Do the rich pay their fair share in taxes? This is likely to become a defining question during the presidential campaign.

Of all the campaign themes that will emerge leading up to the 2008 primaries, one you probably won’t hear a lot about is experience.

Ms. Ramírez is a psychiatrist who prefers the title of "first woman" to "first lady" and leads efforts to bar underweight models from Medellín’s fashion shows. She also challenged beauty pageants through alternative contests that reward knowledge of science, literature and business.

"She seemed to grow calmer as the world around her grew more furious," Mr. Moyers said.

I face the prospect of another campaign like an open-ended stay in a concentration camp.

On one thing, the Constitution is clear: Congress makes the rules on prisoners.

"There were people who dropped the ball," Mr. Colombo said.

An injured officer might be "up-triaged a little bit" at the hospital, he said.

"I don’t enjoy it anymore," he said at the time.

While the jail already has cable television, he said he was now arranging for a satellite dish, because Mr. Taylor and Mr. Lubanga wanted news from Africa.

His account of an unexpected root-canal procedure at the hands of a chador-wearing dentist is a small masterpiece of painful hilarity.

These books are written entirely by me from my own ideas, though some people persist in thinking that I wrote them with Bob. This would be rather difficult to do, since he’s dead.

"The activity in his brain ceased. And that’s death in New York State."

Like is the new say.

Wikipedia consistently favors the current and the kitschy.

It seems that people who vacation on a Caribbean cruise prefer fun, sun and kitschy dinner theater and would rather not think about how to make their 401(k)’s work harder for them.

The younger set is now willing to put its navel rings and lower-back tattoos under wraps in favor of the thrill of a new frock.

"The bill had support from the opinion elite in this country," Mr. Beck said. "But we built a grass-roots army, consumed with passion for a cause, and used the power of the Internet to go around the elites and defeat a disastrous amnesty bill."

People rarely weigh the cost of not taking a risk. Those are the ones that get you.

Why are we looking so hard? And what do we expect to find?

"I was terribly in love with him, but we were separated by race and by the fact that he hated me."

I was belligerent and obnoxious, but I didn’t mean it. That’s how we debated in my family.

We produce and replicate every day the culture in which our children grow up, a culture in which Paris Hilton gets news coverage 24/7 and young Iraqi refugees being forced into prostitution in Syria get a couple of minutes on the evening news; a culture in which kids, like their parents, sprint through each overscheduled day; a culture in which parents don’t have the time -- or take the time -- to model reading for their children.

"We don’t hang together, but we’re cool."

I did Ecstasy with her and felt as if I were peering through the windows of a crowded house I no longer lived in.

"They really think that they’re helping, but they’re actually messing it up bad."

... the smiles and warm embraces between Presidents Bush and Putin just a few weekends ago at the so-called lobster summit in Maine did little to soften the Kremlin’s pique ...

"The famous Kalashnikov assault rifle has become not only an example of daring innovative thought but also a symbol of the talent and creative genius of our people," President Vladimir V. Putin said in a decree.

"The point is that everybody is nobody."

The Texas Legislature has taken up a bill to tax strip clubs, dedicating the money to education.

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People like to see what they perceive as the little guy winning, because in today’s society that is a rare occurrence.

"Society should place an initial emphasis on abundance," Mr. Buffett argued, but "then should continuously strive" to redistribute the abundance more equitably.

Luckily for mankind, Perkins has retired from his job as an infidel dog and now works on the side of the angels.

This weekend, they were trying something that was new, yet as old as human desire.

"Mom, we killed women on the street today. We killed kids on bikes. We had no choice."

Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights -- that immaculate woman exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood.

"Why take any risk?" they ask.

The more he spoke, the more I saw babies.

"They brought him in one day and brought his head in another." "You don’t get that playing the game in your living room."

The president was assured no one was finding out much.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said "the biggest challenge is finding a statutory basis for holding prisoners who should never be released and who may or may not be able to be put on trial."

