Big Mistake

Patients of Dr. Suzanne McCormick can get a glowing picture of her qualifications from the Dental Board of California, where she serves as president. They can learn that the oral surgeon teaches at Loma Linda University, lectures worldwide and has never been professionally disciplined. What the state licensing agency will not tell consumers is that shortly before she was appointed by Gov.

Iowa's Republican governor sent a warning to Mitt Romney on Wednesday: Don't write off the Hawkeye State. Terry Branstad, a former four-term governor who returned to office this year, said at a forum hosted by Politico that the GOP front-runner is "making a big mistake" by favoring other states to his. "I mean, Romney is dropping in the polls and I think he thinks that he wants to keep down expectations, you know. Well, his expectations may get really bad if he doesn't get a little more serious," Branstad said, according to Politico . "I know Romney is putting his focus in New Hampshire, but if he gets clobbered here - if he comes in not in the top three but say fourth or fifth - I think that really damages his campaign on the national [level]

Most of the competitors in the Congressional Cup Masters regatta are older sailors with rusty skills. But Harold Cudmore, the most recent winner in 1986, still makes sailing his business and was coach and adviser to the French team that was recently eliminated from the America's Cup. After winning his first three races Wednesday, however, Cudmore forgot in which match he was sailing in the final round and was late entering the starting area.

The clemency power of presidents and governors has been abused for political purposes more times than we can list here, but former President Clinton is among the few whose last-minute pardons were so ethically suspect that they permanently tarnished his legacy. By commuting the sentence of former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez's son, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may have repeated Clinton's mistake. Nuñez, who is now a business partner with Schwarzenegger's chief political advisor, worked closely with the governor during his term as speaker.

Coach Chuck Lyon of College of the Canyons was hoping to play a new team in Saturday's Western State Conference Bowl. Instead, his Cougars were forced to try to beat their toughest conference opponent for the second time this season. In the first meeting on Sept. 30, Canyons limited its mistakes to beat Allan Hancock, 21-14. This time, the Cougars committed six turnovers and lost, 24-20, only Canyons' second home loss in 16 games since its program was revived in 1998.

Calling Mayor Maureen O'Connor's proposed $35-million "big pipe" project to collect Mexican sewage and dump it back across the border "a big mistake," Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) on Friday offered what he said is a cheaper alternative: building two smaller pipes for $5 million less. "The big pipe is a big mistake," he said. "Maureen's folly is what they're calling it in the South Bay."

The elder son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said it was a "big mistake" that his family did not make sure entertainer and activist Harry Belafonte spoke at Coretta Scott King's funeral, according to a published report. Belafonte, who has strongly criticized President Bush, has said that he was invited to speak but that the invitation was rescinded at the insistence of the White House.

It was after this meet a year ago that Jens-Peter Berndt walked away from the East German swim team during a change of planes in Oklahoma City and told airport officials that he wanted to defect. Berndt, who is now a sophomore at the University of Alabama, did not come to the U.S. Swimming Open this weekend. Just two swimmers came from 'Bama. Alabama Coach Don Gambril (the coach of the U.S. Olympic team in '84) said that Berndt was skipping this meet to study for finals.

Last month, columnist Brian Glanville, writing in London's influential and internationally circulated World Soccer magazine, stuck one of his sharper pins into a man who has done considerably more for the sport in the United States than any of his predecessors. Glanville wrote, "Alan Rothenberg has been involved in American soccer for over 30 years but he still does not really seem to understand the game." Oh, really?

It was supposed to have been a brief trip to Michigan with a buddy, a 2-week lark away from school and worries. But now it is an indefinite stay in a St. George, Utah, jail cell, lodging earned by leading police and highway patrol officers on a dangerously crazy chase over freeway medians and through fences in a truck stolen from an Orange County firefighter. George William Carter II, an 18-year-old Laguna Hills high school senior, said Wednesday he has spent the better part of 2 days reading the Bible, praying and thinking over his actions.

Ten days from the start of Major League Soccer's 15th season and the players are threatening to strike unless a new collective bargaining agreement is reached by the March 25 season opener. That, Tim Leiweke said in very plain language Monday, would be a huge mistake. Leiweke is the chief executive of AEG, which owns the Galaxy and has long been a major supporter of soccer in the U.S. In his view, the players and their representatives in the MLS Players Union are being "disrespectful" of what MLS owners have put into the sport.

There are two kinds of people in the United States -- ones who have high blood pressure now and ones who have a very good chance of getting it someday. That's bad news, because high blood pressure, technically known as hypertension, raises the risk for stroke, heart disease, heart failure, kidney disease and eye damage, including blindness. Patients can greatly reduce their risk for such problems by bringing their blood pressure down to a "goal level" they establish with their doctor.

A rental home on a property owned by the mayor of Bell remained sealed Sunday as law enforcement agents continued their investigation of a suspected methamphetamine lab in the residence. Mayor Oscar Hernandez said in a phone interview that the two men arrested at the small guest house Saturday by a multi-agency state task force were released later the same morning. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department would not confirm whether the men had been released. Hernandez, who did not identify the two men, said he rented the house to a couple and their two daughters.

Patients of Dr. Suzanne McCormick can get a glowing picture of her qualifications from the Dental Board of California, where she serves as president. They can learn that the oral surgeon teaches at Loma Linda University, lectures worldwide and has never been professionally disciplined. What the state licensing agency will not tell consumers is that shortly before she was appointed by Gov.

Re "Obama to renew tribunals," May 15 Retaining military commissions is a big mistake. The proper venue for prosecuting terrorism suspects is the federal courts. There, suspects' constitutional rights are guaranteed. If the government has the power to deny constitutional rights to suspected terrorists, it has the power to decide who gets constitutional rights and who doesn't -- because the government decides which organizations are terrorist organizations. That's not the way it's supposed to work.

With nine starters returning on offense, the competition to become USC's starting quarterback probably won't be determined by who makes the most plays. It could come down to who makes the fewest mistakes. Sophomore Aaron Corp arguably took an early lead Tuesday by avoiding what befell junior Mitch Mustain and freshman Matt Barkley: interceptions. Meanwhile, Corp emerged unscathed in the turnover department as the Trojans completed the second of their 15 workouts.

Buddhism teaches its followers that they should be mindful of what is happening during each moment of each day. Perfectionists would do well to take this tenet to heart. Driven to succeed, they often get bogged down in details, insist on doing things their way and generally make life miserable for their co-workers. We all know them. Maybe you are one. But experts say perfectionists generally don't know themselves at all.

Former President Gerald R. Ford, in an interview embargoed until after his death, said that the Iraq war was not justified. "I don't think I would have gone to war," he said a little more than a year after President Bush launched the invasion advocated and carried out by prominent veterans of Ford's own administration. In a four-hour conversation in July 2004 at his house in Beaver Creek, Colo.

On Wednesday afternoon, Hillary Rodham Clinton visited her Arlington, Va., campaign headquarters and disclosed that she would finally concede her long primary fight. That same afternoon, a fierce storm system developed over northern Virginia and unleashed a tempest of high winds, driving rain and even a tornado.

Much like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" of the 1970s, which chronicled a fictional single, career woman navigating love, friendship and fulfillment, its contemporary counterpart, "Sex and the City," has utterly influenced a cross-generation of women.