Curt Smith writes a regular column for GateHouse Media Newspapers, distributed to about 80 papers around the country. In Smith's home,  the Rochester, New York, area, his column is read in GateHouse's Messenger-Post papers. Subjects include politics, sports, education, culture, and the economy: one week, 9/11's legacy; another, raising children; another, blue v. red States. He often swims against the tide, disdaining both political parties, defending what he terms America's "good, quiet, decent people" -- the great middle class.

To Smith, illegal immigration has a bipartisan stench: "For eight years, George W. Bush spouted non sequiturs from a non sequitur mind. Under been there, Barack Obama touts same old, encouraging illegal aliens to migrate. Mr. President, what part of this sentence don't you grasp? In America, no one gets to break the law."

Bush 43 "didn't know what he didn't know." Nearly a decade after his death, Ronald Reagan had become Olympus. "His autobiography was An American Life. Reagan was an American Original." Mitt Romney remained a puzzlement. "One day I think him tall, dark, and handsome. Go directly to Mt. Rushmore. Next, I doubt the middle class will elect someone who said, 'When the economy's bad, buy stocks.'"

Other Smith columns eschew politics for the personal and cultural: tributes to Pat Nixon, Floyd Patterson, and Kate Smith, Glenn Ford,  Ernie Harwell, America's and the Untied Kingdom's "Special Relationship," the magic of the 1950s American car; less magically, Starbucks' pretension, and most sadly, the continuing economic malaise of New York State.

Based in the Empire State, Smith has pioneered many stories. Even before Eliot Spitzer's Client 9 sexcapade, Smith was the first New York columnist to demand that Spitzer resign as Governor. Numerous politicians attribute New York State Senator Mike Alesi's 2012 decision not to seek re-election to Smith's column, "Alesi Gets What He Deserves" -- public fury at his betrayal on gay marriage.

A series of 2012 columns blasted Penn State University and the media for smearing legendary football coach Joe Paterno, saying "the French Revolution had a fairer jury. Famously unhip, Paterno was old-school and old-world from an Italian Catholic family. To ESPN, that made Joe declasse. Fairer people looked at the nobility of his life."

Readers are invited to e-mail Smith at curtsmith@netacc.net. To find his GateHouse Media columns, go to its flagship paper, The Canandaigua Daily Messenger  http://www.mpnnow.com/opinions/columns