Gore often sounds like he's preaching a sermon in church. And he dumbs things down so much it makes me cringe. Like he's talking to children. I cannot stand that. It makes me feel manipulated and I hate it.

Newt's politics are not the same as mine, but he sounds like he's trying to build bridges here. With adults.

I think the bridges he's trying to build matter more to the future than the ones he burned down in his previous media incarnation.

Our failure to bring peace in Afghanistan has not been good for Pakistan.

I wish the Democrats in Congress could see it that way, but it's a lot easier to just yell at Musharraf.

It's insane that anyone could be thinking about war with Iran now.

Kalyan not only makes us believe that Raja is truly, deeply confused at the sorts of ethical lapses that most American kids take for granted as the dog-eat-dog flavor of high school life, he actually has us empathizing with him. How can he navigate this strange and confusing world that he's landed in?

How could Pakistan be the place it is now -- roiling with corruption, extremism and dictatorship -- if it's only the American kids who take ethical lapses for granted and have a dog-eat-dog life in high school?

Which Pakistan is Raja supposed to come from? The one that gave birth to the Taliban, the one where our aid money disappears without accountability, the one now being ruled by martial law, or some other Pakistan where none of that happened?

Look, he grew up in a country roiled by corruption, class war, extremism and routine and unexamined abuse of the powerless.

I don't see how teenagers could remain so innocent and guileless and naive when that's the world they've been trained to take part in.

And teenagers are biologically programmed to reject their innocence at a certain age. Puberty works in Pakistan, too.

I smell a Noble Savage who's been sent by the TV writers to criticize their own children. The photo accompanying this story even makes him look like a Noble Savage.

And the Noble Savage trope is racist.

Mailer has an uneasy feeling that Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, between them, have written everything worth writing

If he'd read Babel or Bulgakov, he might have changed his mind.

You can punish people for murder without torturing them to death. We do it all the time in America. Every single day, in fact, we civilized people in America manage to punish murderers without torturing them to death.

I know, it sounds unbelievable, but trust me -- it's true.

Stein told the New York Times that Darwin may well have been onto something with his theory of evolution, but that it is isn't up to explaining the origins and diversity of life on its own. Plus, he thinks Darwinism leads to racism and genocide.

Religion has led people in this same direction on more than one occasion in history and if Stein were intellectually honest, he'd admit it.

The Bible is roiling with racism and genocide. Entire peoples are wiped out. What happened to the Philistines? Gone!

If people want to be led to racism and genocide, they'll find an excuse to lead them there. God, Marx, Jesus, Darwin, Israel, Mohamed, whatever -- they'll find one.

This is not an intellectually honest reason for rejecting evolution.

European countries used to underpay and undervalue their scientists but not any more.

We've had it good since WWII as the global leader in science. I think people are taking this for granted and not realizing what they're in danger of spoiling.