When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things; the debate is raging; and he's losing it.

Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.

There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules.

Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson - one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job - about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic-in a word, moral-undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage.

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

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