Baseball is Heaven's gift to mortals.

Remember Henry Adam's jest that the succession of presidents from Washington to Grant disproved the theory of evolution?

I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.

Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their backyards at 3 A.M.

The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, the United Nations is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern.

In a nation committed to better living through chemistry - where Viagra-enabled men pursue silicone-contoured women - the national pastime has a problem of illicit chemical enhancement. Steroids threaten the health of the 5 percent to 7 percent of players proved, by a mild regime of scheduled tests, to be using them. Steroids also endanger emulative young people. Further, steroids subvert what baseball is selling - fair competition. And they strike at the pleasure of engagement with America's team sport with the longest history.

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.