To read additional commentary described below, go to www.spokesmanreview.com and look under “Picks” for syndicated columnists.

David Shaw writing in the Los Angeles Times: “All learning, my father used to tell me, begins with asking questions. It was one of the many maxims that he drummed into my young head and that, I’m convinced, helped make me a journalist. It’s also a maxim that Murrey Marder and Barry Sussman, longtime journalists themselves, fervently believe. At a time of life when the questions that concern most men involve their pensions and their prostates, Marder, 84, and Sussman, 69, have created a Web site designed to encourage other journalists to ask more, better questions of our public officials, corporate executives and others in positions of power over people’s lives.

“Early questions posted on the site, NiemanWatchdog.org, include: ‘Abu Ghraib aside, where is the reporting on (conditions in) U.S. prisons, once a model for human punishment but not any longer?’ “

Deb Price writing in the Detroit News: “A series of trailblazing rulings is sending employers the unmistakable signal that, if they want to stay on the proper side of the law, they need to make their workplaces ready to welcome transgendered workers. Breaking away from the backward rulings of the 1970s and ‘80s, early 21st-century courts are quickly making clear that employers will not be allowed to discriminate against transgendered workers – or anyone else – simply because they do not conform to traditional gender roles.

“This legal trend in federal and state courts will greatly benefit workers who, through surgery and hormone treatments, have changed or are in the process of changing from male to female or vice versa. It will also protect workers whose clothing, mannerisms or other personal traits depart from rigid gender stereotypes.”

Sebastian Mallaby writing in the Washington Post: “Suppose there’s an alligator in your neighborhood. He’s been around for years, and he hangs out at the far end of your street, feeding on chickens that the local children bring him. The alligator’s been there so long, and caused such little inconvenience, that he’s receded to a small place in your mind; you casually leave food out on the porch, and the backdoor’s wide open. But while your thoughts are elsewhere, the alligator is tripling in size. One day those chickens aren’t enough, and he sets off for your bedroom.”

“I’m reduced to spinning metaphors like this by last week’s spectacle in Congress. The House passed a corporate tax bill so expensive and so bad that there’s only one way to explain it: Congress has just plain forgotten that we are racking up a national debt that may eventually devour us.”