I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

You look at the large problems that we face - that would be overpopulation, water shortages, global warming and AIDS, I suppose - all of that needs international cooperation to be solved.

In city rooms and in the bars where newspeople drink, you can find out what's going on. You can't find it in the papers.

Texas liberals are the camels of good news. We can cross entire deserts between oases.

Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair’s-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?

The government can now delve into personal and private records of individuals even if they cannot be directly connected to a terrorist or foreign government. Bank records, e-mails, library records, even the track of discount cards at grocery stores can be obtained on individuals without establishing any connection to a terrorist before a judge. According to the Los Angeles Times, Al Qaeda uses sophisticated encryption devices freely available on the Internet that cannot be cracked. So the terrorists are safe from cyber-snooping, but we're not.

We often seem to be swimming through such a miasma of sexual violence - in advertising, television programming, heavy metal, rap, films, and worst of all, in the home - that even First Amendment absolutists sometimes daydream about how nice it would be to have government-as-nanny just outlaw all this effluent.