I started reading Hunter S. Thompson when I was in college.

I was told to hand over my disposable lighter, to prevent, I suppose, any threat of "Do what I say or I'll light this Marlboro and you'll all die - in thirty years due to inhalation of secondhand smoke."

What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.

I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.

Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.

The problem isn't a Congress that won't cut spending or a president who won't raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.

What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.