ON THE INTERNET, friends can communicate across continents via live video hook-ups for free. Companies can exchange 100-page documents in nanoseconds. Meanwhile, at the U.S. Postal Service, 600,000 employees spend their days stamping and sorting large pieces of paper and carrying them by plane, train and truck to every home and office from Guam to Georgetown -- as federal law requires. This quaint business model was bound to be stressed by recession, and it has been. Mail volume fell from an all-time high of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion in 2009, with more declines to come. The Postal Service is on course to lose more than $7 billion this year, despite substantial recent cost-cutting, and it could lose more than $238 billion by 2020. Approaching the limits of its federal credit line, the USPS must change drastically or go bust.

DON'T BE FOOLED by the excuses offered by Senate Democratic leaders about why no vote has been scheduled to reauthorize the District's federally funded private school voucher program. The truth is that opponents know how bad it would look to vote against a program that has helped low-income, minority children get a better education. So instead they take no action and hope the program dies a slow, quiet death. Those championing vouchers are right to call out Senate leaders for their cowardly refusal to -- at the very least -- allow a fair hearing for this successful program.

IN A MARCH 4 missive to state colleges and universities, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) argued that the schools had overstepped their legal bounds by enacting nondiscrimination policies that include protections for sexual orientation. Under Mr. Cuccinelli's reading of the law, the schools must refrain from offering more protections than the law requires unless the Virginia General Assembly explicitly authorizes them. The attorney general admonished the schools to "take appropriate actions to bring their policies in conformance with the law and public policy of Virginia." Translation: Discrimination is alive, well and now encouraged in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

THEY ARE common stories by now: The court-appointed defense lawyer who falls asleep during a client's murder trial. The beleaguered big-city public defender who barely has a chance to scan a client's file as she rushes from courtroom to courtroom, laboring under a crushing caseload.