On Christmas Day on the op-ed page of The Kansas City Star, a McClatchy newspaper, in the "As I See It" guest commentary spot, one David J. Ekerdt, a sociology professor at the University of Kansas, took issue with a recent Star editorial on Social Security ("The myth of the trust fund," Dec. 14). The next day in his column, E. Thomas McClanahan revealed that he himself had written the offending editorial, and then proceeded to ably defend it against the criticisms in Professor Ekerdt's article. After The Star's exchange between Ekerdt and McClanahan, the paper ran Bob Herbert's syndicated column ("Raising False Alarms") on Jan. 26 and the following day ran "Social Security Picture Darkens" on the front page. These conflicting accounts about the solvency of the Social Security system prompted Professor Ekerdt to fire off a letter to the editor, which ran on Feb. 7: The gloomy news on that second day was drawn from a new Congressional Budget...(Read Full Post)