Ah, if only the best place for storing embryonic stem cells was Yucca Flat.

The al-Qaida cell broken up near Buffalo, N.Y., contains some citizens who also found themselves in Afghanistan, training for the Great All-Around Satan Smiting. Treason? Oh, of course not. They were on a religious pilgrimage and got lost. Happens all the time. I knew a kid who went to Lutheran Bible Camp and turned up six years later in a Christian Identity compound with a shaved head and a Hitler mustache.

I've always wondered if there was a Hezbollah version of minesweeper where you get points for blowing up on your first move.

Look. Every partisan in every party has to learn one thing: Sometimes your people are wrong. To paraphrase an old retort, saying "My party, right or wrong" is like saying "My Kennedy, drunk or sober." Credibility is earned, and standing up and saying "Fie!" now and then reinforces your truthfulness.

So now we're after a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a guy-and-gal thing. To the founders, this would have been like an amendment requiring the sun to rise in the east; it would fall under the category of obvious truths that the Constitution need not address.

All you need to know about Arafat was that he insisted on wearing a pistol when he addressed the UN General Assembly. And all you need to know about the UN, I suppose, is that they let him.

I want to believe in intelligent design, and hence I am suspicious of anything that seems to confirm my desire to believe.