Americans complain about the lack of true leaders and of today's poll-driven politicians. But if American is a democracy, isn't that exactly how it is supposed to work?

George W Bush, lambasted as the destroyer of peace in the Middle East, may preside over the most welcome development there since the Second World War.

Anyone who thinks there is anything Americans cannot or will not do has lost faith in the American people, and is unfit to lead them.

In many ways, Martin Luther King was a good man - certainly a highly intelligent man. Well read, well spoken, influential well beyond his life. But equal to all the Presidents of the nation?

The Vice President will be leaving a slimy, black legacy.

Scientists want research grants, more published papers, and to be listened to by the general public. Bureaucrats want a bigger department and more clout. Politicians want a crisis - any crisis - so they can ride to power with a "solution".

Sure, global warming seems unlikely; but if it's true, it's so awful, shouldn't we take action just in case?

The ocean levels are not going to rise by 20 feet by 2100. According to the UN's International Panel on Climate Change, it's more like a single foot, or maybe 18 inches.

Government proposals to fix global warming won't work, at great expense.

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.