The treatment of Army Pfc. Bradley Manning has been excessively harsh, as far as I can tell. If he is found guilty of leaking more than 700,000 classified documents, he deserves some punishment -- probably -- but should not be at risk of spending the rest of his life behind bars. Apparently.

“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.”

So wrote General Dwight Eisenhower on June 5, 1944, 69 years ago this week.

Eric Holder is in a mess of his own making.

Two weeks ago, the attorney general testified to the House Judiciary Committee in categorical terms: "With regard to potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material, that is not something that I have ever been involved in, heard of, or would think would be a wise policy."

My argument that men should be saved is that, despite certain imperfections, men are fundamentally good and are sort of pleasant to have around. Most women still like to fall in love with them; all children want a father no matter how often we try to persuade ourselves otherwise. If we continue to impose low expectations and negative messaging on men and boys, future women won't have much to choose from.

We are nearly there.

Obama says enough is enough. He doesn't want us on "a perpetual wartime footing." Well, the Cold War lasted 45 years. The war on terror, 12 so far. By Obama's calculus, we should have declared the Cold War over in 1958 and left Western Europe, our Pacific allies, the entire free world to fend for itself -- and consigned Eastern Europe to endless darkness.

Texting while driving is dangerous, especially if you are driving a train. A commuter train engineer was texting on Sept. 12, 2008, near Los Angeles, when he missed a stop signal and crashed into a freight train. Twenty-five people died.

Have you been to the Ninth Street area lately?

With the North Carolina General Assembly daily making decisions that are turning our state backward, Durham City Council can and should make decisions that will keep Durham moving forward: to grow our city responsibly; to end homelessness; and to help, not harm, working families.

Hold your applause. As milestones go, this one is disappointing.

It is, at best, half a milestone. Or a down payment on a milestone. If you are of a more cynical bent, you might even call it an effort to forestall a milestone.

One of the inalienable rights of citizenship in this nation is the First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and to petition for a governmental redress of grievances. Recent events at our General Assembly, however, warrant concern that those freedoms might be in jeopardy.

Just about every political cause in Raleigh is being pitched as a spur to economic growth. It’s easy to see why. North Carolina continues to post one of the worst unemployment rates in the country. Poll respondents continue to list job creation as the top priority for their elected leaders.

With budgetary tantrums in the Senate and investigative play-acting in the House, the Republican Party is proving once again that it simply cannot be taken seriously.

So, Attorney General Eric Holder approved a search warrant targeting Fox News' James Rosen for the crime of journalism with malice aforethought.

Lord Byron was, according to one of his legion of lovers, "mad, bad and dangerous to know," but he also loved dogs, which explains his cameo appearance in a recent Texas Supreme Court opinion. It answered an interesting question in a way that shows how courts can avoid creating opportunities for trial lawyers.

While H. Brandt Ayers guest column on “The Great (shallow) Gatsby” (The Herald Sun, May 28) has a fairly standard analysis of the novel and movie, it contains a disturbing leap in logic.  There is no way possible that the Ku Klux Klan was or has ever been similar to “the camaraderie of fraternal orders such as the Elks...”