Sooner or later, the millions of us for whom the flesh is weak must grow up or die young – but not without the dream of just one sinful habit that is actually good for us.

WASHINGTON - Novelist John Grisham could hardly spin a more provocative fiction: The president and his surrogates mount an aggressive campaign to intimidate the chief justice of the United States, implying ruin and ridicule should he fail to vote in a pivotal case according to the ruling political party’s wishes.

WASHINGTON - By endorsing Deb Fischer – the surprise winner of Nebraska’s Republican Senate primary – Sarah Palin let a competent candidate slip through her normal screening process. Fischer is no Sharron Angle or Christine O’Donnell – tea party favorites in 2010 who seemed to view accomplishment and deliberation as pernicious establishment vices. Fischer is a tough, effective, respected state legislator – and, in the few polls available so far, is leading her Democratic opponent, Bob Kerrey.

WASHINGTON - With its support for gay marriage, the NAACP has done more than strike a blow for fairness and equality. The nation’s most venerable civil rights organization has made itself relevant again.

Do you know how many children in Tacoma School District schools are homeless? Or how many people in Pierce County lived without heat or electricity this winter because their power was shut off?

I, too, sing America.

Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened. Financiers, private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives initiated a series of reforms and transformations.

SEATTLE - I’ve spent the last week traveling to two of America’s greatest innovation hubs – Silicon Valley and Seattle – and the trip left me feeling a combination of exhilaration and dread.

WASHINGTON - In a blowout presidential election, a few large issues dominate. In a tight election, a range of smaller concerns – important to strategic constituencies in battleground states – can end up being crucial.

Stuff.

WASHINGTON – What a difference four years make.

So the people got sick of it, all those criminals being coddled by all those bleeding heart liberal judges with all their soft-headed concern for rights and rehabilitation. And a wave swept this country in the Reagan years, a wave ridden by pundits and politicians seeking power, a wave that said, no mercy, no more.

Europe has had its Draculas, its abominable snowmen and its even-more-abominable inbred royalty, but North America has had its not-quite-so-abominable Bigfoots, its pony wolves and its race of human giants.

WASHINGTON – There are two ways to defend same-sex marriage. Argument A is empathy: One is influenced by gay friends in committed relationships yearning for the fulfillment and acceptance that marriage conveys upon heterosexuals. That’s essentially the case President Barack Obama made when he first announced his change of views.

And another one bites the dust.