If you live in a place that you perceive to be a crowded place, you appreciate government; you see it as this thing that protects you against crime, that keeps order, that makes sure that nobody puts a massage parlor next to your house, that keeps other people's dogs from pooping on the sidewalk.

As long as we decline to allow sick uninsured people to just lie down and die on the side of the road, everybody has to have insurance for the health care system to work sanely.

Non-crazy gun advocates - the ones who aren't stockpiling in preparation for a zombie invasion - don't like the idea of expanding background checks because they think it'll be a lot more paperwork. And it probably would make it more difficult to sell guns at, say, a flea market.

Sarah Palin is an heir to the women's movement. She has not been constrained by gender. At no point in her life has she thought, 'I can't do that because I'm a woman.'

If Christmas is for families, what do you do when there are families scattered all over the country? I am pretty sure God wants to make sure I touch all the bases, even if I spend his actual birthday with Delta Airlines.

You know, I really miss sex scandals. They're generally colorful. They almost never mean anything over the long run. And while they're going on, the people who actually keep the government running are let alone to go about their business. Good old sex scandals.

At the beginning of his administration, Obama homed right in on Medicare, which he wanted to fix by reducing the overall cost of health care in this country. He risked everything - some would claim he lost everything - by being so single-minded.