I say appears because as vivid and visceral as Human Smoke [italics mine (! -- when did they stop italicizing book titles)] is, it has a maddeningly slippery quality. In presenting bare facts unadorned by any commentary, Human Smoke [ditto] cloaks itself in an aura of limpid, virtuous purity. But beneath that cloak, things get a little murky because in presenting the facts as he does, Baker is making an argument that he doesn't explicitly state. Does he really believe--as he seems to--that aerial bombing is on a moral continuum with Nazi genocide? And that Adolf Hitler's hatred of Jews is comparable to Churchill's hatred of the Germans and Japanese? (We get Mrs. Churchill calling them "Nazi hogs" and "yellow Japanese lice" in a letter?) Or that the world would be a better place if--delirious fantasy--Europe had met German aggression with nonviolent resistance? I mean, if you're going to strongly imply that England should have made peace with Hitler, you might as well just come out and say it.

It's hard to argue with somebody who won't argue. It's almost like there's an unspoken analogy at work between Gandhi's nonviolence and Baker's noncommentary: Baker declines to take up arms in support of his thesis, as if to do so would be to commit rhetorical violence against the facts. But facts, even tragic ones, require context and interpretation. They don't speak for themselves. That's why we need historians.

Unlike his Democratic rivals, McCain has expressed support for individual investment accounts as a way to augment Social Security benefits. But his campaign has indicated he no longer favors diverting payroll taxes from Social Security to fund those accounts - a centerpiece of President Bush's Social Security reform proposal.

John Allison discovered Rand as a business major at UNC in the late '60s. "Atlas Shrugged" remains his favorite book.

"Most of the defenders of free markets mostly do it from an economic perspective," Allison says. "They argue that free markets produce a higher standard of living, which is certainly very good. But Rand makes a connection to human nature and why individual rights and free markets are the only system consistent with human nature."

"It's going to make us look like a rinky-dink university," UNCC religious studies professor Richard Cohen said Thursday after UNCC Chancellor Phil Dubois told the faculty council about the gift. "It's like teaching the Bible as a requirement."

[Richard] Cohen, the religious studies professor, responded that Rand was an ideologue, not a serious economist. "It would be exactly like having a Karl Marx room," he said.

No less an authority figure than Karl Rove has warned Republican operatives from demagoguing Barack Obama's middle name.

At a closed door meeting of GOP state executive directors in late January, Rove said the safest way to refer to Obama would be to use his honorific, "Sen. Obama."

"The context was, you're not going to stigmatize this guy. You shouldn't underestimate him," one of the executive directors said. Rove said that the use of "Barack Hussein Obama" would perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party

What we are doing is conducting what we think is rather ground-breaking scientific research in the hopes of better understanding voting behavior from a psychological perspective. The survey we are conducting is not aimed at changing respondents' opinions in any way, and this study is not being funded by any interest group or any of the candidates...

"I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have [been] the subject of this controversy," Obama said, saying that he'd never heard any of them personally.

"One of them I had heard about after I had started running for president and I put out a statement at that time condemning them," he continued.

But more than a year ago, Obama disinvited Wright from speaking at his candidacy announcement. Wright told The New York Times then that Obama told him, "You can get kind of rough in the sermons. . It's best for you not to be out there in public."

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

In your opinion, what are the "new sins"?
There are various areas today in which we adopt sinful behavior, as with individual and social rights. This is especially so in the field of bioethics where we cannot deny the existence of violations of fundamental rights of human nature—this occurs by way of experiments and genetic modifications, whose results we cannot easily predict or control. Another area, which indeed pertains to the social spectrum, is that of drug use, which weakens our minds and reduces our intelligence. As a result, any young people are left out of Church circles. Here's another one: social and economic inequality, in the sense that the rich always seem to get richer, and the poor, poorer. This [phenomenon] feeds off an unsustainable form of social injustice and is related to environmental issues—which currently have much relevant interest.

Democracy is a good thing for everyone in the world. Americans are no exception and neither are the Iraqis. Iraq's people, like people all over the world, have the right to enjoy democracy - which includes the right to define and develop their own democratic institutions. It should be obvious that the choice of what kind of democracy to choose can only be decided by the Iraqis. The people of every nation have the desire to pursue democracy and must have the freedom to choose the right democratic model consistent with its own conditions.

Democracies differ around the world. The world is a colorful pageantry - so how could the world's democracies be any less so? Democracies are different because each nation's culture, history, values, and stage of social development is different. We can say that the "soil" of the society determines what kind of democratic "tree" grows. Democracy needs nurturing, sure, but most important of all is the soil it grows in.

Democracy cannot be wholly transplanted. Whether democracy takes root and goes on to flower and bear fruit depends on whether the majority of people believe that it's suitable for the country's political, economic, and cultural soil. And whether one looks at history or at current events, the lesson is that forcibly transplanted democracy carried the seeds of its own destruction, and will result in very dangerous consequences..

I don't think that unless a greater effort is made by the...[g]overnment to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the Communists.

A few voters even say they are reluctant to vote for Mr Obama because a Southern racist might shoot him.

"There are people in this country who will not accept a black president," said Marvin Henderson, 32, at a Bill Clinton rally in Amherst, New Hampshire

After the recent murder of Benazir Bhutto, we realize once again that nothing excites the forces of hate and fear more than the prospect of decency and reconciliation.

Now that the Republican Party has abandoned any pretense of being in favor of small government, they have to try to sell us on the idea that their spending binges are more virtuous because they are paid on credit (deficit spending) vs. cash (taxes).

Two Detroit pension funds have sued Yahoo Inc. and its board of directors, saying they breached their duties to shareholders in trying to thwart a takeover by Microsoft Corp.