WASHINGTON — Sen. Hillary Clinton is facing increasing Democratic criticism for using Mark Penn as her presidential campaign’s chief strategist while he also serves as CEO of Burson-Marsteller, the public relations giant with corporate clients whose policies run opposite to Clinton’s.

That Americans, after all these years of tearing their hair out and trying everything in the wide world else, still can’t iron out their racial predicaments tells us numerous things we need to understand.

Amnesty is dead. Now, let’s talk about the other “A” word. It’s the word and the concept completely abandoned during the immigration debate: assimilation.

Whatever happened to Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest man? Guilt, a feeling of being blessed by luck, forgotten lessons — who knows? In any case, Buffett now believes that government should redistribute the wealth earned by others to those who did not earn it.

Just in time for the Fourth of July, John Lott, author of the groundbreaking 1998 book “More Guns, Less Crime,” has released another amazing book: “Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t.” This book provides studies and analysis proving that your every right-wing instinct is based on sound economic analysis.

Now that the Democrats are raking in more campaign dough than the Republicans, it will be interesting to see if the media demonize the role of money in politics as they have in past elections when the GOP was winning the contributions race.

Washington, Indiana — It's a long way from Washington, D.C., to Washington, Ind., where my father was born a century ago next January and where I am attending a Thomas family reunion. On the drive from Indianapolis, one passes towns that could fill a Norman Rockwell album. My favorite is named Freedom because, though the town has only a single flashing caution light, it displays many flags. If I don't slow down, I will miss both.

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?

It’s too easy to quit these days. Quitting, in fact, is seen as an acceptable path, almost a virtue. Don’t like a course in school? Drop it. Don’t like the pastor? Get another one. Don’t like your church? Find a new one. Work a little tough? Quit. Having a rocky marriage? Get a divorce. Parents a little hard on you? Run away from home. Unexpected pregnancy? Kill it.

At age 7, my time had finally come. The years of waiting and anticipating were over. The day of passage from just being a little brother to — well, someone important — was now at hand. My dad had chosen me to pick out the Fourth of July Watermelon.

Whenever Miss Virgie, my beloved mentor formerly of Pascagoula, Miss., now of Carson City, Nevada, learns I am dating a new guy, she is quick to pounce.

Two years ago at the Peachtree City 4th of July parade, I showed my daughter how to stand respectfully straight and silent with right hand over her heart as the honor guard with our flag passed.

“Was it worth it?” they asked.

Was it worth standing in line for two-and-a-half hours to get a dozen barely legible words scribbled in the fly page of a book I hadn’t even seen reviewed?

The Edwards campaign is apparently still running low on donations, so this week they went back to their top fund-raiser: me.

Every night around 11 o’clock my wife reluctantly relinquishes the remote control so that I can select the local newscast we will watch. The scene is familiar to millions of people for whom the TV remote can sometimes cause marital friction and spark a battle for the power to determine what others watch.

Immigration reform is dead. But before conservatives who killed this bill start popping champagne corks, they ought to consider the following.

WASHINGTON — There is no need to wait until a new president is elected next year for the great national health care debate. It is underway right now, disguised as a routine extension of an immensely popular, non-controversial 10-year-old program of providing coverage to poor children.

It may seem too early to be talking about whom the Republican Party might select as its vice-presidential nominee in 2008. After all, there’s not yet even a clear view of whom the GOP presidential nominee will be.

When the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Bush administration did not act unconstitutionally by sponsoring conferences largely designed to teach faith-based groups about federal grant applications, hard-core secularists were aghast: Here comes theocracy!

“The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” — Thomas Jefferson

This is an article about a man who did not want me to write it.

A few weeks ago, I gave a commencement speech at a Catholic elementary school. I received the invitation from a 13-year-old young lady, Elisabeth, who began listening to my radio show at 6-and-a-half years of age, who has now finished the eighth grade and prepares, next semester, to enter high school.

Just about the most difficult lesson for first-year economics students, and sometimes graduate students, is that economic theory, and for that matter any scientific theory, is positive or non-normative.

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.

Free speech — which means, to entirely too many self-styled liberals, “speech I agree with” — won a modest victory this week in the U.S. Supreme Court. A conservative majority of five reminded their four liberal brothers and sisters that the First Amendment to the Constitution encourages us to chatter on till kingdom come.

Harry Reid boasts of his compassion for “undocumented Americans.” President Bush wants understanding for “newcomers” without papers. The so-called Grand Bargainers on both sides of the aisle in the Senate are pushing forward this week with their massive plan to “regularize” the unregularized and bring in hundreds of thousands of extra foreign guest workers on top of the ones who are already here or have been waiting for approval for years.

Old Mrs. Crabtree lived in the dilapidated, two-story house at the end of Flamingo Street. It was the only one in the cul-de-sac; the rest of the lots were in a flood plain and couldn’t be built on.

Vacations can often be a source of stress and anxiety. All too often, these times away can be filled with travels, schedules, deadlines, places to go, people to see and, by the end of the vacation, one is in need of a vacation from the vacation! Such are the vacations I now attempt to avoid.

Call it expediency, but I’m taking advantage of (1) a family crisis, (2) the feedback I get from readers who tell me they love grandchildren stories, plus (3) the fact that the column planned for this week was only half-finished when the phone rang.

Don’t like the drought-related watering restrictions in your community? Outraged enough to rat out neighbors who violate watering rules? The state’s water “wars” could get worse: Watch out for the initial draft of the Statewide Water Management Plan, scheduled to be unveiled June 28.

Now that I live in the country – a lovely blessing – I see slices of everyday life that make my heart smile.

In the little speck of a town that is my permanent address these days, I love my regular visits to the tiny post office where the postmaster, Regina, and her staff including three rural carriers welcome me by name and stop for a friendly chat.