Informed opinion.

Whatever your political orientation or tendencies, you're missing a lot if you don't seek out the best arguments. I was trying to think of writers who impress me as examples of people who offer opinion backed by solid journalism. You can pick them out because they provide facts that you can verify to support their opinions. I'm more liberal than conservative, but I've always thought George Will is one of these writers who make sense. Read how he defended Christopher Cox, President Bush's appointee for SEC Chairman, in the Washington Post. If you're not inclined to go there right now, here's an excerpt:

...The third paragraph of the New York Times front-page story reporting Cox's nomination called him "a devoted student" of [Ayn] Rand.

Cox, however, has never read a Rand novel. He sampled her work only when preparing, for the Times, a less-than-reverent review of a collection of her correspondence. Still, the "devoted student" tag swiftly reverberated in the echo chamber of Washington journalism, where much of the reporting about Cox's nomination has had a cartoon-like quality.

I'm not as liberal as, say, Al Franken, but I do admire the writing of E.J. Dionne, also of the Post. He just wrote an interesting take on our government's Iraq War planning.

The notion that the president led the country into war through indirection or dishonesty is not the most damaging criticism of the administration. The worst possibility is that the president and his advisers believed their own propaganda. They did not prepare the American people for an arduous struggle because they honestly didn't expect one.

Both Mr. Will and Mr. Dionne make their cases with facts I can check, and fairly. You may prefer to disagree with their conclusions because of whom you root for, but I believe both writers have presented plausible, convincing arguments, without slander or name-calling. I think they help get us closer to the truth.