No doubt about it, Barack Obama has been getting the lion’s share of election campaign coverage in the media of late. And that includes in Stars and Stripes.

This is not necessarily a function of political favoritism. The Democrat’s visit in the past week to Afghanistan and Iraq was a newsworthy event involving a candidate whose international and national security credentials are open to question. (At the same time, the decision of all three network TV anchors to accompany him smacks more of a reach for ratings than a search for security smarts.)

It’s always been known around here that the comics are closely read pages of this newspaper. Their purpose is to elicit a chuckle or two in the midst of our workaday lives. But for some readers they can also evoke a frown. This seems especially true as, over the years, many comic strips have added political and social commentary to the funny lines and drawings. At least they are meant to be funny. And that’s the point: Is humor still the goal and reason for being of comics? For me, the laugh’s the thing, but I don’t have a monopoly on grading comics.

It’s amazing what four words uttered by a little pig-tailed girl in a comic strip can stir up. The character, Carmen, is a regular in the "Prickly City" cartoon strip that appears daily on Stars and Stripes’ Opinion page. In the May 29 entry, an elephant representing the Republican Party is seen getting smaller panel by panel, until in the last one Carmen calls it "the party of torture."

A letter writer from Ramstein, Germany, casts shame on Stars and Stripes for a front-page article that ran June 21 [in her edition]. The article quoted an Air Force report as saying that most military bases in Europe that store nuclear weapons do not meet Defense Department security rules. "That kind of information in the hands of the wrong people could result in a catastrophic incident," wrote Betty Schultz.

Returning from a leave of nearly two weeks, I found a lot to think and write about:

A new Page 1

Stars and Stripes launched a new front-page design two weeks ago. The page looks markedly different from what had been the predominant Page 1 design. Most of the time, that one had a large headline and a large, usually unrelated photograph, as well as "teasers," or references, to articles on inside pages. The design dated from the late 1990s and was intended to grab readers’ attention.

According to a letter writer, Stars and Stripes "hit an all-time low" with a May 22 story about a military spouse who posed for a sexy calendar. The model and spouse is Alessandra Bosco, who is married to an Army sergeant based in Katterbach, Germany. She says the calendar idea emerged when downrange soldiers, fans of her Web site, asked her to send photos of herself in military gear. That’s what she has on in the calendar shots, as well as lingerie.

Newspapers exist to push out news to the public, but it’s not a one-way affair. They also provide a platform for comments from the readers. Any hindrance to that flow is cause for concern. That concern is felt keenly by Stars and Stripes, which offers servicemembers a unique outlet for their opinions and grievances.

The House of Representatives is mad as hell at the Pentagon and is not going to take it anymore. At least it's mad at what an amendment passed Thursday claims is the DOD's attempts to create propaganda to make the administration look good in the Iraq war.