Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

Something about her eyes or voice has always suggested the hint of a free spirit, trapped in a Peck and Peck cage, dreaming of making rude noises at public gatherings of Republicans.

Somebody is going to have to do fancy footwork to make sure Elizabeth and John Edwards get their prime-time shot .

These people have served a longer sentence than some people who have committed murder.

More things in politics happen by accident or exhaustion than happen by conspiracy.

I got into television because I hated it so. I thought, there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to be of nurture to those who would watch and listen.

After immersing myself in the mysteries of the Electoral College for a novel I wrote in the '90s, I came away believing that the case for scrapping it is less obvious than I originally thought.

As a personal matter, I stopped voting more than a decade ago, on the grounds that it helped me as an analyst not to think about making a choice in the voting booth.

By every measure, John Kennedy's sex life was compulsive and reckless. At one level, it had clear public consequences. Knowledge of Kennedy's behavior gave FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover absolute job security, as well as the potential power to derail Kennedy's re-election had he survived assassination.

Conservatives may worship Adam Smith's 'invisible hand,' but for Obama, the helping hand comes in large measure from the public, not the private sector. To call this 'socialism' is to do violence to the word and to the concept. To call it 'un-American' is a smear.

F.D.R. had to deal with Southern segregationists - and outright racists - who held power in Congress, so he had to yield to that power in order to get his New Deal legislation passed.

For millions, Roger Ebert will be remembered as a writer and television personality who brought a sense of passion and excellence to his craft. For me, he is a man who fused joy and courage as few others ever have. My life was enriched by having such a friend; it is poorer for losing such a friend.

If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.

If the court strikes down the Defense of Marriage Act, is that a 'liberal' result enabling gay couples married in states where gay marriage is legal to enjoy the same economic advantages that federal laws now grant to straight couples? Or is it a 'conservative' ruling, limiting the federal government's ability to override state power?

In early 1961 a new president, John F. Kennedy, was told by military leaders and civilian officials that the Kingdom of Laos - of no conceivable strategic importance to the U.S. - required the presence of American troops and perhaps even tactical nuclear weapons. Why? Because if Laos fell, Asia would go red from Thailand to Indonesia.

In the post-Watergate atmosphere of 1975 and 1976, the just-plain-folks personalities of both Ford and Carter seemed the perfect antidote to Nixon's arrogant, isolated presidency. But as alert history-minded readers know, Ford and Carter were both rebuffed by voters in their efforts to hold on to the presidency.

Men and women in my lifetime have died fighting for the right to vote: people like James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered while registering black voters in Mississippi in 1964, and Viola Liuzzo, who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1965 during the Selma march for voting rights.

One of the litmus tests for judicial conservatism is the idea of judicial restraint - that courts should give substantial deference to the decisions of the political process. When Congress and the president enact a law, conservatives generally say, judges should avoid 'legislating from the bench.'

Protestations of indifference to higher office are hard to take seriously when the 'non-candidate' is busily engaged in testing the waters.

Remember, the first presidential candidate to reject public financing for both the primary and general election was... Barack Obama, in 2008. He did it, in spite of a flat pledge to the contrary, because his campaign saw that it could vastly outspend John McCain.

So you wake up this morning and find you're president of the United States. Pretty cool, no? Helicopters and a 747 at your disposal; courtside seats at any NBA playoff game of your choice; everyone stands up and the band plays when you come into the room.

The Supreme Being I would sign up for would not prove his omnipotence by saving one life while ending dozens, or hundreds, or thousands. Nor would he summon an angel to heaven by ending a first grader's life at the hands of a gunman or sadist.

There are good people who are dealt a bad hand by fate, and bad people who live long, comfortable, privileged lives. A small twist of fate can save or end a life; random chance is a permanent, powerful player in each of our lives, and in human history as well.

Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child's life - the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you'll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

This is part of the involuntary bargain we make with the world just by being alive. We get to experiences the splendor of nature, the beauty of art, the balm of love and the sheer joy of existence, always with the knowledge that illness, injury, natural disaster, or pure evil can end it in an instant for ourselves or someone we love.

Traditionally, marriage is one arena where states have all but plenary power; it took until 1967 for the Supreme Court to tell states they could not prohibit interracial marriage.

When Ronald Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980, it was a clear signal that he was running an inclusive campaign; that he welcomed the moderate and even liberal wings of the GOP - there was a liberal wing back then - into his campaign.

To hard necessity ones will and fancy must conform.

Fancy your having no sunshine in London yesterday! Here it was glorious, like full summer, and I sat up with the window wide open, listening to the discourse of two amorous thrushes.

Welcome, wild harbinger of spring! To this small nook of earth; Feeling and fancy fondly cling, Round thoughts which owe their birth, To thee, and to the humble spot, Where chance has fixed thy lowly lot.

I decided that I would be one of the biggest new names; and I actually had some little fancy business cards printed up to announce it, 'Count Basie. Beware, the Count is Here.'

There is a spell in mediaeval Art which has had power to bewitch some people into trying, or wishing to try, or fancying that they wish to try or making believe to fancy that they wish to try, to bring back the Middle Ages.

Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I know that syndrome. I fancy offices, so there must be something wrong with me. Even the window cleaner intrigues me. It's a very sexy environment.

I think 'destiny' is just a fancy word for a psychological pattern.

I fancy that no good ideas upon that campaign will be mentioned at any time that did not receive their share of consideration by General Lee.

I fancy our chances at the European Championships.

I would advise you to write, my dear friend, because with your active nature, solitude is simply intolerable to you, and after some time your solitude would become perhaps attractive if you were to people it with creatures of your own fancy.

You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

It is not that Shakespeare's art is in technicolor and fancy, and that real life is black and white and tedious. The life that Shakespeare was living was the only life he had, and he had to use it to create what he was doing.

I don't know why you use a fancy French word like detente when there's a good English phrase for it - cold war.

Gray hairs seem to my fancy like the soft light of the moon, silvering over the evening of life.

The power of daring anything their fancy suggest, as always been conceded to the painter and the poet.

We happened to be in the studio next door and I think Noel Redding came around and said, 'Do you fancy having a sing on this?' We just went and did it and it was great.

The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin.

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.

One man's observation is another man's closed book or flight of fancy.

Why do you need to do a fancy cartwheel for before you hit him? It just looks stupid.

We need to steer clear of this poverty of ambition, where people want to drive fancy cars and wear nice clothes and live in nice apartments but don't want to work hard to accomplish these things. Everyone should try to realize their full potential.

Cutting up fowl to predict the future is, if done honestly and with as little interpretation as possible, a kind of randomization. But chicken guts are hard to read and invite flights of fancy or corruption.