Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase 'hope and change,' to wit: 'big, fat government.'