And that is how we intend to destroy the enemy!" The superior shakes his head wearily. "Young man, the Soviets are our adversary. The Navy is the enemy.

We've all been wrong- I certainly have- and we should thank those who set us right. Not always fun, but always best in the end.

Trump is not just unlike a Republican, he's unlike a presidential candidate. The whole elaborate presidential process is designed to screen out people like Donald Trump. And that process broke down in ways quite unlike anything in the recent experience of the United States.

Donald Trump, as a businessman, he's not much of a builder and he's not much of dealmaker and he certainly isn't very good at making expenses line up with income. But he is a marketing genius. He must have seen an empty market niche that no one but him filled.

[In politics,] when there is no reason to speak, there is a reason not to speak.

The system has evolved to protect parties from people like Donald Trump. It really is true that people without well-established public records, without proven capability in public service, without tested beliefs and at least apparently under the influence of a foreign power, such people are screened out by major parties.

Anybody who imagines that an election can be won under these circumstances by banging on about William Ayers and Jeremiah Wright is ... to put it mildly ... severely under-estimating the electoral importance of pocketbook issues. We conservatives are sending a powerful, inadvertent message with this negative campaign against Barack Obama's associations and former associations: that we lack a positive agenda of our own and that we don't care about the economic issues that are worrying American voters.