Being a gritty wartime pilot, the senator from Arizona, a strong-willed Republican with snow-white hair, relished his upcoming presidential battle against the handsome, young Democratic senator with the matinee idol good looks.

In the cold days of early January, when Hillary Rodham Clinton's war chest still overshadowed Barack Obama's, I got an unexpected e-mail.

The famous Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," got its start, we're told, some 3,400 years ago. Leviticus 19,18.

"Slowly."

Scientists have finally discovered why we won't stop overeating despite the fact that many of us fall under the American Medical Association's weight guidelines as ``shaped like the Guggenheim Museum.''

On CNN, I got into a nasty little brawl with a man I admire. He's a true Texan and a fellow practicing Catholic. The difference is he's for Hillary Clinton, and I am trying desperately for the sake of the Democratic Party to maintain my neutrality. But when my old buddy Paul Begala suggested the coalition Clinton has generated is better than the one Obama has built, I got upset. Both are winning coalitions for the Democratic Party that must now, in the midst of an exciting election season, come together to begin to take on John McCain.

With Mother's Day tomorrow, I'm again missing my own mom (who died in 1995), but I'm also asking, and more fervently with each passing year, ``what kind of a `mom legacy' am I giving my own kids?''

Mother's Day is traditionally a time when we honor our mothers with a gift that shows them we love them and are grateful for the care they have given us over the years.

Imagine this: A preacher endorses a candidate for president. Then we learn the preacher has, for years and from the pulpit, made disgusting, inflammatory and un-American statements. Yet the mainstream media totally ignores the preacher's remarks and never pressures the candidate to explain all the ugly things the preacher has said and done over the last 20 years.

Spring is the time of year when a visit to my Uncle Fud's Chigger Mountain Farm is especially rewarding.