Apparently there is nobody among either the Democrats or the Republicans who is going to cause a runaway stampede like that which toppled all the Republican front-runners in 1940, when the convention delegates began loudly chanting “We want Wilkie!”

There is an article in the current issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education — the trade publication of the academic world — about professors being physically intimidated by their students.

Shoeless Joe Jackson was the only man to bat .382 in his last season in the major leagues. After that he was banned for life for his role in the “black sox scandal,” the deliberate throwing of the 1919 World Series.

Books are good gifts to receive and even better gifts to give because you can get books without half the hassles involved in buying many other kinds of gifts. You can easily buy books from the Internet and avoid the mob scenes at the shopping malls.

Since electricity is generated mostly by burning coal, has anyone calculated how much pollution is created by electric cars, even though none of that pollution comes out of their tailpipes?

People who are in the top 1 percent in income receive far more than 1 percent of the attention in the media. Even aside from miscellaneous celebrity bimbos, the top 1 percent attract all sorts of hand-wringing and finger-pointing.

The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of 2 has as its reason an opportunity for “early intervention” to treat the condition.

Among the many mindless mantras of our time, “making a difference” and “giving back” irritate me like chalk screeching across a blackboard.

It is remarkable how many political “solutions” today are dealing with problems created by previous political “solutions.” Three examples that come to mind immediately are the housing market crisis, the wildfires in southern California, and the water shortages in the West.

High school seniors who want to go to a selective college in the fall of 2008 should already be making arrangements to take the tests they will need before they apply ahead of the deadlines for such schools, which are usually in January or February.

Oakland, California, continues to suffer the high crime rate, and especially the high murder rate, which has long afflicted that city. Judging by a recent speech by its current mayor, long-time leftist Ron Dellums, it can look forward to a future all too much like its past.

It would be hard to think of anyone whose portrayal in the media differs more radically from the reality than that of Justice Clarence Thomas. His recent appearances on “60 Minutes,” the Rush Limbaugh program, and other media outlets provide the general public with their first in-depth look at the real Clarence Thomas.

The Yankee bullpen has some young pitchers who could throw a baseball through a brick wall -- if they had enough control to hit the wall.

Nothing is easier than to second-guess other people’s decisions, ignoring the inherent limitations of knowledge, the pressures of circumstances, and the dangers of alternative courses of action.

In a world where the tragedy that is Iraq is usually discussed only in media sound bites and political slogans, it is especially gratifying to see an adult, intelligent, and insightful account of life inside Iraq by someone who lived there for nine months in the early days of the occupation in 2003 and 2004, and who saw the fundamental mistakes that would later plague the attempt to create a viable Iraqi government.

Sometimes I feel as if I must be one of the few people left in America who is not a military expert.

For example, all sorts of politicians have been talking about all sorts of ways we ought to “redeploy” our troops. The closest I ever came to deploying troops was marching a company of Marines to the mess hall for chow.

During the first 30 years of my life, I had no health insurance. Neither did a lot of other people, back in those days.

No trade-offs?

A whole nation following the tragedy of a mine cave-in in Utah was struck by the further tragedy of another cave-in at the same mine, killing men who had gone underground to try to rescue the miners trapped there.

It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise.

Two recent tragedies — in Minnesota and in Utah — have held the nation’s attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention.

Amid all the hand-wringing and finger-pointing as housing markets collapse, mortgage foreclosures skyrocket, and financial markets panic, there is very little attention being paid to the fundamental economic and political decisions that led to this mess.

It took a collapsing bridge in Minnesota to alert people across the country to the fact that many other bridges in many other places have been allowed to deteriorate without adequate maintenance.

“Moral paralysis” is a term that has been used to describe the inaction of France, England and other European democracies in the 1930s, as they watched Hitler build up the military forces that he later used to attack them.

“And then what?” That is the question which should be asked of those who are demanding that we pull out of Iraq now.

Historians in the future will undoubtedly find many and varied lessons from the war in Iraq. But we in the present do not have the luxury of waiting for all the evidence to be in before we start to understand what has gone wrong and what has gone right in Iraq.

When my research assistant and her husband took my wife and me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, I was impressed when I heard her for the first time speak Chinese as she ordered food.

With the White House, the leaders of both political parties, and the media all solidly behind the “comprehensive” immigration “reform” bill, how could it be stopped in the Senate, as it was last week?

Among the interesting people encountered by my wife and me, during some recent vacation travel, were a small group of adolescent boys from a Navajo reservation. They were being led on a bicycle tour by a couple of white men, one of whom was apparently their teacher on the reservation.

We in America have some of the most magnificent national parks in the world — Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and many others.

The disbarment of Durham District Attorney Michael Nifong should be just the first step in remedying the gross and cynical fraud of last year’s “rape” case against Duke University lacrosse players.