Recently the country has seen too much of our legislators, seeing them as a gaggle of check-kiting, judge-smearing deadbeats who don't pay their restaurant bills but raise their pay in the middle of the night. Many Americans-this columnist included-hitherto said tax increases are justified by the budget deficit now say: Give that mob more money? Never. Not a nickel of new taxes until term limits change the political culture on Capital Hill.

The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering.

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

Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.

There is no reason to think today's levels of [drug] addiction are anywhere near the levels that would be reached under legalization.

Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election.