EDITORIALS
Responsibility for a Killing
The seeds of hatred that Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy helped plant with years of anti-Latino initiatives and harsh statements have borne bitter fruit, and he knows it. He walked out of a press conference on the county budget this week when questions turned to the Nov. 8 death of Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue.

Desperation Play
Bill Taylor, the East Hampton Democratic Committee chairman, issued a call this week for a bipartisan commission to tackle town spending. Obviously, as he will be the first to tell you, this is a desperation play; the Democrats, with a 5-0 lock on the town board, have set themselves up for a beating when East Hampton voters go to the polls in a little under a year.

Saving Detroit, or Not
The only new-car dealer left in East Hampton Town, Plitt Ford, sells American cars, and heaven knows we would be loath to see anything happen to it. However, we have our doubts about the proposed and much-debated bailout of the Detroit auto industry, though we are hard-pressed to figure out the on-again, off-again banking rescue the money would be taken from. General Motors said recently that it was going to delay repaying dealers for cash-back incentives in order to preserve its capital. The G.M., Ford, and Chrysler auto malls of America will manage without the anticipated reimbursements, but only because traffic on their sales floors has been so slow of late.

COLUMNS
Connections | Helen S. Rattray
What’s in a Word
“Gotcha” is certainly an efficient way of conveying that you understand what someone is saying, but it’s not very graceful.

The Mast-Head | David E. Rattray
Forget the Gloom
The people who sit in the other room decided to tough out the last half-hour of the workday Tuesday by sitting in the dark, their faces illuminated only by the pale light of their laptops.
Point of View | Jack Graves
Unstacking the Deck
The former Republican national chairman Richard N. Bond apparently sees his party resurging should Obama and the Democrats dare to tinker with the tax code so as to discomfit the wealthy, who have been pampered fiscally lo these many years.

GUESTWORDS: By S. Dianne Moritz
Where Are the Children?
It’s a warm, sunny fall day.

Relay | Russell Drumm
Modern-Day Pirates
You can’t make this stuff up, or can you?