It seems the Southern Baptist Convention approves of freedom of association in the United States of America when it allows churches to disassociate themselves from the national Boy Scouts of America. But when it comes to the Boy Scouts' own freedom? Not so much.

Data-mining has been with us for years. Perspective should return once folks understand what data-mining is and what it's not. It's a sophisticated way to spot incipient threats to our security. It's not an unrestricted license to read American citizens' emails or listen in on our phone calls.

Sixty years. Sixty years on the throne of the United Kingdom. Can the little Englishwoman entering Westminster Abbey all in white, including the almost 19th century lady's hat, a big black matron's bag slung over a begloved arm, be the same young queen who tremblingly took the throne 60 years ago?

The apologists for this administration in the press corps responded predictably enough as one scandal after another was unfolding in Washington: They went after those who revealed the scandals, not those who perpetrated them.

In recent years, text-message techno-lingo has added another layer to the overgrowth covering a once muscular, colorful, ever alive and adaptable language -- until you have to wonder if there's still a language somewhere underneath all of that mass trying to get out. Or has it simply rotted away?

Just what is the country supposed to make of our president's rambling stream-of-consciousness billed as a Major Policy Address at the National Defense University last week?

It's called deniability. By keeping a president out of the loop, his loyal aides can hope to insulate him against any accusation that he knew of the dirty tricks being played on his opponents. That doesn't make the tricks any cleaner, or that the chief executive is any less responsible for what is done by his administration.

The most vivid memories aren't those carved in stone but the ones etched in the mind. Memory deepens with the years, the way a river carves through rock, slowly creating canyons, revealing old layers, unveiling pain you'd kept decently covered before, bringing it all back. Sometimes the river cannot be contained and will overflow its banks.

The jurisprudence of Her Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, may be only mediocre at best, but her candor deserves the highest praise. Every few years she'll pull back the judicial curtain and tell the rest of us what she thinks is really going on at the court. And shock anybody who can still be shocked at the court's motivations.

As it goes with these things, every day there is another drip. Which becomes a trickle, then a stream, and soon enough a flood. Maybe even a whole monsoon season. Scandals tend to multiply. It's not that some folks suddenly go bad, as an old boy once told me, it's that they're suddenly found out.

Our president is one cool customer, careful to stay a little distant from his Scandal of the Day, sidestepping any embarrassing questions rather than confronting them, analyzing his critics rather than answering them, looking down on the political circus even as he stars in it. And he does it all so smoothly.

"We're not going to have another Watergate in our lifetime. I'm sure."

Now we know. Or at least we know more than we did about what happened at Benghazi, and, even more telling, what happened afterward. And there's doubtless more to come. With each congressional hearing, with each appearance by another whistleblower, the picture becomes more complete.

The bloody war-by-proxy continues in Syria. It pits the embattled, increasingly desperate but still determined and far from defeated dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad against a disorganized amalgam of rebels, aka the Free Syrian Army.

Whenever this president can't answer a direct question about some failure of American security, or at least can't answer it satisfactorily, he goes into his riff about the need to ... close the brig at Guantanamo.

Kermit Gosnell. If you don't recognize the name, that's understandable. His trial in Philadelphia -- on multiple counts of murder -- has been covered extensively by the local papers.

This week's news from Iraq isn't good, though when has it ever been? Well, maybe during those exceptional times when Washington was paying close attention and American troops were being given the support and leeway to do their job right.

A cancer is eating away at a once Grand Old Party, and if the party doesn't wake up and take precautions, it may wind up only a shadow of its better self -- a hollowed-out refuge for haters and paranoids and the kind of ideological parasites that can reduce a major party to a minor one.

"I just see a huge trainwreck coming down." That's not a quote from one of our old editorials or from any of the other critics of what has become known as Obamacare. It's a quote from one of its key backers, one of its designers, one of its advocates and defenders. It's a quote from Max Baucus, senior senator from Montana and Democratic stalwart on the Senate Finance Committee.

I just see a huge trainwreck coming down." That's not a quote from one of our old editorials or from any of the other critics of what has become known as Obamacare. It's a quote from one of its key backers, one of its designers, one of its advocates and defenders. It's a quote from Max Baucus, senior senator from Montana and Democratic stalwart on the Senate Finance Committee.