I guess nobody assumes anybody is a libertarian. It's a more complex political discussion than most people are used to, to explain why you think the way you do about public education or drug laws, and why it's not as simple as being for or against something.

One of the major hobbies in South Florida is keeping animals that no sane person would want to keep. One of those is snakes. They usually get them when they're small, and when they get too big, they let them go. But there are also people with monkeys, lions, tigers. And they all get away, eventually.

We constantly see surveys that reveal this ignorance, especially among our high school students,78 percent of whom, in a recent nationwide multiple-choice test, identified Abraham Lincoln as 'a kind of lobster.' That's right: more than three quarters of our nation's youth could not correctly identify the man who invented the telephone.

A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which we realize that we are trapped in a world almost totally devoid of reason. Laughter is how we express the anxiety we feel at this knowledge.

I am a world-class weenie when it comes to letting people stick needles into me. My subconscious mind firmly believes that if God had wanted us to have direct access to our bloodstreams, He would have equipped our skin with small, clearly marked doors.

As long as humanity has been human, it has looked toward the heavens and dreamed that some day, some way, there would be giant federal contracts involved.

We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, except possibly flipping a coin.