All policy is a matter of gains and losses, upsides and downsides.

In my experience, it's not just that serious books get a hearing on comedy shows. But serious books get a serious hearing, as well as a funny one, on comedy shows.

The attacks of September 11, 2001, were spectacular, riveting, grim, costly and searing. The shock that they caused reverberated throughout the world. What happened in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania ended the lives of thousands of people and changed the lives of many more. But they did not change the world.

Football is controlled violence, but it is violence, which people have loved to watch since the gladiatorial contests in ancient Rome.

Let me remind you all that the first task of American foreign policy is to reduce threats to the United States.

The United States doesn't do what it does in the world for altruistic reasons. Nobody set out to be the world's government.

The windfall of great riches can, if mismanaged, make things worse, not better, for the recipients.