First, sorry to hear about your mom. As others have noted, it's harder to find your column with the new design and by the time I found the last one the letters column had been closed. She was way too young.

Second, it's interesting that you went up stairs in April 1974, because I started to fly in and out of Logan regularly by the following August and remember only jetways. Other than on commuter flights, flights to Alaska and one time in Dublin at 4 in the morning when there was no one around to run the jetway and the guy who tried broke it, I've pretty much always been on jetways.

Third, picking on politicians' silly comments is like shooting fish in a barrel, not a lot of sport involved.

Is an antique cherry sleigh bed. The mattress is pillowtop over memory foam over a rigid box. Peasants shop Ikea.

Where did you buy them? I've always wanted to know where the snobs shop.

Chernobyl

Afghanistan

The Armenian Earthquake

These led the people to understand that their communist masters cared not a whit for the people's survival. It left the uncivil society's support eggshell thin and anything could make it collapse. As it did.

I distinctly remember Big Dog Bill Clinton getting mostly a pass during l'affaire Lewinsky. I'm not a conservative, can't stand them actually, but there is a ring of truth to the charge of hypocrisy.

And of course, there was absolutely no backlash at all. We just elected Dumber as President and Evil as Vice President to punish ourselves.

No.

If there's anything more annoying than someone telling someone (say, a Mormon) that they aren't a Christian because they don't agree with some part of his or her own doctrine, it's someone telling someone they are an atheist when they aren't. Throw all your damn Greek wherever you want to, but the terms have the meanings they have acquired, not what you personally decide that they have.

The "rant" has been a fixture of "sophisticated" magazines for a long time. Andy Rooney made a career of it, as did E.B. White before him and H.L. Mencken before him, back to Jonathan Swift. I suspect a guy named Adam once wrote, "I am certain I am the most modern guy on earth, so you'd think I'd be interested in this whole 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' thing, but I'm not."

I don't think it's crass at all. The question of the cost is not immaterial. This wasn't going to happen in India, it wasn't going to happen in Rwanda. 15 doctors' visits a week? On my own plan, that's $300 a week in copay. Plus, of course the $1 million lifetime limit would have been blown through well before the child was eight. A lot of people have profited from this situation, including many who made the initial decisions here.

It's two blocks east of Harvard Yard, a combination of grad student apartments and faculty houses, and in the summer quite quiet. This occurred just after noon. Not exactly prime burglary time.

So the officer gets called because 'two black males' with 'backpacks' are jiggling with the door. By the time the officer arrives, there's one black male in the house, and you can see what Professor Gates looks like. The man is on the phone, he doesn't run or look in any way out of place. I imagine there are probably pictures on the wall of Professor Gates with people like President Clinton and Nelson Mandela, though I don't know that.

Now how do you, as a Cambridge police officer, presumably familiar with the neighborhood (though apparently not well enough acquainted to know the house is owned by Harvard), approach this man?

I suggest that what you do is say something like, "Hello, sir, sorry for bothering you, but one of the neighbors reported there was a problem involving the door to this house. Do you need any help?" Even if the man is a burglar--and there are zero indications beyond the words of the neighbor to indicate so--who somehow burgles in the middle of a summer afternoon in this quiet, prosperous neighborhood of Cambridge, if you approach him like this, what's he going to do? But to approach him like this is to disarm him in the figurative sense. And when you say, "sir, can I please see your ID so I can write up my report and be on my way?" he's not too likely to fly off the handle. Though he might; Gates had just flown Lord knows how many hours from China and then had a problem getting into his house. But isn't your job as a peace officer to assess the situation you see, not the one that was phoned in?

Or is it in each of my neighbors' power to make a phone call that, without more, entitles the police to make me feel a prisoner in my own home?

If you get sued over suggesting that she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, you got a lawyer gratis.

Al Franken went to Iraq before it was cool.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/01/05/cnna.franken/

Decided not too long ago by the Washington Supreme Court (Washington being one of the states whose courts turned down an equal protection lawsuit on gay marriage even though it was brought by a high public official who wanted to certify gay marriages). In this case, the birth mother of a child sought to use the old, tired, homophobic common law rules to deny any kind of parental rights to her ex-partner, who had previously raised the child with her as a parent. The court said bullshit, it doesn't work that way.

Oh, right, IOKIYAR

Henry II had his legalistic defenses, too.

Swept under the rug? Google "Citi Field Naming Rights Cost" and you get 80 million hits. There is a difference between "the thing I'd want done with this didn't happen" and "swept under the rug."