealed as having encompassed a colossal intelligence and law-enforcement blunder-fest).