Hillary Clinton has spent years trying to erase the memory of her failed attempt to bring socialized medicine to the United States, but this week the ghost of Hillary Care was lurking in the wings again as she unveiled her new plan to overhaul the nation’s health system.

Let’s play “Jeopardy!”

Answer: This news event triggered the following headlines. “Greenspan Faults Bush in Book; Ex-Fed Chief: Politics Trumped.” “Former Fed Chair Greenspan Criticizes Bush in Book.” “In New Book, Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan Bashes Bush.” “Greenspan Book Criticizes Bush and Republicans — ‘They Deserved to Lose.’” “Greenspan Is Critical of Bush in Memoir; Former Fed Chairman Has Praise for Clinton.” “Greenspan Decries Course of Bush and GOP in New Book.”

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.

I'm going to continue with the Cochran family this week, giving you more detailed information on two of the children of William Allen and Alpha Johnson Cochran. These Cochrans were only one of several Cochran families in the Campbell County area and may be related to some of them. They were in a corner where three counties come together - Campbell, Coweta and Fayette - and they lived in the McCollum community.

In the late 1950s, the formal engagement in state socialism by Great Britain had twice been confirmed by the voters. And the socialists had been twice disfranchised. Great Britain was a mess. Clement Attlee, the clever lawyer-intellectual who embraced the dreams of common ownership, couldn’t quite sell the country on the success of it.

On Friday night, June 8, just before midnight, John Holloway suffered a massive stroke. The next night, he would undergo an emergency surgery to save his life. Since that time, he has spent most of the past three months in hospitals and a rehabilitation facility.

Like actress Sally Field, I am a mom. Unlike Sally Field, I do not live in La-La Land. We breathe a different brand of oxygen. We hold diametrically opposed worldviews. We have nothing in common but stretch marks.

I haven’t yet inquired of the most intelligent person I know, but I think she’d endorse a critical element in Alan Greenspan’s critique of the Republican party, as conveyed in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.

Every now and then you have to entertain folks at your house or you’ll be labeled a recluse, or worse, a hermit. Last weekend was just such a time.

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.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s closest adviser and architect of the New Deal, Harry Hopkins, advised, “Tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect, because the people are too damn dumb to know the difference.” Professor Bryan Caplan, my colleague at George Mason University, sheds some light on Hopkins’ observation in his new book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.”

Not that I expect anyone to believe this, but our daughter Mary, the German pianist, will be 50 years old in November. How can this be, when I’m only 55 and Dave 60?

“If you can read this, thank a teacher,” says the bumper sticker on the car in front of me. But literacy is more than the ability to read a bumper sticker. It also includes the accumulation of basic knowledge combined with a way of thinking that allows an individual to lead a life that is personally productive and contributes to America’s health and welfare.

When I was a kid, I often heard my parents say, as they parted company with others, “Y’all come see us.

And they meant it.

According to a survey done by the Barna Research group, only about eight percent of born again Christians tithe. If that’s true, and other studies reveal the same thing, then less than 10 percent of Christians are financing the impact that the church is having on the world today.

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.

We’re a pragmatic lot, we Americans. Or would cautious be the word? Those who prefer clarity in public policy often seem doomed — with blessed exceptions like the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 — to witness no end of philosophical hemming, hawing, stammering and foot-dragging.

A few weeks ago I attended a training session of the Georgia Association of Law Enforcement Chaplains, or GALEC. The several day sessions took place at the beautiful Baptist campground and convention center in Toccoa with about 60 chaplains from across the state in attendance.

“If only.” Those are the verbal crutches America must discard in a post-9/11 world.

If only the State Department hadn’t been so sloppy in issuing visas to the 9/11 hijackers. If only police and state troopers had been able to check the immigration status of the hijackers who were pulled over for speeding before the attacks. If only universities had been more diligent in monitoring the hijackers’ whereabouts. If only the feds had listened to alert agents’ recommendations to profile young Arab students in our flight schools. If only someone, anyone, had said something when they saw the suspicious behavior of the jihadists on dry runs.

“I don’t feel no ways tired. I come too far from where I started from. Nobody told me that the road would be easy. I don’t believe He brought me this far,” drawled presidential aspirant Hillary Clinton, mimicking black voice to a black audience, at the First Baptist Church of Selma, Alabama.

Not enough attention has been paid, on the Iraq question, to the factor of universal access to information.

For many years, in many wars, news reporters could not get near the front-line scene. And where high politics were concerned and dictators held sway, newsmen — and foreign diplomats — not only were stymied, they were deliberately misled.

They say you learn something new everyday. Well, I sure did learn a lot last weekend.

On our recent vacation, I learned quickly that there is a huge difference between a concierge, a butler and how much you should tip each one.

There is no photograph of Satan, so we must improvise with what we have: Osama bin Laden.

Looking like a Middle East version of a bad “Just for Men” beard dye commercial, OBL has resurfaced to deliver another rambling address to America.

When my sister arrived for the family get-together, she set down a platter on the kitchen island and turned to me with a fretful look.

It was not, as I feared, the floods in Wisconsin and Kentucky last month that kept me from hearing from my friend Viki. She probably didn’t even notice them.

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the darndest, most interesting questions from people in their churches and people they meet. Here are a few that I’ve gotten over the years and via email since this column started.

If you’ve just returned from your Labor Day vacation and are scanning the headlines from recent newspapers — don’t panic! America is not threatened by a category 5 hurricane named “Larry Craig.”

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights turns 50 this week. Created by the 1957 Civil Rights Act, signed into law Sept. 9 that year by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Commission’s work rarely makes the front pages as it did in the heyday of the civil rights movement.

The Wall Street Journal did a good job this week of exposing the vicious tactics of the far-left outfit MoveOn. The story centers on Democratic Rep. Brian Baird, an ardent opponent of the Iraq War, who recently traveled to that hellish country and, surprisingly, came back saying that the “surge” is improving things there.

Recently, I was one of 60 or more law enforcement chaplains gathering in northeast Georgia for several days of training.