[N]o serious Dem wants anyone to join the military and considers it a sign of a great social failure when they do. They just want gays to have the same right to not join the military as everyone else.

[S]ome of the effete elitist intellectuals in the GOP orbit are going to have to get over their craving for a Republican Party that’s “respectable” by the standards of Manhattan, Georgetown and Brentwood. — Robert Stacy McCain

Okay, it’s happening again.

“Our journalists know that good men are often despised by the mob; it just never seems to occur to them that they might be the mob themselves.” — Andrew Klavan at NRO

Baseball’s singular purpose, some seem to have forgotten, is to entertain us. So the moral panic surrounding Alex Rodriguez’s steroid use is unquestionably counterproductive. If an athlete decides to sacrifice his testicles to the gods of baseball, who am I to object? — David Harsanyi

(What can I say? I’ve gotten behind.)

But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing is worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

It has been suggested that the world is overpopulated with solipsists. — Umberto Eco

Uncertainty is intrinsic to the scientific process, and sometimes you have to have the courage to stand up and say, “Maybe.” — Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post.

Editorials and columns are a short form of essay writing, often about complicated, interwoven matters. Though we worked hard to bring new reporting and analysis to our arguments, the pieces still had to fit into a limited space. Being young and earnest, I wrote long, to explain it all. I can still hear Tony saying, as he slashed sentences and paragraphs, “You don’t have to tell them everything you know. You’ll get another crack at it.” — Lisa Schiffren remembering Tony Snow.

“Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.” — Sir Bernard Ingham

“I think if God is dead he laughed himself to death. Because, you see, we live in Eden. Genesis has got it all wrong. We never left the Garden. Look about you. This is paradise. It’s hard to find, I, I’ll grant you, but it is here. Under our feet, beneath the surface, all around us is everything we want. The earth is shining under the soot.” — Justin Playfair, Esq.