When I was 14 or 15, a camp counselor told me I was smart. I had never been very good in school, but he told me once that I was smart but my mind operated a little differently.

But the United States is neither a Christian nation nor the exclusive home of any particular religious group. Non-Christians are not guests. We are as much hosts as any Mayflower-descendant Protestant. It is our home as well as theirs. And in a home with so many owners, there can be no official sectarian prayer. That is what the First Amendment is all about, and the first act by the new administration was in defiance of our Constitution.

The prosecution wants to make sure the process by which the evidence was obtained is not truthfully presented, because, as often as not, that process will raise questions.

Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers -- and most others in the profession -- will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.

There’s simply nothing in there that would justify second degree murder.

Ed Koch will never "rest in peace." That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say "it's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax."

It's a new phenomenon in America that states can now sue the national government and become a kind of check and balance on the excesses of the federal government.