So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so.

But particularly when the media profess to strive toward objectivity, gatekeepers play a crucial role in helping people navigate the news to make educated political decisions.

Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network somehow always manages to prove itself even worse than we had previously imagined.

I am deeply devoted to the 27,000 songs I can take anywhere on my iPod Classic as well as the exquisitely engineered MacBook Air on which I typed this column.

Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirited Democrats and increasingly radicalized Republicans.

The Economist is undoubtedly the smartest weekly newsmagazine in the English language. I always look forward to its quirky year-end double issue.

Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady.

Americans get mad as hell with reasonable frequency but quickly return to their families and sitcoms.

The myth of the liberal media empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the point where liberals cannot even hope for a fair shake anymore.

Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising.

Face it, the system is rigged, and it's rigged against us.

The difference between school and life? In school, you're taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you're given a test that teaches you a lesson.

Your universe is not out there. You create it every moment and every day with your thoughts, ideas, perceptions, and imaginations.

I want no men around me who have not the knack of making friends.

Happiness is the overcoming of not unknown obstacles toward a known goal.

God knows, people who are paid to have attitudes toward things, professional critics, make me sick; camp-following eunuchs of literature.

This seems counterintuitive, but turns out that as infant mortality is reduced, population sizes also decrease, because parents don't need to anticipate that their babies are going to die.

Whilst my physicians by their love are grown Cosmographers, and I their map, who lie Flat on this bed.

The development of the mind comes through movement

I buy newspapers to make money to buy more newspapers to make more money.

They who will live for others shall have great troubles, but they shall seem to them small. Those who will live for themselves shall have small troubles, but they shall seem to them great.