After three losses in congressional special elections, the Republican Party is faced with a formidable task: Reinventing the brand.  The old Bush brand has been rejected by voters.  What will replace it? One or two such defeats is disquieting but this week's 8-point loss by the GOP candidate in Mississippi, the third such defeat, suggests a trend. Voters are rejecting Republicans in places where Republicans should be winning.

Some years ago, a Hispanic teacher invited me to a discussion in a newly formed Center for Mexican Studies at UTA University in Arlington.  The director of the center that was created to study the Mexican-American people wanted input from community members with varied views to get the center off to a running start.

Recently, I watched a televised hearing before a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives. A representative of the American Medical Association testified before the committee. The lobbyist was evidently trying to force pharmaceutical companies to get a pre-clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration before they run an advertisement of an already FDA-approved prescription drug.

In Michael Gerson's contemptuous, and factually loose, op-ed about what he calls the "Coburn Seven" and our effort to preserve the life-saving success of the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), he asks readers to weigh the moral scale between seven United States Senators and 3 million HIV/AIDS infected people, many of whom are frail and malnourished.