IT HAS been almost two years since Nancy J. Leppink, acting administrator of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, declared that CityCenterDC, a $700 million private-sector complex under construction at the downtown site of the former convention center, is a public works project for purposes of the Davis-Bacon Act — the de facto super-minimum wage law for government-backed projects.

FOR REASONS that are unknown, in circumstances that remain murky, a young man was shot and killed in Alexandria the other night by an off-duty Arlington County sheriff’s deputy. Based on the results of an autopsy, the shooting of Julian Dawkins, a 22-year-old shuttle driver for PBS’s “NewsHour” program, was ruled a homicide. But the deputy, Craig Patterson, was neither arrested nor charged. Why?

A FREE press in a democracy demands a delicate balance. The First Amendment means the media must have the right to inquire without hindrance. The government has a legitimate interest in keeping some national security information secret. When these come into conflict, the balance often has been struck this way: The media are free to pursue secrets, but it is up to those in government to keep them. When the media come into possession of information that, if disclosed, could be damaging, the government can plead the case for secrecy — and the media generally are open to persuasion.