WASHINGTON -- The Republican presidential candidates, their sinews stiffened and their blood summoned up, may rightly dread Wednesday's version of what are inexplicably called debates.

WASHINGTON -- Illustrating an intellectual confusion common on campuses, Vanderbilt University says: To ensure "diversity of thought and opinion" we require certain student groups, including five religious ones, to conform to the university's policy that forbids the groups from protecting their characteristics that contribute to diversity.

WASHINGTON -- The Republican presidential dynamic -- various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support -- is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

WASHINGTON -- You step onto an airport's moving walkway, a flat metal conveyor belt that conveys travelers down an airport concourse, sparing them the indignity of burning a few calories by walking a bit.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Richard Mourdock, a Republican and Indiana's treasurer, wants to wrest his party's U.S. Senate nomination from a six-term incumbent who has been a national figure since becoming mayor of this city in 1968 at age 35, who has averaged 69 percent of the vote in five re-elections, and who ran unopposed by a Democrat in 2006.

"The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government ..."
-- U.S. Constitution

WASHINGTON -- The tea party's splendid successes, which have altered the nation's political vocabulary and agenda, have inspired a countermovement -- Occupy Wall Street.

WASHINGTON -- Republicans supposedly revere the Constitution, but in its birthplace, Pennsylvania, they are contemplating a subversion of the Framers' institutional architecture.

WASHINGTON -- Elizabeth Warren, Harvard law professor and former Obama administration regulator (for consumer protection), is modern liberalism incarnate.

Obama Gives States a Voice In 'No Child'
-- New York Times, Sept. 24