The administration's attempted financial penalization of the Roman Catholic Church, to impose what the pope has rightly called "militant secularism" at the expense of the Church's legitimate official canons, is oppressive, unconstitutional, repugnant, and the lowest form of political chicanery.

I liked and admired the late James Q. Wilson; he was a fine man and a rigorous intellect who made a positive difference, but where was he while American criminal justice was becoming the terrible conveyor-belt of corruption, hypocrisy, and abuse that it now is?

The report by Henry Schuelke III on the fraudulent prosecution of the late Alaska Senator Ted Stevens admirably exposed the problem of lawless prosecutors, which to some extent or another afflicts almost every jurisdiction in the country.

Europe looks increasingly like it is stirring, like the awakening Brunhilda, from its torpor, and could gradually, tentatively, take up the aptitudes of intercontinental leadership of olden time. For America, it may indeed be time to learn something from Europe, but not the Europe whose emulation Barack Obama was urging four years ago.