No matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting.

Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid style in American politics. He is the un-Edwards and un-Huckabee - an adult aiming to reform the real world rather than an adolescent fantasizing mock-heroic 'fights' against fictitious villains in a left-wing cartoon version of this country.

It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet.

It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen.

All children find chaos congenial. Any unruliness, even by nature, advances the child's program of subverting authority.

Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.