NEW YORK -- I confess to having a residual soft spot for Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who is retiring from radio for finally going too far.

NEW YORK -- It is hard to imagine that anything has gone unsaid about the so-called Ground Zero mosque, but we seem to be missing an important point.

The mosque should be built precisely because we don't like the idea very much. We don't need constitutional protections to be agreeable, after all.

NEW YORK -- Observing the Michelle Obama vacation controversy unfold, one is of multiple minds.

WASHINGTON -- Weve heard much these past few years about small town values, most recently iterated and personified by Sarah Palin.

WASHINGTON -- The current Journolist controversy that has the blogosphere heaving sparks, and Washington even more self-absorbed than usual, is weak tea -- a tempest in Barbie's teacup.

WASHINGTON -- Sarah Palin, the ubiquitous enchantress of the disenchanted, may not have been ready to lead the free world back when John McCain anointed her as his running mate. But she's left rubber on the road that leads to fame, fortune and a new feminine mystique that drives certain men and women wild -- in very different ways.

For what it's worth, I get a kick out of Sarah. May I call her Sarah?

WASHINGTON -- Fifty years ago Sunday, a novel hit Americas bookshelves that changed the way millions thought about race and the inexplicable South.

Harper Lees To Kill a Mockingbird, by some estimates the most-read book in American schools, has grown old enough to have become slightly dotty in the minds of fresher readers, many of whom have only a textbook understanding of the way things were.

WASHINGTON -- In the days since I suggested that President Obama's rhetorical style mimics feminine tropes, I've been informed of the following:

One, a black man cannot show anger in public lest he be considered an Angry Black Man.

WASHINGTON -- If Bill Clinton was our first black president, as Toni Morrison once proclaimed, then Barack Obama may be our first woman president.

Phew. That was fun. Now, if you'll just keep those hatchets holstered and hear me out.

NEW YORK -- In the catalog of life-altering surprises, few compare to the query that came my way a few weeks ago from CNN/US President Jon Klein: How would you like to co-anchor a prime-time show on CNN?