Why can't we Americans buy cheap cars? The cheapest car in the US costs about $20,000, about 8 times the cost of Tata's offering.

Bush-bashers hate to admit it, but a smaller percentage of active-duty military personnel died during both Bush administrations than during the Reagan and Carter administrations.

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.