Why is it that the same people who have the least confidence in the police and the military are the most willing to allow only the police and the military to have guns?

I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am.

The counties with the highest per capita income aren't near New York City or Los Angeles - they're in the Washington, D.C. area - a one-company town where the company is the government. The three counties with the highest incomes in the entire country are all suburbs of Washington. Eleven of the 25 counties with the highest incomes are near Washington.

In a comprehensive study of all public multiple shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that the only public policy that reduced both the incidence and casualties of such shootings were concealed-carry laws. Not only are there 60 percent fewer gun massacres after states adopt concealed-carry laws, but the death and injury rate of such rampages are reduced by 80 percent.

It may be annoying, but the rash of hijackings by Connecticut WASP girls surely explains the time-consuming - but still somehow completely useless - examination of my personal effects. We all have to make sacrifices for airline safety.

I never sought to be a pundit, or on TV, or a writer-it just kind of came to me. If you just keep doing what you want to do, you wind up doing precisely what you want to be doing. Don't resist how life bats you around.

Yet, when Republicans were finally able to push through tough policies on crime and welfare which they'd supported for decades, they were magnificent successes for the entire country, but especially for black people. Release us, and great things will happen!