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Columns by Steve Ford

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Steve Ford

Steve Ford has been The News & Observer's editorial page editor since 1989. He grew up in Virginia and lives in Cary. He and his wife, Jeanne, have three sons. Steve can be reached at 829-4512 or sford@newsobserver.com



Here, no failure to communicate

It was as sure as shootin' that when I wrote a column a few months ago about letters prison inmates had sent to me and my department here at The N&O, those letters would proliferate.

Updated: Jul. 2, 2009 10:04 PM | Full story

Touring N.C. battlefields, so to speak

Let's say you want to take a brief tour of some North Carolina political hotspots. Option No.

Updated: Jun. 26, 2009 6:44 PM | Full story

Better health means tackling costs

Personal calamities touch our hearts and bring out the better, or best, angels of our nature as we respond to the needs of people we may not even know.

Updated: Jun. 19, 2009 7:03 PM | Full story

Accident report: Easley train wreck

Ford:We who have spent careers in the news business, where the pay was adequate so long as your tastes, and your family size, were modest, often consoled ourselves with the rueful observation that nobody became a news person to make money.

Updated: Jun. 14, 2009 6:34 AM | Full story

Sharing the pain in budget hell

You can almost hear them muttering to themselves as they stagger through the corridors and warrens of the Jones Street puzzle palace: "Be careful what you wish for." Because what you might get is a seat in the N.C.

Updated: Jun. 5, 2009 6:38 PM | Full story

Sotomayor and the smoke-eaters

Frank Ricci, get ready for your 15 minutes of fame. By the time the smoke clears, you'll probably be the best-known firefighter not only in New Haven, Conn., but wherever Americans debate questions of fairness and race, meaning from Caribou to Calexico.

Updated: May. 29, 2009 6:00 PM | Full story

House calls at the death chamber?

Across a grand stage in Washington last Sunday strode the newly minted physicians -- one of them a close acquaintance of mine ever since he first drew breath in Rex Hospital -- to accept their diplomas.

Updated: May. 22, 2009 7:10 PM | Full story

Punishment that went too far

Imprisoning people who have committed crimes isn't guaranteed to turn them into little angels.

Updated: May. 8, 2009 6:01 PM | Full story

Twists, turns on lobbying trail

So many lobbyists. So little time. Well, that's a fair guess as to the mindset of Special Agent John M. Lynch.

Updated: May. 1, 2009 6:13 PM | Full story

Prisoners out of sight, and mind

Ford:A pamphlet from the N.C. Division of Prisons methodically lists every single thing inmates aren't supposed to do and warns them what could happen if they break the rules.

Updated: Apr. 19, 2009 6:52 AM | Full story

School pointers from some thinkers

Dick Leone would remember me only vaguely, if at all. It wouldn't help to remind him that I'd been the guy with longish hair, wearing bell-bottoms. Most every male reporter covering the New Jersey Statehouse in the mid-1970s fit that description.

Updated: Apr. 10, 2009 6:15 PM | Full story

Long road out of racial oppression

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.

Updated: Oct. 23, 2005 8:05 PM | Full story

Power can be poisonous behind bars

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.

Updated: Oct. 24, 2005 11:00 AM | Full story

Know-it-alls and go-it-aloners

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.

Updated: Oct. 24, 2005 1:17 PM | Full story

Iraq, where it all looks so familiar

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).

Updated: Oct. 22, 2005 5:55 PM | Full story

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