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.

9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.

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

Who needs enemies when you've got Republican Surrenderists for Obamacare waiting in the wings?

The truly bold thing for Obama to do would be to tell the panic-mongers and boondoggle-seekers to shove it, and to tell taxpayers to ride out the rest of the tough times while he gets Washington's own economic house in order.

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.

The difference between past and present immigration experience is the existence of a defiant anti-assimilationist lobby that encourages legal and illegal aliens to resist adapting to the American way of life.