Ford:A natural reaction to the sight of accused multi-murderer Samuel Cooper Jr., brought to bay and shackled, was to recoil in loathing.

Ford:Down we plunge into a familiar rabbit hole: Does the performance of a university's sports teams have any significant bearing on the overall quality of the school?

Ford:Graft, says my dictionary, is "the acquisition of gain (as money) in dishonest or questionable ways." If you want an all-encompassing term for the dynamic at the core of political corruption, graft is about as close as you can get.

Ford:Savage hand-to-hand-combat: men clubbing and bayoneting each other amid the smoky woods. Point-blank artillery fire with rounds of flesh-shredding grapeshot. Wounded left to writhe and moan in the mud.

Ford:Family travel patterns often lead us in the direction of Washington, meaning we've become all too well-acquainted over the years with I-85 up toward Petersburg.

Ford:It's natural to agree with people we find personally likable -- everyone remembers how George W. Bush's easy-going, ordinary guy persona gave him a leg up over the I'm- smarter- than- you- and- don't- you- forget-it Al Gore.

Ford:It might have made for an interesting exit survey. Buttonhole folks after they finished voting in Raleigh and Cary last week.

Ford:Maybe the French had it right: If we're going to execute people, just trust gravity and a heavy blade to lop off their heads.

Ford:My late father earned a master's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, but he seemed prouder still of having graduated from Cass Technical High School in Detroit.

Ford:The crux of the Iraq War debate has never been about whether we'd like to see that country operating as a peaceful democracy. Of course we would.

Ford:If you polled the residents at one of our fine institutions of correction as to which of them really didn't do whatever it was that got them locked up, there's no doubt many would make that claim.

Ford:The war in Iraq, for all its cost and tragedy, all the frustration and contention here at home, has come nowhere near the Vietnam War in terms of lives lost (on both sides) and general havoc inflicted. But in some respects, Iraq still shapes up as th

Ford:What's ironic is that Newark had been coming back. What's comforting, if any comfort is to be found after the surpassingly cold-blooded slaying of three college students, is that its comeback stands to be accelerated.

Ford:Surge? Perhaps some progress. Political reconciliation? Don't even ask.

Ford:Our editorial Thursday about the sentencing of Jim Black in state court on corruption charges ended with an observation and a question, as posed by Jim Jenkins, deputy editorial page editor, who wrote the piece.

Ford:In case there was any doubt that a major North Carolina industry had its fat in the fire over at the legislature, consider this little vignette (mid-day Wednesday): A group of activists had surrounded a well-dressed woman in one of the Legislative Bu

Ford:As if the physical resemblances, both natural and cultivated, weren't enough, John Edwards now explicitly casts his presidential campaign as a sequel to Robert F. Kennedy's.