If you ever become a mother, can I have one of the puppies?

One of the great changes wrought by the increased public awareness of Alzheimers - and thank you, Nancy Reagan, you wonderful tough old dame, you - is that people in the early stages of the disease are now speaking out while they still have the capacity to do so.

We, The People is more than a statement of purpose. It is an acknowledgement of an obligation to each other.

Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.

Ronald Reagan was a dim hack who did horrible damage to almost everything he touched.

Bill Clinton was not a symbol. People did not invest in him their idea of what America should be or, worse, their pride in what they thought America had become. There was no great moral self-congratulation in having elected a president from Arkansas.

The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank's marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.