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

I just got hooked on the radio, the voice of it all. It was my connection to metropolitan America, if you will. Sports, in particularly baseball then 'cause of its rich sediment of numbers, was one of the first things a young person could peg up with adults on - that is, you could know as much about Jimmy Fox as your father did.

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

The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.

Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.