Television is one of the most fickle businesses that there are, you are in favour one minute and out the next.

Conservatives may worship Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' but for Obama, the helping hand comes in large measure from the public, not the private sector. To call this 'socialism' is to do violence to the word and to the concept. To call it 'un-American' is a smear.

When an office-holder facing a multi-count indictment says that he has decided to spend more time with his family, the proper response is a horse-laugh. When an accused politician explains that a charge of corruption is 'really' an attack on his or her race, religion, ethnic background or gender, the odds that something felonious happened jumps.

More things in politics happen by accident or exhaustion than happen by conspiracy.

Something about her eyes or voice has always suggested the hint of a free spirit, trapped in a Peck and Peck cage, dreaming of making rude noises at public gatherings of Republicans.

Protestations of indifference to higher office are hard to take seriously when the 'non-candidate' is busily engaged in testing the waters.

The niftiest turn of phrase, the most elegant flight of rhetorical fancy, isn't worth beans next to a clear thought clearly expressed.