During the Bush years, a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government was writing a book called Savin’ it! on abstinence education in the public schools. As part of his research, he contacted then-Attorney General John Ashcroft with a request for personal testimony. His letter noted:
The book’s fourth chapter, ”Role Modelin’ It!” will feature the personal stories of abstinence heroes for our nation’s young people to emulate …I would very much appreciate if you could share your abstinence story. I can tell by your passionate advocacy that you will have a lot to offer this book… I hope you will find the time to inspire the next generation of sex-free leaders.
I don’t know whether the author ever completed this monograph, though he did complete another book soon after.
My next health policy book will include a similar chapter on what you might call budget abstinence heroes: Men and women will proclaim the virtues of fiscal conservatism, and then actually resist the temptation to mess around in the fine print when the adults aren’t looking.
When I came to Washington from Baltimore in 1974, I had reason to be interested in a profound question: Do Republicans make better poker players than Democrats? My $15,000 salary at the Baltimore Sun remained unchanged, but the mortgage on my new house was four times the old one. So my Friday night game, which often lasted until 6 a.m., became a matter of survival.
In January 2006, a court in Northern Virginia will hear a case in which, for the first time, the federal government has charged two private citizens with leaking state secrets. CBS News first reported the highly classified investigation that led to this prosecution on the eve of the Republican National Convention. On August 27, 2004, Lesley Stahl told her viewers that, in a "full-fledged espionage investigation," the FBI would soon "roll up" a "suspected mole" who had funneled Pentagon policy deliberations concerning Iran to Israel.
