A 19th century Irish immigrant named O'Reilly called the newspaper a biography of something greater than a man. It is the biography of a DAY. It is a photograph, of twenty four hours length, of the mysterious river of time that is sweeping past us forever. And yet we take our year's newspapers, which contain more tales of sorrow and suffering, and joy and success, and ambition and defeat, and villainy and virtue, than the greatest book ever written -- and we use them to light the fire.
-Adair Lara, columnist, San Francisco Chronicle

Politics The Loyal Opposition: The Triumph Of Me-Too Politics

Neither side is daring much. Neither is imagining much. Neither seems ready to break out. With Wellstone gone, there is one less voice to counter the boring and alienating politics of cowardice and calculation.
· Politics ... is what we dare to imagine. [Tom Paine]

Ethics The Silence of the World

Elie Wiesel:
I am obsessed with silence because of the silence of the world. Where were the humanists, the leaders, the liberals, the spokesmen for mankind? The victims needed them. If they had spoken up, the slaughterer would not have succeeded in his task.

We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.
· Oral Morality [Tikkun]