My thoughts and prayers go out to the thousands of marathon runners, onlookers, city officials and others affected by this senseless tragedy.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the thousands of marathon runners, onlookers, city officials and others affected by this senseless tragedy.

The problem is, is that President Bush and the Republican leadership in the Congress have resisted attempts to increase dramatically our fuel economy standards over the last five years.

Drilling in the Refuge is completely unnecessary when we could improve the average fuel economy of cars, minivans and SUV's by just 3 miles a gallon and save more oil within 10 years than we could ever produce from the Arctic Refuge.

However, while we should certainly celebrate the demise of overt official racism, we must also critically examine where we are at this historical moment, recognize the many challenges ahead and reaffirm our commitment to making Brown v. Board a reality.

If we fight our enemy using the same inhumane and morally bankrupt techniques that we are trying to stop, we will simply become what we have beheld.

In Uzbekistan, hundreds of protesters were recently killed under the corrupt regime of President Karimov in what human rights groups are calling a massacre.