With a chip on his shoulder larger than his margin of victory, Barack Obama is approaching his second term by replicating the mistake of his first. Then his overreaching involved health care - expanding the entitlement state at the expense of economic growth. Now he seeks another surge of statism, enlarging the portion of gross domestic product grasped by government and dispensed by politics. The occasion is the misnamed "fiscal cliff," the proper name for which is: the Democratic Party's agenda.

The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.

Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.

Sports is the toy department of life.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

The English language is not always the President's friend.

Baseball exemplifies a tension in the American mind, the constant pull between our atomistic individualism and our yearning for community.