Social Security is at last on the nation's front burner.

In my opinion, the president is right to address future funding, even though Social Security will show a surplus through 2018 and will not run out of funds until 2042.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

When runaway inflation and bank failures struck in Germany in the 1920s, the middle class was destroyed, which led directly to the rise of the Nazis.

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.

As I listened, it occurred to me that interest in and affection for the animals that share the planet with us may be a more unifying force than any other.

Social Security is at last on the nation's front burner.