In 1961, when astronaut Gus Grissom tried to avoid responsibility for losing his spacecraft, he said, “the hatch just blew.” Or so Tom Wolfe reports in “The Right Stuff” (1979), which four years later became a great movie.

WASHINGTON — Mid-term elections 13 days earlier had been disastrous for Republicans, but Sara Taylor on Nov. 20, 2006, gushed in her thank you message to the Office of National Drug Control Policy. The 32-year-old White House political director praised drug czar John Walters and his deputies for attending 20 campaign events for vulnerable Republican members of Congress. On Friday this week, Taylor as a private citizen will testify under oath about the propriety of this political activity.

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

In 1961, when astronaut Gus Grissom tried to avoid responsibility for losing his spacecraft, he said, “the hatch just blew.” Or so Tom Wolfe reports in “The Right Stuff” (1979), which four years later became a great movie.

Sen. Joe Biden is the embodiment of snide. Snide is the embodiment of the left-wing attitude toward gun owners. So when snide Joe Biden confronted a YouTube user who asked Democrat presidential candidates about gun control during a debate Monday night, what unfolded was a Teachable YouTube Moment — the caught-on-tape embodiment of ideological snideness toward the Second Amendment and those who defend it.

The following letter should have been written, but was not, by an illegal alien:

Dear American People,

I entered your country illegally. Several years ago, I paid thousands of dollars to a “coyote” to sneak me out of Mexico through your southern border.

Well, it took two-and-a-half years, but the University of Colorado finally axed the nutty professor.

Ward Churchill has been fired for academic misconduct, including plagiarism. Despite those assertions, this was really about an out-of-control teacher earning nearly $100,000 a year saying things so foolish that no institute of learning could support them.

WASHINGTON — Karl Rove, President Bush’s political lieutenant, told a closed-door meeting of 2008 Republican House candidates and their aides Tuesday that it was less the war in Iraq than corruption in Congress that caused their party’s defeat in the 2006 elections.

The Gridiron Club, an invitation-only organization of fewer than 70 Washington reporters and columnists founded in 1885, exists almost solely to host an annual white-tie dinner attended by Supreme Court justices, Cabinet secretaries, congressional leaders and assorted celebrities.

Ward Churchill, the controversial University of Colorado ethnic studies professor who likened 9/11 World Trade Center victims to “little Eichmanns,” has finally lost his job. CU regents voted 8-1 this week to fire Churchill after a lengthy investigation that revealed a long history of academic misconduct by Churchill, including plagiarism.

Last week brought a convergence of issues into the public realm, all of which I’ve previously written about, polled on or participated in.

My wife, a professor of nursing, often displays a pin on her clothing that has become, for her, a favorite symbol. That symbol is a turtle.

The Democrats are poised to hurl America right over the cliff, to the rocks below.

Wait — I didn’t say they long to do such like, or that, in suicidal mood, they’d take the chance if they got it, assuming they win big in 2008. I think if they do win, much of the creepy teeth-baring and chest-pounding they presently go in for will likely just ... go away.

Nothing good could come of it, but like moths drawn to a hot porch light on a cool summer night, we just had to look. After all, it’s not everyday we saw an armadillo the size of a football padding his way across Flamingo Street, totally unaware of a freckled-faced boy with bright red hair bearing down on him.

“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.

Sometimes the advocates of socialized medicine claim that health care is too important to be left to the market. That's why some politicians are calling for us to adopt health care systems such as those in Canada, the United Kingdom and other European nations. But the suggestion that we'd be better served with more government control doesn't even pass a simple smell test.

Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target Europe with missiles if the United States deployed components of a limited missile defense system to the Czech Republic and Poland.

Recently Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to target Europe with missiles if the United States deployed components of a limited missile defense system to the Czech Republic and Poland.

WASHINGTON — When Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid picked up his ball and went home following his staged all-night session last week, he saved from possible embarrassment one of the least regular members of his Democratic caucus: Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

Credit CNN with trying to shake things up in an otherwise dull, exasperating and too-long campaign season with its YouTube Democratic presidential "debate" Monday night. There was a good deal of silliness, like Sen. Chris Dodd claiming he has white hair because he's a hardworking senator (what does that make senators with dark hair, dyed hair or no hair?).

Fox News ought to buy a copy of Monday’s Democrat debate on CNN to play over and over during the general election campaign.

“What made you decide to wash all the knick-knacks?”

“They’re not knick-knacks. They’re mementoes.”

“They look like knick-knacks to me.”

For the last few months, when Coweta County has been mentioned, Fayette residents in person and on our website react like they have a bad case of heartburn.

PORTSTEWART, NORTHERN IRELAND — The release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final book in the Harry Potter series, has momentarily diverted the public’s attention from certain realities: The weather, which normally depresses during winter months when there is less sunlight, has been crying unmercifully on Britain, bringing what the Daily Telegraph calls “chaos and misery” as homes are flooded, flights are canceled, or delayed, and train and subway service is disrupted.

From the moment I saw it, I though it was the dumbest thing I’d ever seen. I spent 20 years thinking that, too.

“Whatta ya think?” Daddy stepped back, folded his arms across his chest with the look of a satisfied, proud man.

Desperate situations come to all people. Most people, when faced with a desperate situation turn to prayer. Prayer seems to be the most important thing to do when in desperation, but is it always the right thing to do?

Barack Obama and John Edwards want to get us out of one war and into another. The two Democrats vying for their party’s presidential nomination want to end the war in Iraq and spend at least some of the savings on a new war on poverty.

As I drove through the city of Los Angeles on a lovely day, I listened to an interview on National Public Radio. I heard something disturbing. The NPR host interviewed a lawyer with the NAACP who said that he had filed a lawsuit against several banks.

My fellow Americans, we have a problem. We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, but our government can’t even track and deport convicted criminal aliens.

WASHINGTON — Ignoring pleas from outraged South American governments, Democratic leadership of the House this week was adamant about Congress going into its August recess without taking action on free trade agreements with Peru and Panama as promised.