This is how most stories end in the hospital. Not with crash carts and sirens and electric shocks to the chest, but with an empty room, a crisp white bed, silence.

If you give a man a hammer, he thinks he can solve all problems by pounding. Well, God gave men penises.

Catholic extremism should be resisted as fiercely at home as we oppose the Taliban abroad.

Life is nasty, brutish, and short. Death is easy.

Much as we do not permit convicted pedophiles to teach kindergarten or convicted hijackers to board airplanes, common sense dictates that individuals who have been imprisoned for plotting violence against abortion clinics should never again be permitted anywhere near such facilities.

Victory [over homophobia] may require five or maybe 20 years. Yet I have no doubt that "don't ask, don't tell" and same-sex adoption bans will be as unspeakable and inexplicable to my grandchildren as counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being.

If freedom means anything at all, it is the right to primacy in regard to sexuality, reproduction, medical care and death.