The Economist is undoubtedly the smartest weekly newsmagazine in the English language. I always look forward to its quirky year-end double issue.

America's great newspapers have staffs that range from 50 percent to 70 percent of what they were just a few years ago.

History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.

Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady.

Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq.

Stylistically speaking, Barack Obama could hardly be further from Jimmy Carter if he really had been born in Kenya.

So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so.