In its new report on how to reduce drunk-driving deaths, the National Transportation Safety Board states its goal in the title: "Reaching Zero." The agency thinks it is irreproachable to try to ensure that no one ever dies in an alcohol-related accident.

When it comes to prosecutors' investigations of leaks, you can count on journalists to dispense with impartiality and scream bloody murder.

If rain is pouring and you don't want to get wet, you have a few choices. You can stay inside. You can put on a raincoat, grab an umbrella and brave the torrent. Or you can step outside and demand that it stop.

For decades, Americans have been told of the evils of importing energy. It sends our money abroad, the argument goes, makes us vulnerable to supply disruptions, strengthens our enemies and weakens the economy.

Video surveillance cameras have been growing in popularity for years, but in recent weeks their advance has gotten a turbo boost. After helping to identify two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, they went from occasionally desirable to universally vital.

With the Iraq war behind us and our departure from Afghanistan underway, the United States could be entering a well-earned respite from fighting. But even before peace can take hold, hawks are singing the old country song: "I've enjoyed as much of this as I can stand."

Once in a while, a government agency adopts a policy that is logical, hardheaded, based on experience and unswayed by cheap sentiment. This may be surprising enough to make you reconsider your view of bureaucrats. But not to worry: It usually doesn't last.

According to a 19th-century composer named Francis Scott Key, the United States is the "land of the free and the home of the brave." If he were writing those lyrics today, he might add an asterisk with the notation: "Void in the aftermath of terrorism."

The autopsy gave a spare account of how the 52-year-old man died. He suffered blunt force injuries on his torso and legs, and abrasions on his left wrist indicated he had been tied or shackled down. One of his neck bones was fractured.

Our era is known as the Age of Terror, and no wonder. Twelve years ago, the United States suffered its worst terrorist attack ever, and since then, we have lived under the shadow of atrocities designed to frighten as well as kill. The bombs that went off in Boston put to rest the hope that with al-Qaida largely demolished, we could rest easy.

The communist regime in Cuba was just about to come tumbling down, ending decades of dictatorship and opening the way for freedom and democracy. But before that could happen, Jay-Z and Beyonce took a trip to the island. So Cuba's despotism can expect to survive another 50 years.

Democrats claim we have one party that upholds science and one that rejects it.

When it comes to government action, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hold down gasoline prices to help motorists, and you create shortages. Punish landlords to protect tenants, and apartments get harder to find. Invade Iraq to spread freedom, and you get civil war.

After deciding to pursue the execution of the man charged with fatally shooting 12 people in a Colorado movie theater last summer, the prosecutor declared that "for James Egan Holmes, justice is death."

Flying commercial can be a terrible hassle these days, but not for Steven Washburn. The people in charge of airport security have decided to spare him all the inconveniences.

The New Yorker magazine once had a cartoon showing a storefront office with the company name on the window: "None of Your Damn Business Inc." If it were publicly traded, the corporation's stock would be down this morning.

Some people should not be trusted with access to firearms. On that point almost everyone agrees, the only debate being where to draw the line.

Foreign policy is often a form of theater, with elaborate rituals and pretenses that no one takes too literally. But rarely have the gimmicks of stagecraft been as obvious as in the latest standoff between North Korea and the United States.

Ten years ago this week, Americans were about to be introduced to a strange new concept, as they awaited the U.S. war to bring regime change in Iraq. Coined by American military officers, it encapsulated a situation in which everything went right until everything went wrong. The term was "catastrophic success."

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy can't be created and can't be destroyed -- it can only be changed from one form into another. The same holds true of the puritanical impulse.