I'd like to know why sociologists can't decide whether movie sex and violence has any effect on children, but there's a universal consensus that even a glimpse of a Camel will force children to become lifelong smokers.

The logical upshot of liberalism's hatred of hypocrisy is that it is better for the liar to champion lying, the glutton to advocate gluttony, the adulterer to celebrate adultery, than for someone to preach the right thing if he himself occasionally does the wrong thing. Better to let your failings define you and be happy about it, than to let your ideals define you but then fall short of them, for that opens you up to the charge of hypocrisy.

Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies.

If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.

Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone.

Joe Biden says the Wall Street crisis is the result of George W. Bush's tax cuts, which makes as much sense as blaming the rising price of fairy dust. But as a wise man once asked, Who gives a rat's patoot what Joe Biden thinks?

The premise of my book is that everyone is a bit ideological to some extent. Everyone comes from a ideological perspective.