"I might have had the hefeweizen," he said. "But I’m not going to kill them for it."

Experts say that sex-selective abortions in India reduced the number of girls per 1,000 boys from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001.

He gestured at a passer-by with "Hail Satan" on his T-shirt. "That’s disturbing me a lot," he said.

"We are going to try to be the white-hat company."

IBM is managing traffic congestion in Stockholm.

There’s not a single tooth in that proposal.

"It is the ultimate in hackery -- for which I am perfectly suited."

"In every organization there are a relatively small number of really critical people."

... an iron hand, a dash of panache and a flair for things sartorial ...

I was a little bit untouchable in the eyes of some people.

"White is wicked hot in watches right now."

The sack is back.

Whether it will change the state of affairs is uncertain. But one thing is clear.

I love the idea of the old hard-boiled glamour.

Some white parents avoided schools with a heavy Chinese concentration, believing they would be too high-pressure for their children.

These claims are enough to get populist juices flowing. The problem with them is that they don’t hold up under close examination.

Boeing says the Dreamliner is a lighter, more durable airplane that will allow airline passengers to sit on the runway for hours and hours.

Tall and blond, he had an easy laugh, played on the lacrosse team and liked to dance.

Then, for reasons that seem to have something to do with making a lot of money, he made the unusual decision to go to work as a minion of Lucifer.

"At least we would have a direction."

If there were any purists on hand who were unhappy, their voices were drowned out in the cheers.

Unfortunately, this is a predictable outcome of a system driven by competing entrepreneurs rather than by reasoned policy.

"Normally you get only one chance in a lifetime to do something really special and meaningful, and that’s if you’re lucky."

"Everything just fell into place," Mr. Boucher said.

"Since there are people on both sides who don’t like it, maybe it’s the right thing."

And like the most fulfilling rituals, it involves a fantastic fetish.

What fabulous freedom there is in just giving something a try, with no expectations.

They were driving down to Texas in a converted school bus to a nudist festival called Rainbow. We were invited, and of course we went.

Officials say resistance from families is a major recruiting obstacle.

"It’s very different," Mr. Azar said. "It’s like making love to a rubber doll."

Several hours later, the Nissan was still in the street, and the driver’s door was open, revealing blood, scattered bills, a black bra and a gold stiletto pump inside.

He was charged with conspiring to cause explosions.

"There are two schools of thought on this."

But rational analysis doesn’t hold sway with the pregnancy police.

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For serious politicians and analysts, the "global warming" scare is passé.

Imagine if you could offset the whole Ten Commandments.

As big consumers of oil, you and I are intervening powerfully in Africa -- and perhaps unwittingly furthering graft and bloodletting.

"That’s when all hell broke loose," Mr. Williams said.

But now the glue is gone.

He likens it to a school of fish moving in a particular direction until a new leader suddenly emerges, everything shifts in that direction and somehow the crowd arrives at something close to an aesthetic.

Genetic engineering is too big for ethics. It changes human nature, and with it, our notions of good and bad. It even changes our notions of perfection. The problem with perfection in the age of self-transformation isn’t that it’s bad. The problem is that it’s incoherent.

Why Bush and the military are emphasizing Al Qaeda to the virtual exclusion of other sources of violence in Iraq is an important story.

Nothing amuses him more than the wincingly awkward silences that freeze a room in the moments after someone blurts out something embarrassing in a trying-too-hard attempt to look cool.

"The only explanation I can think of is the critical-mass explanation."

It will be dredged up from the ocean bottom, mixed with water and pumped to shore as a slurry that will spew out onto the beach.

Amazon folklore, in fact, is full of fanciful creatures that are used to explain unwelcome or embarrassing phenomena. The boto, for example, is a type of dolphin that is said to be able to transform itself into human form, wearing a white hat to cover its air spout, and seducing and impregnating impressionable young virgins.

It was ... [ Read More (2.6k in body) ]