Out of the snows of New Hampshire came the walking dead-dead at least as pronounced by the political blogs and media talking heads.  Last summer, they chronicled the exquisite decline of the candidacy of Senator John McCain.  McCain is the type of guy you would be proud your kid became.

Why are atheists so angry lately? There has been a flood of books promoting the anti-belief system, and some of them even hit the best seller list of the “New York Times.”  The pope keeps informing the world that humankind cannot exit without hope, a hope based on faith, but few are listening. 

With the very strange goings on in evangelical Protestant circles toward Mormonism, especially those led by the amiable denier Mike Huckabee, , one begins to see importance in the wisdom of the Founding Fathers who insisted on a separation of Church and state. For instance, when the Holy See wrote President Jefferson to ask what say he expected to have in the naming of Catholic bishops, he politely wrote back that in America there was no such interference.

After having published my two volume history of the presidency, I began to dream that Oprah would make it her summer reading.  The designation would mean 200,000 copies would be sold.  Instead, she chose Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, the tale of a frustrated married woman who commits suicide.  Too bad.

In 1994, Mitt Romney was challenging Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy for one of the US Senate seats from Massachusetts.  For the first time in his career, Kennedy had a strong contender, and his campaign staff reminded traditionally a Catholic Massachusetts that Romney was a "Mormon."  It was obviously an attempt to raise the religious issue, and newspapers and commentators quickly recalled for the Kennedy family the bigotry which Jack Kennedy faced in the 1960 race for the presidency of the United States.

Benjamin Franklin once said that he opposed any action that would lead to the debasement of the common people  I now know what Franklin meant by watching the second ridiculous debate co- sponsored by  YOUTUBE and CNN.  CNN had 5000 questions from the YOUTUBE site and managed to pick some of the most stupid and banal inquiries that one could dreg up.

Sometime ago, Rudy Giuliani was campaigning in New Hampshire in order to convince the common folk that he is a Republican.  He had a bare acquaintance with the GOP while in New York City, and at one time he even supported liberal Democrat, Mario Cuomo for governor.  He also supported strong gun control, abortion, and gay marriages or unions.  Those themes played well in Manhattan, but not too well in the other boroughs of the city and the nation.  Now h

In November, the state of New Jersey had an important election in which only 31% of registered voters cared to participate.  At the polls, I was struck by the symbolism of poll workers who could not figure out who was registered... 

Try as critics may, more and more people seem to like Hillary. She is liked enough it seems to make her the next president of the United States. Her election will mark the beginning of the end of the disasterous presidency of George Bush II.  Even Republicans may breathe a sigh of relief when the Sage of Crawford leaves in January 2009.  But why Hillary?  First, despite the observations of the Washington chattering class, she has broadened her appeal to women.  Initially, she had considerable support among working class women of the nation who are most directly affected by downturns in the global economy, the lack of medical care, and the education mess in urban areas.  It made sense, they said, since they saw her liberalism as good for them. They voted in their own self interest, and since many working class women do not vote, it looked like their support was less important than meets the eye.

When I young and living in Madison, New Jersey, we would listen in the autumn to the World Series, usually between the awesome New York Yankees and the hapless Brooklyn Dodgers (sometimes the New York Giants made it in). This competition was termed the “Subway Series,” indicating that one could see all the action by traveling to stadia via the subways in the Bronx or Brooklyn. One did not need a car to see the World Series.