When are the world's political parties going to get appropriate symbols: snake, louse, jackal, ... trash can, clown face, ... dollar bill with bat wings on it?

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.

Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.

Iraq's invasion of Kuwait is a case of bad men doing wrong things for wicked reasons. This is the full-sized or standard purebred evil and is easily recognized even by moral neophytes. Other malignities-drugs in America, famine in Africa and everything in the Middle East-are more complex. When combating those evils people sometimes have trouble deciding whom to shoot.

There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions.