Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into an IRS building, turns out to hold a greivance against... the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Yes, I know -- your first guess for the issue that set him off was going to be SCHIP expansion.

One afternoon in October, a blue and white jumbo jet flew high above the Pacific Ocean, approaching the international dateline. On board was the secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who was on an around-the-world trip that would end with a summit of NATO defense ministers, where the topic of the day would be Afghanistan. Gates was flying on what is often called “the Doomsday Plane,” a specially outfitted 747 that looks like a bulkier Air Force One and was built to wage retaliatory nuclear war from the skies.

If the Democrats give ground on malpractice reform, can they win some Republican support for universal health care? Former Senator Bill Bradley thinks so. In the New York Times on Sunday, Bradley suggested such a swap was the key to salvaging a bipartisan bill. As proof, he cited the 1986 Tax Reform Act, of which he was a chief architect. Bradley is right to be proud of that legislation, which cleaned up the tax code, lowered rates, and stabilized federal revenues--and which came about because Democrats and Republicans managed to find common ground.

Bradley is also correct that Democrats should be willing to make a deal on malpractice, even though they have opposed it in the past. The present malpractice system isn't good for anybody. Not only does it impose an emotional (and, in some cases, financial burden) on doctors. It also leaves the vast majority of people harmed by medical errors without financial compensation. The present system operates more or less like a lottery: If you have a really good lawyer, a sympathetic jury, and the right kind of case, you can win a large judgment. And if not, well, then you're basically stuck. Meanwhile, the system doesn't seem to do a particularly good job of punishing the truly negligent doctors, many of whom keep on practicing.

If you were a gun-control supporter last spring, life was sweet. Al Gore and Bill Bradley were climbing over each other trying to prove their devotion to the issue. After a rash of school shootings, President Clinton was taunting the National Rifle Association ("I'm just trying to keep more people alive"), and Democrats had practically shut down Capitol Hill in a push for meaningful gun legislation.

It would seem, on the face of it, that the only thing standing between George W. Bush and the presidency is a persistent reservation about his intellect. The doubts have crystallized around a reporter's now-famous pop quiz, in which the Texas governor could not identify various difficult-to-pronounce heads of state. Bush, according to many in the press, needs to wonk himself up, and fast. He needs to cocoon himself with all those Stanford Ph.D.s and reemerge with a deep, studied interest in the stability of Central Asia and the efficacy of scattered-site housing.

There was always a special patriotism to the speeches of Martin Luther King. No other American orator could bring audiences to their feet by reciting three full stanzas of "My Country, Tis of Thee." From there he often soared across the American landscape in perorations calling on freedom to ring "from the granite peaks of New Hampshire . . . from the mighty Alleghenies of Pennsylvania . . . from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado . . . from Lookout Mountain in Tennessee! Let it ring . . .