Redistricting is a deeply political process, with incumbents actively seeking to minimize the risk to themselves (via bipartisan gerrymanders) or to gain additional seats for their party (via partisan gerrymanders).

First, his job approval ratings have been trending down for many months, a trend that has accelerated in recent weeks as the war on terrorism has been supplanted in the public's mind by corporate scandals, stock market declines, and a growing sense of economic insecurity.

Human reason needs only to will more strongly than fate, and she is fate.

Votes in federal elections are cast and counted in a highly decentralized and variable fashion, with no uniform ballots and few national standards.

Speech is civilization itself. The word, even the most contradictions word, preserves contact - it is silence which isolates.

With the parties at virtual parity and the ideological gulf between them never greater, the stakes of majority control of Congress are extremely high.

I will keep faith with death in my heart... For the sake of goodness, for the sake of love, Let no man's heart be ruled by death... The only religious way to think of death is as part and parcel of life; to regard it, with the understanding and the .emotions, as the inviolable condition of life.