It’s Valentine’s Day, so what better day to give a present to my fans (you in the balcony, I see you) and my critics.

CHISAMBA, Zambia — It’s 7:15 Monday morning in a cement-block house near this country’s major highway, the paved, two-lane Great North Road. Supervisor Peter Phiri, who helped to build that road during the 1990s, is speaking to 40 employees starting their workweek in a country where AIDS, unemployment and corruption are all rampant. They sit on planks held up by cement blocks in the building their own hands constructed.

Some GOP conservatives worry that a President Mike Huckabee would be like George W. Bush in domestic policy, not using his constitutional power to restrain government spending; and like Jimmy Carter in foreign policy, not using military power to restrain anti-American forces.

Humorous Mike Huckabee has become the sum of all fears for many members of the GOP establishment. Some of the attacks arise out of plain old Christophobia, and Huckabee can’t do much about that. But some come from concern that he’s a Christian-only candidate: On these matters he can take lessons from Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry.

Many of us are giving thanks this holiday, but are we thanking God, thanking our friends or throwing into the air an undirected thanks?

New York Times columnist John Tierney recently offered a materialist version of “intelligent design”: All of us are actually characters in a computer simulation devised by some technologically advanced future civilization.

New York Times columnist John Tierney recently offered a materialist version of “intelligent design”: All of us are actually characters in a computer simulation devised by some technologically advanced future civilization.

With Hillary Clinton surging in the polls and Democrats knifing Bush’s foreign policy and praising Bill Clinton’s, it’s time for a reality check on a supposed triumph: Team Clinton oversimplified a complex situation in Bosnia and ended up aiding and abetting Muslim extremists.

Reasons to be sad about the Bush administration abound. But here's a happy note: Team Bush has repaired its mistake on religious freedom that I and many others complained about last month.

No one tolerates everything. Some who tolerate the murder of unborn children abhor the killing of some animals. One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

Sometimes we find guts in strange places, and cowardice where there should be strength.

Last month’s largest cowardice report came from The Netherlands, where a Catholic bishop said that Christian-Muslim animosity could be reduced through one simple measure: “Shouldn’t we all say that from now on we will call God Allah?”

“They’ll walk out to the bleachers, sit in shirtsleeves on a perfect afternoon. ... The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: It’s a part of our past.”

Last week, when Karl Christian Rove, born on Christmas in 1950, announced that he was ending his White House life, pundits eager to punch back had the best of all possible worlds: They could write the summing-up lines characteristic of an obituary without the constraints of courtesy to the deceased. The New York Times was typical in referring to Rove’s “infamously bare-knuckled political tactics.”

Should biblical churches host gay-glorifying funerals? Should evangelical politics move leftward? Many news organs give us one answer: Yes!

Democratic presidential candidates in their Tuesday night debate were ragging, as usual, on “cool hand” George W. Bush’s “failure to communicate,” but I don’t think they get why the president, an intelligent fellow, does a poor job of explaining his actions.

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.

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.

If you liked making bets you’d never lose (up to now), try asking the name of the American poet whose statue sits on the “Literary Walk” of New York’s Central Park. It’s not Longfellow, Whitman or Robert Frost. It’s ...

ST. LOUIS — Barring a last-minute switch, Cardinals shortstop David Eckstein will not be at next week’s All-Star Game — but Sports Illustrated gave him a more important recognition this spring. The magazine asked 413 Major League Baseball players, “Which player gets the most out of the least talent?” — and Eckstein received 77 percent of the votes. No other player received more than 3 percent.

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!

Why take a small child to France when his main interest is French fries?

The Wall Street Journal’s Saturday section, called Pursuits, instructs business readers on what to do with money made Monday through Friday. One section this spring, typical in its ads for very expensive houses and cars, led off with a lengthy article on “Power Trips for Tots” that showed how “extreme family vacations are becoming a status symbol for parents seeking an edge for their kids.”