Pending catastrophe is not an easy notion to entertain, much less sustain. Americans, moreover, have a low tolerance for doom and gloom. We are the nation of optimism, after all. We elect leaders who promise hope and change. We are the shining city on a hill. But what happens when the lights go out?

If you don't like tomato soup, you don't buy tomato soup.

Earlier feminists were almost universally pro-choice and have dominated political debate until now. Having access to abortion was viewed as the only way women could have full equality with men, who, until recently, couldn't get pregnant.

Great nations don't have to remind others of their greatness. They merely have to be great.

For justice to have any meaning, it must also mean that no innocent person should ever be executed.

But principles defended at the expense of pragmatic application is the business of priests.

I've never been a fan of presidents who place blame on their predecessors or who accept credit for events that couldn't have been engineered so soon in their tenure.