The Factor concept is very simple: Watch all of those in power, including and especially the media, so they don't injure or exploit the folks, everyday Americans. Never before in the United States had a television news guy dared to criticize other journalists on a regular basis. The late Peter Jennings, a friend, told me I was crazy to do it. "These people will not allow anyone to scrutinize them," he said. "They will come after you with a vengeance." And so they have.

At the end of the day, every child has learned the Lesson of Spin: Almost every wrong action can be stripped of consequences, along with the need for feelings of guilt and remorse.

They established their patriotic credentials long ago, and are either supportive of the Bush agenda or know when to keep their traps shut.

Right now in Oregon anybody can open a saloon, and hire people to come in and have sex in front of their patrons.

Safety nets for the poor and disadvantaged are a must for any compassionate nation, but encouraging folks to go on the dole when not absolutely necessary is disgraceful.

As the tree is bent, so it will grow.

If you're gay, you're gay. It's my Dennis Miller theory of homosexuality shot through the movie "Boy and the Dolphin." If you're a 12-year-old boy and you're watching the movie "Boy and a Dolphin" and a 27-year-old Sofia Loren crawls up out of the Aegean Sea after sponge diving, she's standing there in the deck of the boat in a see-through gauze top, rivulets of water dripping off her torso onto the deck of the boat. If you're a 12-year-old boy and you're watching that and you still want to make it with the captain of the boat, you're gay. You can't fight that. So it is what it is.