Yes, this is 21st-century America. Where we have better means to treat mental illness than ever before, but choose to let the insane people decide to get it or not.

Bill Clinton was a liberal who could appeal to conservative-leaning Bubba voters.

Al Gore adopted three utterly different personas in three national presidential debates.

Al Gore's performances could be a case study in abnormal-psychology classes.

Almost all political campaigns involve falsity and playacting.

Because liberalism typically doesn't sell in American presidential politics, liberal candidates tend to run as culturally conservative centrists.

Bush's faith in the rightness of his strategy in the broader war is deep-seated. It is a product of faith.

Calculation has its advantages, but no one likes naked calculation.

Comedians still make fun of Bill's out-of-control appetites, but with Hillary, the mockery is about how she lets nothing be out of control.

France will always be France no matter what, but America involves striving toward an ideal.

If Bill was all id, Hillary is all superego.

It is Hillary's lot in life not to be able to fake it well.

John Kerry couldn't even order a Philly cheesesteak properly.

Message to Obama: Fighting the Clinton machine won't be as easy as picking up favorable press clips.

Parents are the most likely to be victims of the violence of their mentally ill children.

When they are treated, the seriously mentally ill aren't more violent than the general population. If untreated, though, they are.

You have to check out 'March of the Penguins'. Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy.

Clinton's fakery was so deft and deeply ingrained that it was impossible to tell where it ended and the real Bill Clinton began. This constituted a kind of political genius.

In person, George W. Bush is extremely forceful. He has a restless energy when he sits in a chair, and nearly leaps out of it when making certain points.

The debate about the war seems pretty robust and free. Many publications, from the New Yorker to the Nation, feel perfectly comfortable printing anti-American articles and that's fine. That's what the First Amendment is all about.