If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

Whenever you hear a politician carry on about what a mess the schools are, be aware that you are looking at the culprit.

Economist Frederick Thayer has studied the history of our balanced-budget crusades and has come up with some depressing statistics. We have had six major depressions in our history (1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893 and 1929); all six of them followed sustained periods of reducing the national debt. We have had almost chronic deficits since the 1930s, and there has been no depression since then - the longest crash-free period in our history.

It is quite reasonable to subscribe both to the old saw that no good girl was ever ruined by a book and to the perception that it is not good for children to be constantly exposed to the sexual violence in our popular culture. Protecting children seems to me logically, legally, and rather easily differentiated from censorship.

And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist - it's practically a congenital disorder with me.

Sometimes I think Texas exists as a reality check for those who might wander too far toward the precious.

Humanism is not alive and well in Texas. Different colors and types of Texans do not like one another, nor do they pretend to.