Columns

A year before I enrolled at St. Augustine's Flagler College, I attended Mercyhurst College, a private, liberal arts school in Erie, Penn. Pennsylvania's lottery system is designed to assist senior citizens, unlike Florida's, which is intended to improve education. Consequently, Mercyhurt's annual tuition ended up around $32,000. And that was in-state tuition.

Last week, Florida and a dozen other states asked the federal courts to measure the new health care law against the Constitution's requirements. In the simplest of terms, this new law is an unprecedented and unconstitutional expansion of federal power that will cost Florida taxpayers billions of dollars.

WASHINGTON -- The 2006 summit that preserved the peace occurred in a laundry room in the Minneapolis Metrodome after the Twins beat the Red Sox 8-1. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, with center fielder Torii Hunter in tow, met with Red Sox manager Terry Francona to assure him that Hunter had not intentionally sinned.

As a Roman Catholic, I have heard more than the usual share of other Catholics expressing frustration about the Church's handling of what seems to be a never-ending controversy. Great harm has come to some young people who have been the victims of molestation and similar behavior by a small percentage of priests.

When you look back on your life you sometimes think about things you wish you had done differently or done at all.

Over the past 14 months, our political debate has been transformed into an argument between the heirs of two fundamental schools of political thought, the Founders and the Progressives. The Founders stood for the expansion of liberty and the Progressives for the expansion of government.

When the Republicans shocked the liberal media elite by winning back Congress in 1994, they had been demonized for months. But it took the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995 for Bill Clinton and all of his "objective" media devotees to really pull the violence card and smear that mass murder all over Newt Gingrich and conservative Republicans, blaming it on their "anti-government" rhetoric.

What a difference $2,000 in a lesbian bondage strip club makes. Then again, the latest Republican National Committee scandalita (Press three for Spanglish: "Small scandal") is, alas, just that -- the latest in a string of problems plaguing the RNC when it should be stocking champagne for November. Who are these goofballs?

PHOENIX -- In 1994, when first running for Congress, J.D. Hayworth, who today is 51 and trying to wrest from John McCain, 73, the Arizona Republican Party's Senate nomination, went jogging in Washington wearing a T-shirt given to him by some Arizona loggers.

When ancient fossils of creatures that live on the ocean floor have been found in rock formations at the summit of Mount Everest, that ought to give us a clue that big changes in the earth are nothing new, and that huge changes have been going on long before human beings appeared on the scene.

As Democrats, after a Sunday rally on the Capitol grounds, marched to the House hand-in-hand to vote health care reform, Tea Partiers reportedly shouted the "n-word" at John Lewis and another black congressman. A third was allegedly spat upon. And Barney Frank was called a nasty name.