Somehow, the painting soothed him. It verified his fears. But it also informed him that fear was wonderful.

A purely objective viewpoint does not exist in the cosmos or in politics.

Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.

As Walter Cronkite would say, that's the way it is.

It's hard to know now who, if anyone, in the media has any credibility.

A political party is dying before our eyes-and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the mainstream media, which is being destroyed by the opposition.

Asked at the hearing why she hadn't pressed the FBI more closely about what it knew, or didn't know, about domestic terrorist threats, Rice acted as though the question was an odd one: it wasn't her job. Well, in retrospect, it was and now certainly is.

By Rice's own standards, the war was well underway by the time he took office. He was a war president the moment he took the oath. But did he act like one?

I know that from the days of Watergate... the notion of two sources on a story has become the popular dogma about how you confirm something. And there is a lot of truth to that, but there are all kinds of ways to check to the extent that you can, a story that you get.

The crusades of Vietnam and Watergate seemed like a good idea at the time, even a noble one, not only to the press but perhaps to a majority of Americans.

The notion of a neutral, mainstream national media gained dominance only in World War II and in its aftermath, when what turned out to be a temporary moderate consensus came to govern the country.

When Americans invade Iraq, Bush says, we will be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people, proving that taking out Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do.