Columnists

TFA an ‘investment’ in education: Sunday, May 26, 2013; Q&A - Victor Wakefield: Group's leader says it’s well-suited to help CCSD fill teacher vacancies in high-poverty areas; Sun staff; Some lawmakers have questioned Gov. Brian Sandoval’s proposal to include $2 million for the nonprofit Teach For America, which trains teachers for the Clark County School District. The Sun asked Victor Wakefield, the executive director of TFA in the Las Vegas Valley, about the program and the governor’s proposal.

Case shows need for federal shield law: Sunday, May 26, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Eve Burton; The U.S. Department of Justice’s unprecedented decision to gain information in secret from more than 20 separate telephone lines used by Associated Press reporters and editors strikes at the very core of our constitutional freedom.

A wider, better welcome mat for immigrants: Sunday, May 26, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Linda P.B. Katehi; As an immigrant and an engineer, I know the magnetic pull that the United States exerts on anyone who dreams of a career in science.

A mission for Obama on climate change: Sunday, May 26, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Eugene Robinson; President Barack Obama should spend his remaining years in office making the United States part of the solution to climate change, not part of the problem. If Congress sticks to its policy of obstruction and willful ignorance, Obama should use his executive powers to the fullest extent. We are out of time.

Somebody did something: Saturday, May 25, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Gail Collins; Whenever the world of Washington seems hopeless, someone will point out that the Senate Judiciary Committee did a good job on immigration reform.

Networks serving up schlock: Saturday, May 25, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Maureen Dowd; TV executives think younger viewers don’t care about history. And they’re always on the hunt for the younger demo, working on the mistaken premise that millennials buy more and change brands more often than profligate and fickle baby boomers.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev: Not just any body: Saturday, May 25, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Robert M. Sapolsky; If you don’t believe in souls or an afterlife, then a corpse is just a body — potentially a teaching tool, a source of life-saving organs, but little more.

Macau provides lesson in supply and demand: Friday, May 24, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Roger Snow; Some things you must see for yourself to appreciate their scale and grandeur: Mount Rushmore, the Palace of Versailles, Arlington National Cemetery, Jay Leno’s cranium. You can add Macau to that list.

Obamas’ message not just for black students: Friday, May 24, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Derrick Z. Jackson; I am long familiar with the messages delivered in recent days to black college graduates by the first family. When done right, they sear you forever and seal you with purpose.

At the IRS, wrong but maybe explainable: Friday, May 24, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Michael Smerconish; First the easy part: No one from the Internal Revenue Service should ever have singled out any applicant for disparate treatment based upon party affiliation or ideology.

On press freedoms, Obama races Nixon to bottom: Thursday, May 23, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Clarence Page; Despite what you may hear from some of his more fevered critics, President Barack Obama’s recent scandal-quakes don’t appear to fall anywhere near the level of Richard Nixon’s Watergate disaster. But by another Nixonian yardstick, trying to put a muzzle on press freedoms, Team Obama appears to have surged into the lead.

Tell me how this ends: Thursday, May 23, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Thomas Friedman; I’ve been traveling to Yemen, Syria and Turkey to film a documentary on how environmental stresses contributed to the Arab awakening. As I looked back on the trip, it occurred to me that three of our main characters — the leaders of the two Yemeni villages that have been fighting over a single water well and the leader of the Free Syrian Army in Raqqa province, whose cotton farm was wiped out by drought — have 36 children among them: 10, 10 and 16.

Is democracy in trouble?: Wednesday, May 22, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; E.J. Dionne; We know American politics are dysfunctional. But it’s worth asking if there is something especially flawed about our democracy.

The second-term scandal plague: Wednesday, May 22, 2013; OTHER VOICES:; Doyle McManus; What is it about presidents’ second terms that makes them seem so scandal-ridden? Simple: The iron law of longevity. All governments make mistakes; all governments try to hide those mistakes. But the longer an administration is in office, the more errors it makes, and the harder they are to conceal.

Inequity in state’s spending on roads is a joke: Tuesday, May 21, 2013; WHERE I STAND:; By Brian Greenspun; Connecting the dots in Carson City is a fool’s errand. Enter the fool. Sen. Debbie Smith has bottled up Senate Bill 322 in her committee despite a previous unanimous vote to move it to the floor for passage. But why?