Principals have be to able to fire teachers, or you can't run an effective school.

Some idealists suggest that election campaigns be paid for by the Treasury -- taxpayers would pay for campaigns intended to elect people we don't like. In fact, we DO have public campaign funding but nobody wants to admit it.

A president is supposed to be emotionally stable, not a weeping willow.

A computer can only do what it's told, or programmed, to do - it can't force people to do anything, unless they allow it to do so.

One of the supreme ironies of our time is that a religiously-motivated US president went to war in the name of God to set up a non-religious state in Iraq to protect Americans against a highly religious movement known as Al Qaeda.

The conservatives have rightly complained about the fiasco that was the CNN/YouTube debate, to say nothing of Chris Matthews' execrable moderating. Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it doesn't fit any better on that side.

The recent, less-than-informed coverage of the death of Benazir Bhutto reminds us of Neville Chamberlain's infamous comment about Czechsolovakia as " a faraway country about which we know nothing."

Of course Mr. Musharraf doesn't want to share power. Who does? Does The Times want to share power and influence with the LA Times or with the Washington Post? Of course not.

How come all the environmentalists keep proposing things people don't want to do? Real solutions nedn't require deprivation.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, stirred up a storm when he spoke of the Nativity as a "myth." The Pope didn't have that problem. Perhaps the Pope has a stronger brand identity than does the Church of England?