Seeing the rich and famous screw up makes us feel superior, or at least not quite so inferior.

Whether couched in terms of envy, admiration, or derision, celebrity fascination begins as an exercise in imagining what it would be like to lead a more carefree and pleasurable life.

Conservative journalists don't just have the inside track on Republican strategy - they help devise it.

The party where humorless thought police work to enforce a rigid ideological discipline isn't made up of Democrats. It comprises Republicans.

Essential to the self-image of conservatives is the notion that they are enemies of an established orthodoxy, insurgents against the dogmatic political correctness that predominates on the Left.

Members of Congress are less beasts of accumulating burden than computational machines designed to win re-election. Their sense of their own political interests is acute.

Being editor of 'Slate' is the best job I've ever had because of the freedom and support given to me by Don Graham and the Post Co. and because of the opportunity to work with colleagues I admire and adore.

I think 'Slate''s editorial staff understands the intersection of journalism and technology better than any other.

Running a magazine is a journalistic assignment, and part of the fun of being a journalist is that you get to change jobs every so often. Though there's no stated term limit, four or five years should be plenty of time to put your stamp on a publication.

Sexual signals can be received without being consciously sent.

Many reporters have gone to Tea Party rallies looking for expressions of bigotry. What they have tended to find instead is a constitutional fundamentalism that argues that Washington has no right to tell individuals or states what to do.

Southern Republicans are guided by the Bible. Western Republicans read the Constitution. Seen in historical terms, it's the difference between a movement descended from George Wallace and one that harks back to Barry Goldwater.

Southern conservatives care about government's moral stance but don't mind when it spends freely on behalf of their constituents. Western conservatives, by contrast, are soft-libertarians who want government out of people's way on principle.

Northeastern conservatism is moderate, accepts the modern welfare state, and dislikes mixing religion with politics. Western conservatism is hawkish, hates government, and embraces individual freedom. Southern conservatism is populist, draws on evangelical Christianity, and plays upon racial resentments.

I don't think Kanye West can support his view that George W. Bush just doesn't care about black people. But it's a demonstrable matter of fact that Bush doesn't care much about black votes. And that, in the end, may amount to the same thing.

It's tempting to dismiss the debate about the National Security Agency spying on Americans as a technical conflict about procedural rights.

The leader who loves books that tell him he is great and right may be worse than the leader who does not love books at all.

By 2003, if you didn't understand that the United States was inflicting torture on those deemed enemy combatants, you weren't paying much attention.

Unlike the Japanese internment, water-boarding was ordered and served up in secret. But it, too, was America's policy, not just Dick Cheney's. Congress was informed about what was happening and raised no objection. The public knew, too.

Raised in a house filled with old books, I'm drawn to them: the dust jackets that call out a historical moment, the marbled boards, the words pressed into the page with movable type.

The conservative position that all spending is evil obliterates any distinction between investment and consumption, between the long-term and the short-term.

Where Reagan channeled disenchantment with overweening government, Obama symbolized America's transformation into a multiracial country.

To count as transformative, a president needs to synthesize the moment and mood of the country.

Closely allied to the assumption that Democrats can't win because they're too secular is the view that they can't win if they're too liberal. This assumption has steered Hillary Clinton toward the center, following her husband. I tend to share this view myself.