At Augusta and elsewhere, we're better off seeing discrimination for what it is.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Karen Heller

Tradition can be a messy heap of cement used to cover a faulty moral foundation. It's something that defensive people trowel over incendiary situations, hoping to avoid further conflict.

I say, better to know the jerks than to have them camouflage their beliefs to please the multitude.

Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond no longer serve in the U.S. Senate, and that's progress for mankind. Still, they served as not-so-gentle reminders _ these were not gentle men _ that unrepentant creeps do get elected to higher office and that, more frighteningly, voters put them there.

With those old codgers of the Carolinas, you never ...