As a kid, I was a paperboy, and the walls of the place where we picked up our papers were plastered with pictures of former paperboys - some sports figures, some presidents, some military officers.

Polanski is a great film director - although the much-acclaimed 'Chinatown' has a muddled script - but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.

Hillary Clinton may have lied about her emails, but Donald Trump lies about everything.

We fear hackers lifting our digital wallet, a public accounting of our private lives, and we wonder if the shoes that follow us around the Internet will someday, with the click of a distant mouse, look like the jackboots of old.

It has become increasingly difficult for states or the federal government to apply the death penalty. But why even try? Nothing is accomplished, and while the chances of making a mistake are now diminished - DNA can prove guilt as well as innocence - life in prison is a worthy substitute.

I served in the Army. I worked at blue-collar jobs. I washed dishes and bused tables.

Trump was always a poster boy of the selfish, egomaniacal, ignorant, bragging, cruel rich kid, whose mirror was the sleazy pages of Rupert Murdoch's 'New York Post.' Trump's oxygen was the leaked item, without which he would die the suffocating death of being shown to a bad table.

Iran may or may not be the existential threat to Israel that Netanyahu insists it is. But a lessening of U.S. support for Israel certainly would be. With an indifferent America, Israel would become a lonely, frightening place.

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone. So, increasingly, will be peace.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he cares. He cares about things I don't, and he has some awful ideas, and he is an amoral man in so many ways. But, in contrast to Obama, his emotions are no mystery.

I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy.

Trump's presidency will fail. Just don't ask me how and when. It will collapse because at its center is a hollow man, lacking ballast, whose chaos cannot be contained.

The ultimate question is whether the name Donald Trump will be attached to an era - whether he will so change America that it will never be the same afterward.

You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media and, to get just a bit more specific, 'The Post.'

I agree that sometimes Michelle Obama can come across as angry - and anger is discomforting. We venerate that empty word, closure, wanting to seal off the pain of the past and refusing it admittance to the chirpy present. This, of course, is nonsense.

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

Trump's overriding accomplishment is plain: The Republican Party can no longer be shamed.

The grieving are surely owed our empathy, but capital punishment can neither right a wrong nor prevent another from happening.

Conservatives watch Fox News and read 'Breitbart.' Liberals watch MSNBC and read 'HuffPost.' When we agree, it's the truth; when we differ, it's fake news.

Trump is unloved in his own house. A figure of ridicule, a theatrical creation, he is almost sympathetic. He was told by the greedy and the outright stupid that he would make a swell president. The Liar's Paradox has spun out of control, with liars lying to a liar who believed the lie. What would that be called? Fox News, I think.

Churchill had a marvelous way with words, and greatness accompanied him like a shadow, but in certain ways, he was a 19th-century man wandering, confounded, in the 20th.

Sometimes I think that Rush Limbaugh is the dumbest man in America. This happens whenever I take him at face value and forget that he is basically an entertainer with contempt for his audience. He will tell them anything.

I reveled in political science and history of all kinds, and I felt for a long time that I had discovered all the secrets of life in psychology, although its Freudian variety left me cold. The id never made much sense to me.

We grow up to respect the gray. Black or white, one or the other, is childish. It represents the worldview of someone who does not know the world.