(Barry) Bonds' records must remain part of baseball's history. His hits happened. Erase them and there will be discrepancies in baseball's bookkeeping about the records of the pitchers who gave them up. George Orwell said that in totalitarian societies, yesterday's weather could be changed by decree. Baseball, indeed America, is not like that. Besides, the people who care about the record book - serious fans - will know how to read it. That may be Bonds' biggest worry.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life.

Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called "self-interestedness". This was not a portrait of man "warts and all". It was all wart - except that the dominating attribute was not considered a blemish.

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

Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.

Look, three love affairs in history, are Abelard and Eloise, Romeo and Juliet and the American media and this President at the moment. But this doesn't matter over time. Reality will impinge. If his programs work, he's fine. If it doesn't work, all of the adulation of journalists in the world won't matter.