A week from today, readers of the Napa Valley Register’s Web site are going to see a brand new look. We are rolling out a redesigned www.napavalleyregister.com.

It has taken nine bloody and difficult months, but the deployment of 30,000 additional U.S. troops appears at last to have brought not just a lull in the sectarian fighting in Iraq, but the first tangible steps toward genuine political reconciliation.

For as long as I have been writing about California politics and public policy, well-meaning people have been coming to me with the promise to fix what ails government in the Golden State.

Dear editor,

Dear editor, Napa Police Sgt. Terry Gonsalves, who is in charge of the department’s gang unit, says there are about 750 documented gang members in Napa County in 2007.

Dear editor, Widespread consensus has it that the juvenile justice system in many places in this country has become a gateway to a criminal career, a ruined life, and a short one.

Dear editor, We recently received a letter from Keep Napa Napa regarding the Napa Pipe project. I marked the card enclosed to receive more information about it. Imagine my dismay when I opened the next letter from Keep Napa Napa with my name listed as approving the project! I neither approve nor disapprove because I don’t have enough information.

Ultimately, Sept. 11 was a low-tech attack and the hijackers who carried it out were not particularly brilliant. We know this about them because they made no particular effort to conceal their activities before the attack, asked recklessly suspicious questions in flight training, and of course, they were grown men who believed that God would reward them for murder.

This is one of the most exciting Presidential campaigns ever, largely because so many new voters are getting involved and getting energized about the issues, something that has been sorely needed for a long time.

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