Big Government is erecting a panopticon state - one that sees everything, and regulates everything. It’s great “customer service,” except that you can never get out of the store.

If you look at the range of Hollywood movies playing in most cities in the developing world, you'd hate the America they portray, too.

Can't spell, can't spot fake Shakespeare, can't tell one wacky foreigner from another: it's increasingly obvious that Barbra is some deep sleeper planted by the Republicans to discredit the very concept of activist celebrities. Poor old Democrats, in thrall to her fundraising: people who need Barbra are the unluckiest people in the world.

But in reality the point of free speech is for the stuff that’s over the line, and strikingly unbalanced. If free speech is only for polite persons of mild temperament within government-policed parameters, it isn’t free at all. So screw that.

There may be many things wrong with the United States but only a blind fool who hasn't been paying attention for the last twenty years would hold up Europe as the alternative.

Those who can do. Those who can't form a supercommittee.

LBJ held up Detroit as a model of what the Great Society could accomplish. He was right.