Why did special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put a reporter in jail and ruin a government official's life in an "investigation" of things he already knew, including the fact that it was Richard Armitage who revealed that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA? Perhaps it was the corrupting influence of unbridled power.

Despite political spin about "tax cuts for the rich," cuts in tax rates have led to increases in tax revenues -- not only in this administration, but in the Reagan administration before that, and the Kennedy administration before that, not to mention in India and Iceland as well.

When the Constitution's protection of private property was disregarded, so that politicians could rob from the rich to give to the poor, that also gave politicians the power to rob from the poor and give to the rich -- such as seizing homes in low-income neighborhoods and turning that property over to developers.

Whenever I see the kinds of expressions on the faces of people in high-fashion ads, I feel lucky that I never met them.

When the University of California system and the California State University system raised their tuitions, the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle read: "UC, CSU Reach Again for Students' Wallets." Apparently you are only supposed to reach for the taxpayers' wallets.

A reader says that he had a T-shirt made that said: "Stop Continental Drift!" It made as much sense as "Stop Global Warming."

When Democrats are criticized, they counter-attack. When Republicans are criticized, they apparently believe in "the soft answer which turneth away wrath." In politics, however, a soft answer is like blood in the water that provokes piranhas to more vicious attacks.

At a recent debate over global warming sponsored by National Public Radio, the audience was polled beforehand and was solidly on the side of the hysterical predictions. Afterwards, they switched to a slight plurality against those predictions. Don't look for the global warming crusaders to risk doing any more debates.

Why should they, when they have virtually a monopoly in the media, in schools and colleges, and among politicians?