NEW YORK (USATODAY.com) – He had just helped pull three bodies from the rubble when he saw it there in dawn's first light, standing in a sea of debris. A heavenly symbol in a hellish setting. A cross.

It’s what President Bush’s whole image is built around, why the Republican National Convention is here, what everyone is talking about, including former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in his speech Monday.

A recent Yakima Herald-Republic article from April 10 suggested various “symbols” for Yakima. The bird chosen was the prairie falcon. The mammal the paper chose was what many south-central Washington ...