Eric Holder dismissed America as a "nation of cowards" because we wouldn't, he argued, have a "national conversation" about race. It's a slander wrapped in a farce. We talk of race unremittingly. That's the farce. The slander is hydra-headed.

There is nothing the cable channels love more than a good murder trial, especially if the violence is spiced with the irresistible seasoning of race. But you don't understand much about America if you don't know that only some racial recipes are newsworthy. If the victim is white and the killer is black, it's not interesting (unless the killer is a celebrity).

I feel a very unusual sensation -- if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude.

-- Benjamin Disraeli?

Many commentators on United States v. Windsor have offered the view that the decision was not far-reaching, that it didn't enshrine same-sex marriage as a constitutional right and that therefore the struggle continues.

It would be nice to write a column in praise of President Obama for his vigorous conduct of the war on terror -- to praise his willingness to look for "dots" to connect amid all the electronic noise of the communications web.

If I were the parent of a child who might be kept alive -- if only for a few more years -- by a lung transplant, I too would move heaven and earth to get it done.

In the course of his rambling monologue on national security policy delivered at the National Defense University, President Obama gave only glancing attention to the most significant military undertaking of his term in office -- the Afghanistan war.

The headlines were misleading: "Moms are Breadwinners in Record 4 of 10 Households." Immediate thought: Wow, 40 percent of wives are primary breadwinners. Nope.

If you Google "George W. Bush shredding the Constitution," you will get many millions of hits.

Count me as irritable on the subject, but President Obama's imperious habit of suggesting that American diplomats work for him is offensive to democratic sensibilities.