A. The lead story in today’s Albuquerque Journal ranks New Mexico institutions of higher learning according to their "major crime and in liquor and drug law violations." The statistics come from the US Department of Education.
So the federal government distinguishes between alcohol and other drugs. And the state’s major newspaper accepts the distinction.
There is one, of course – alcohol is (mostly) legal, the others illegal. But alcohol is a drug and this unthinking practice of distinguishing it from the other drugs is obfuscation, pure and simple.
B. "More than two years after the Bush Administration won pledges of support from dozens of countries eager to join the war on terrorism, Washington and its allies still keep a jealous hold on intelligence – snarling the information-sharing needed to shut down alQaeda."
That is the lead sentence of an Associated Press story also on the Journal front page this morning.
If the author, one Dafna Linzer, were in my employ or my journalism class, we would first discuss clunky prose, then move on to the virtues of rewriting.
Also, why Ms. Linzer chose not to put quotation marks around "the war on terrorism."
I would have to concede that she is not alone in failing to question that formulation.
And compliment her on writing an important story.