This weekend I was out doing errands for a few hours, and it turned out I forgot my cell phone. It was fantastic! My kids couldn't bug me every eight minutes with "Where are you, when are you coming home, and can you please get to the store for 'fill in the blank?' "

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written 'al-Qa'ida' in order to make generals race there, and we cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses - without their achieving anything of note!" - Osama bin Laden, November 2004

Does anybody really know what time it is?

In the history of modern politics, we've never seen a worse case of media overkill.

WASHINGTON About the only consistent thing in this burg over 46 years of observation is that a whole lot of the politicians that run it never seem to learn from the past. When it comes to corruption, they just keep thinking they can beat the odds.

My favorite magazine by far was "Constitution," published by the Foundation for the U.S. Constitution. No longer in existence, it was full of riveting stories - for students and adults - with beautifully reproduced historic documents, portraits and paintings of how we came to be distinguished from all other nations.

'You look like you've been chasin' cars.'

I remember back in the day, we had two nights. The first one was "Cabbage Night." this was a night where the boys simply terrorized the neighborhood. A night of nothing but pranks, i.e., windows soaped, doorbells rung, rotten tomatoes thrown. Just good clean fun! Usually the night ended with us kids running for our lives. While being chased under bushes, over fences and through backyards by some very steamed adults and on occasion, even the police. I'm tell you it was great fun!

The legacy of the '09 off-presidential year elections is still to be determined as politicians, pundits and partisans debate whether Tuesday's gubernatorial massacre of Democratic candidates in Virginia and New Jersey was a backlash against President Barack Obama's governance or not.

Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government's health insurance programs for the elderly and poor, play a big role in the health care reform proposals being considered on Capitol Hill. President Obama and Democrats in Congress hope to cut Medicare spending by nearly a half-trillion dollars over the next decade, and reform plans call for a big expansion of Medicaid during the same period.