THE TRIBUNE'S VIEW
Downtown signs
By HENRY J. WATERS III, Publisher, Columbia Daily Tribune
Downtown Empress Carrie Gartner and her sturdy band of Special Business District directors do good work looking after the interests of what they lovingly call "The District." Often they creep modestly "outside the box," suggesting changes and rules not so eagerly accepted by everyone doing business or otherwise interested in their part of town.

OPEN COLUMN
Adult stores not only place to find adults-only items
Editor, the Tribune: As the president of Passions Video, which filed and recently won the case against the "billboard law," I’d like to answer a question. Sen. Matt Bartle and someone on the TribLog - maybe one and the same - asked, "What do I tell my children when they ask what the three X’s mean?"

OPEN COLUMN
America was better off when it obeyed God’s laws
Editor, the Tribune: The rise and fall of civilizations or nations can be described in the following cycle: From bondage comes spiritual faith, from spiritual faith comes courage, from courage comes liberty, from liberty comes abundance, from abundance comes complacency, from complacency comes apathy, from apathy comes dependency and from dependency comes bondage.

OPEN COLUMN
Sale of student loans bad business for students
Editor, the Tribune: A Kansas student - who was temporarily not paying her student loan because of a shattered leg - had her loan sold to a "new loan company," which did not contact her. Without their name, telephone number or address, she could not contact them. When she did not pay the loan because she had not received the necessary information, her loan was turned over to a collection agency, which charged her 25 percent interest.

OPEN COLUMN
Columbia should ban sale of unhealthy tobacco products
Editor, the Tribune: One more idea about the proposed smoking ban. Why not ban selling tobacco products in the city? They are unhealthy. If you can’t smoke them in the city, why should you be able to buy them in the city? Move them out to the county.

Bush subverts democracy with the big lie
By ROBERT SCHEER
If representative government were alive and well in America, President George W. Bush would not have dared to give the speech he made Monday on the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001.

Liberals know best (or so they think)
By GEORGE WILL
EVERGREEN PARK, Ill. - This suburb, contiguous with Chicago’s western edge, is 88 percent white. A large majority of the customers of the Wal-Mart that sits here, less than a block outside Chicago, are from the city, and more than 90 percent of the store’s customers are black.

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