• As Dad serves in Afghanistan, Mom's on a mission at home
At one moment, she is talking about her project and coaxing her two youngest off the dining room table where they have climbed in a bid for attention. The next, Randi Cairns suddenly is gone, off in a corner of her house in East Brunswick, speaking softly into a cell phone that had quietly buzzed to catch her attention.

• Let's talk about road safety, but not on your cell phone
Pamela Fischer is in charge of highway safety for New Jersey and she thinks she knows what the problem is:

• Major James stands by his country and his father
Sharpe James is a man many loved to hate. He belongs to a despised class -- politicians -- and it didn't help his popularity in some places in New Jersey that he is African-American. So, although he is going to prison for more than two years for failing to disclose an affair with a city contractor, we still hear screams he got too light a sentence.

• A judge who chafed at the advice he got
The U.S. Attorney's Office yesterday called a federal judge's bluff -- only the judge wasn't bluffing, and the beneficiaries of the extraordinary duel between him and prosecutors were former Newark mayor Sharpe James and his reputed lover.

• It's not as if James' land deals were hurting anyone
The term "perfect crime" usually refers to a crime perfect for the criminal. A perpetrator achieves an illegal end without penalty.

• Spurring fast debate at 68 miles per hour
My column Monday about speeding on the New Jersey Turnpike drew reactions from hundreds of readers. Most were unhappy off-rampers. The long, gray highway that in some ways defines what it is to be from New Jersey looms large and dark in our psyches.

• When abiding by the law can get you killed
Somewhere north of Camden, the driver of a car in the center lane of the northbound New Jersey Turnpike found himself in a harrowing fix last week.

• A voice for change
Rocco Fiorentino is a remarkable young man for many reasons. The most important: He is alive.

• A special patient far from war zone
War creates strange circumstances. What went on the other day in the Howell offices of Vince and Vance Moss, twin doctors and U.S. Army officers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, was both oddly incongruous and inspiring.