I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.

You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

I am a political recidivist. An incorrigible, repeat voter. A career lever-pusher. My electoral rap sheet is as long as your arm. Over the course of three decades, I have voted for presidents and school board members. I have voted in high hopes and high dudgeon. I have voted in favor of candidates and merely against their opponents. I have voted for propositions written with such complexity that I needed Noam Chomsky to deconstruct their meaning. I have been a single-issue voter and a marginal voter. I have even voted for people who ran unopposed. Hold an election and I'll be there.

We may never know why Joe Ellis fabricated a heroic past. But we know that the life he embellished has deeply diminished the life he'd earned.

On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about.

Kerry asks Americans to look at the evidence. Bush asks people to believe.