I like Hanukkah. It's a very nice holiday, as Jewish holidays go; one of the few where the Jews actually won, as opposed to having the Temple destroyed, or fleeing the divided sea, or being spared from the evil Haman. Usually, it's enough if we survive. Often, we don't even do that.
Nine women. And counting.
When did this guy find time to play golf?
People keep asking me whether I agree with the president's troop surge in Afghanistan. I am a lawyer. I know what to do with a hard question: Answer another one that is so similar that even the person asking may not notice you've changed it. So I answer that I absolutely support the president on this one, that I absolutely approve of the process and the decision and the way he's handling his responsibility as commander in chief.
The last Thanksgiving of my childhood started out promisingly enough. It was 1969, and we were going to my parents' best friends' house. I had a crush on their second oldest son, and with luck (a lot of it), we'd end up in his room listening to Led Zeppelin. He was much cooler than I was, but I was who would be there on Thanksgiving.
It's that time of the year again. Time to feel like a fool. I started early this year, at Bed Bath and Beyond. Mind you, I love the store -- two shiny new floors of beautiful things that you don't have to try on. I'm a goner for candles and diffusers, not to mention cordless vacuum cleaners.
So, as it turns out, did I not need to have my breasts squeezed in the mammogram machines every year between the ages of 40 and 50? Could I have missed the two scares in there, especially the one when both of my kids were babies?
I really hate defending Sarah Palin. I mean, I don't agree with her on anything. Seeing a woman at her level saying and doing some of the things she says and does is like nails screeching against a blackboard for me. And while she ultimately helps Democrats in any partisan contest, her brand of polarizing politics and efforts to annihilate the moderate wing of the Republican Party ultimately aren't very good for her own party (not my problem) or the country (everyone's problem).
There's an old saying that hard cases make bad law. The same rule, unfortunately, applies to presidential decisions.
You've got to hand it to Nancy Pelosi. Love her or hate her -- and there are probably more people in the second category than the first -- you can't deny the enormity of her accomplishment. She did something very, very big.
Everything and nothing happened on Tuesday. I could have predicted that. Whoever "wins" says it means everything. Whoever "loses" says it means nothing. That's how off-off-year elections work. History supports both sides.
There's an old story about a Harvard professor who gets a call from the president (of the United States) and responds that his president is the president of Harvard.
To be honest, I don't care whether Valerie Jarrett plays basketball or not. And I certainly would hate to see Ambassador Susan Rice, known to be a good player, missing meetings at the United Nations so she can make it to the White House court.
My internist told me he is now using the technique he learned many decades ago in the military, when supplies of vaccine were short and they had to split doses. I wouldn't even think of asking. But I did ask my rheumatologist, since rheumatoid arthritis is one of those things that makes getting the flu worse. He would have been happy to give me a flu shot -- I'm talking regular flu here, not the swine kind -- but he was out.
As it turns out, it was no secret that Richard and Mayumi Heene were very bad parents. Their associates knew it. Television producers witnessed it. Their willingness to put their children in danger to get attention was nothing new. They chased storms with their children. They used them to become "stars" of reality television. They taught them an ugly and offensive rap song about not being "pussies," which they posted on YouTube.
Dr. Carol Greider may be the only Nobel laureate to have been folding laundry when she got the call. She was up early, and there was a lot of laundry. After the phone call, she woke up her two children and told them she had won the Nobel Prize.
OK, so President Barack Obama hasn't accomplished enough to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize under the conventional approach.
Afghanistan used to be a great issue for Barack Obama. As a candidate, he repeatedly argued that George W. Bush and his Defense Department had lost their way, focusing too much attention (and troops and resources) on Iraq while shortchanging the more important mission in Afghanistan.
On my way to work this morning, I heard not one but two advertisements urging me to vote for former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as the next governor of California. The ads touted her decades of experience working for such companies as Disney and Hasbro before taking the helm at eBay in 1998 as its first CEO. The pitch was that California needs someone who understands business and job creation as its next chief executive.
He had sex with a 13-year-old girl. He got her to go to Jack Nicholson's house by promising that she would be in a photo shoot. When she got there, he fed her a Quaalude and alcohol -- champagne for a 13-year-old, how enticing -- and then he raped her.
It's hard to argue with the FDA's decision, announced this week, to ban the sale of flavored cigarettes. To be honest, I always thought cigarettes came in regular and menthol, not chocolate and strawberry. The legislation passed earlier this year giving the FDA authority over tobacco products specifically authorized it to ban flavored cigarettes, while protecting the kind that I got hooked on.
