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Today in Context
Bob Sparks: GOP, Obama heading for high-stakes showdown on Syrian refugees

On the morning after the Islamic terrorist massacre in Paris, the Republican Party of Florida's Sunshine Summit continued with its second, and final, day. Circumstances required the second-day speakers to alter their prepared messages.

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum summed up the mood by offering sentiments we all shared. He talked about ISIS wishing to return the world to the 7th century when slaughtering other humans was a normal occurrence. Let's accommodate them, he told the audience, and "bomb them back into the 7th century."

While Santorum engages in hyperbole, it points to our leaders talking about "containing" ISIS as opposed to "defeating" them. Notwithstanding Paris, that strategy will continue for as long as President Barack Obama is in office. With that in mind, conversations must be about how best to protect the homeland.

ISIS is committed to hitting us at home. Clear-thinking people should take them at their word; so how safe are we?

"I've never been more concerned," Democratic U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein, the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on MSNBC. "I read the intelligence faithfully. ISIL is not contained. ISIL is expanding."

Read the full op-ed  here .
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Florence Snyder: Who's willing to send their own?

"Men raise flags when they can't get anything else up," Emperor Charlemagne's mother tells her grandson in "Pippin," the Tony Award-winning musical set in the 9th century.

You'd think the modern multibillion dollar erectile dysfunction industry would have fixed that problem. But plainly the drugs aren't working.

Preening pols and pasty-faced pundits have been screaming for war since Friday's attack on Paris. They have thus far not told us whose children will be providing the cannon fodder.

It's worth noting, then, that Vietnam combat veteran Mac Stipanovich is willing to put his beloved grandsons where his mouth is on the subject of what to do about ISIS. Stipanovich, a lawyer, lobbyist and oft-quoted influencer, took to Twitter to call for "War. Not kinda war on the cheap. Boots on the ground. Higher taxes, less domestic spending, less consumption, conscription if needed. War."

"I have grandsons coming of age for whom I fear, " Stipanovich tweeted, "but I believe we must put aside hopes for peace and go to war with whoever will stand with us."

Many of Stipanovich's contemporaries burned their draft cards and fled to Canada rather than "engage communism" in Southeast Asia. Still, they respected the fact that people running the draft and reporting the news from the rice paddies had themselves "engaged fascism" in Europe and in the Pacific. The voting age public has no such respect for 21st century pols and pundits who don't know a Sunni from a Shiite and can't pronounce Raqqa, never mind locate it on a map.

Read the full op-ed  here .
Shannon Nickinson: Investment can ease West Florida's economic worries

Way back in 1992, the political wisdom of the day came down to one thing: It's the economy.

In 2015 in Pensacola, it still is.

The Pensacola Young Professionals rolled out the 2015 Quality of Life survey on Oct. 21. The survey, conducted June 11-16 by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research asked 800 people who match the demographics of Escambia County how they feel about the place they live.

The survey was paid for by entrepreneurs Quint and Rishy Studer, who also are the founders of the Studer Community Institute.

When the PYP survey debuted in 2008, jobs and the economy were the top issue. Seven years later, they still are.  See the survey here. The survey is posting some of the highest positive findings since its inception in terms of how people feel about Pensacola's prospects and future.

But the sense of economic unease remains just beneath the surface of the progress Pensacola has made.

Read the full op-ed  here.
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Yesterday's Context
The mighty always have fallen, warns Dr. Marc J. Yacht. Always. Being a strong imperial power offers no guarantee of continued existence. Ask any Mayan whose empire survived 3,500 years. They sit alongside the Roman, British, Spanish and Mongol empires. The French faced the revolution with Madame Defarge knitting while the People's Court sentenced French nobility to death. One cannot ignore the Russian Revolution and the end of the Romanov dynasty. It happens and it can happen in the U.S.

To Jerelyn Luther and other Yale students who shouted down a professor who asked to respect the right to be inappropriate during Halloween, the Mizzou students and faculty denying freedom of the press, as well as anyone else who believes they alone are arbiters of what the rest of us should see and hear ... Catherine Durkin Robinson offers 20 things social justice warriors should know.

Elizabeth Santiago relates a conversation that determined her views on gender equality. It was after a class during her senior year of high school, where she was having a casual conversation with a literature teacher. The topic landed on how a woman's clothing held the power to define her sexuality. The teacher flip the script and asked if a male rape victim was at fault because he wasn't wearing a shirt and his jeans were tight. Santiago's answers affected the way she thought from that point on.

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