Those who actually hate animals to the point of being cruel to them are outcasts to the rest of us, no matter where in the world they live.

It is impossible to exaggerate the wide, and widening, gulf between the American attitude on the Iraq war and the view from our friends across the Atlantic.

Conventional wisdom holds that setting a timetable for getting American troops out of Iraq would be a mistake.

Currently, 94 out of 100 of us pay the Social Security tax all year round.

Perhaps our Irish friends should not so completely turn their backs on their historical dishes, no matter how many jokes they might have to endure.

Respect and affection for animals, particularly those who share our homes, recognize no geographic borders.

America has faced much more difficult times, including potential national extinction, without flinching.

A salute from this corner to President Bush for saying he was willing to investigate raising or eliminating the cap on salaries subject to the Social Security tax.

For some reason, on that sparkling afternoon last week, I actually saw the coal that was passing by and it set me to thinking how important coal was to our everyday lives when I was a little boy.

In economic panics throughout history, the wiping out of the savings accounts of lower earners and the middle class has often led to social revolution, sometimes violent upheavals.

In matters large and small, many people seemed concerned about churlishness, an ugliness in our relationships that appears to be increasing rather than decreasing.

If your parents died suddenly, Sandro understood, your home was wherever you were, and now you were from nowhere. Your parents were your provenance. Dead, you had no provenance.

Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in God.

Jay Leno's the only guy on earth who could have a bobble head made of him that would bobble less than his actual head.

Just try to make the world a better place for your having been here.

The inflection point at which we have arrived is one in which we are increasingly seizing the keys to all creation, as astonding as that might seem.

It is worth it to leave behing my minor life for grander maybes.

Planned Parenthood, we're going to get rid of that.

My function here is to destroy all hypocrisy in you.

If you're politically correct, chances are you're not coming to one of my shows. I get to go onstage and say things that everybody thinks all the time, but can't say out loud.

I'll probably die by the time I reach 25. But I'll have lived the way I wanted to.