Tuesday's victory was big. But it did nothing more than level the playing field and give you a shot. Take it.

Look, I don't mind if the President sends a budget which he knows is not going to achieve anything. But when he prefaces his remarks as we just saw by saying we have to put politics aside, posing again as the one person in the country who rises above partisanship and party, speaks for the national interest, it's really grating.

So far as Im concerned, Ronald Reagan was the best president. Nixon was the worst. Some of his policies were okay, but he disgraced the office.

When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.

In the course of his presidency, Obama has gone from an almost magical charismatic figure to an ordinary politician. Ordinary. Average.

Preemption is a kind of pre-deterrence that stops the threat at an earlier, safer stage.

There is no comparing the brutality and cynicism of today's pop culture with that of forty years ago: from High Noon to Robocop is a long descent.