The office of the president is a secular office in a secular government. There is not a word in the Constitution that authorizes the president or anyone else in the federal government to make a religious decision.

Why then are both voters and candidates wasting their time talking about religion? The personal religious beliefs of the candidates should be considered irrelevant. Furthermore, people should not forget that there are a lot more professors of religion than practitioners. What a person claims to believe and how that person leads his or her life are often quite different.

People should be asking not what these people claim to believe about God, but what have they actually done? How do their lives measure up to their speeches? Do they demonstrate a belief in and a concern for the Constitution? Do they have a wide knowledge of the world as it truly is? Are they catering to special interests? Are they independent thinkers or followers?

The presidential race is, after all, a search for a secular leader, not for a pope or ayatollah. The United States is in deep trouble politically, financially, and economically. It will take a smart, sane, and courageous person to get us out. Opportunists and people who sell their souls for campaign contributions may well preside over our national collapse.

I suggest that we can see the focus of the next US administration by paying attention to Al Gore. He’s going around preaching the gospel of climate change, and that is rapidly becoming the new cause celebre for the ‘international community’. It’s more than a campaign by Gore, we’re seeing a campaign being supported by the mass media, by the powers that be. We are clearly being prepared for a ‘new show’, after the ‘Bush show’, and the ‘new show’ is going to be about carbon taxes and credits, new energy sources, more efficient cars, biofuels, and all those other things that are allegedly related to climate change and peak oil.

here are many arguments from those who oppose the Universal Health Care plans as proposed by Dennis Kucinich and others. One is that it would raise taxes. Horrors! Have you computed the amount that you pay in insurance premiums each year? The insurance companies have been "taxing" you for half a century and you take it in stride. The added taxes to cover your health care would not be likely to be more than you are paying now to the insurance company and the coverage would be better.

I have a cold. And I got it the only way I know how to do things -- the hard way. On Christmas Eve, I decided I'd give myself a present. I had this bright idea to get a head start on the new year by testing the strength of the Equal Rights Amendment -- you know, the ERA -- the free pass that enterprising women have used for years to back stubborn men into corners...

To all you parents, I’m sorry about the Chinese toys. With the output of my Workshop dwindling, I was forced to import in bulk. I apologize for the high amounts of lead, the sharp edges, the parts that fall off or blow up, the leaky batteries and the cute stickers that contain the date rape drug.

To all the registered Democrats who wrote me: it’s impossible to buy spines in bulk. I realize your predicament in terms of Congress, but you might want to just buy two-by-fours and jam them in as far as they’ll go. If nothing else, it will improve their posture.