The most dangerous lechers and creeps are not drunks wearing rags on the street, but respectable men wearing hairspray, pinstripes, and wedding rings who lurk in the halls of power.

We knew Chris Matthews had no shame. Now we also know the king of TV ghouls has no souls

Out: Reading is fundamental. In: Feeling is fundamental.

It's time for a 21st-century retirement age. If 40 is the new 20 and 50 is the new 30, why shouldn't 70 be the new 65? The last time Washington politicians tinkered ever so gingerly with the government-sanctioned retirement age, Ronald Reagan was in office and Generation X-ers were all in diapers.

A city suffering from chronic poverty, out-of-control crime, a $76 million budget deficit and a 15 percent unemployment rate (nearly 50 percent for Oakland's youth) can hardly afford such social justice follies. But a pushover Democratic mayor and an overwhelmed police force have left what's left of gainfully employed Oakland taxpayers at the mercy of professional freeloaders and anti-capitalism saboteurs.

Try walking the halls of Congress. It's Abercrombie & Fitch meets the Hair Club for Men. Lots of really photogenic young people kissing up to lots of insufferable blowhards. Separated by one or two generations, most of these players have only one real thing in common: They have never been weaned from the public teat. The closest they've ever come to meeting a payroll is when they come together to spend everyone else's payroll taxes.

In the 1970s, 'The Boys on the Bus' exposed how a clubby pack of male political reporters ruled the road to the White House and shaped the news. Four decades later, an outsider gal from Alaska has commandeered the 2012 media bus - and left Beltway journalism insiders eating her dust.