Sound bites and nibbles, mostly

An argument that judgment matters but knowledge does not is profoundly anti-intellectual...If judgment means anything, it has to be grounded in at least a minimum amount of knowledge.(*)

I'd like to explore something more like a dialogue than a paintball fight at close range. (*)

[There] may simply be no limit to blind party loyalty for too many people. Torture is the worst-case scenario. If people support torture, what won't they support? (*)

"It is hard to fight anger, for a man will buy revenge with his soul."
Heraclitus, 500 BC

It may be justifiable anger, but I won’t trade the rest of my world for it. (*)

The late Irving Selikoff, one of the last century's great epidemiologists, used to say that statistics were people with the tears wiped away.(*)

...What Gene Roberts, former editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer called “news that oozes” – the slow developing issues in our world – doesn’t get covered (*)

It's not that it's a big thing. It's the opposite: a small thing that speaks to an attitude. (*)

...A government that is not scrutinized by an energetic and adversarial press is a government that is not accountable for its actions. (*)

Fundamentalism in the White House is a difference in degree, not kind, from fundamentalism exercised in dark, damp caves. Democracy is always the loser. (*)

Conversations involve listening with an intent to understand. Lynch mobs are light on conversation.(*)

Since when is the "sincerity and compassion" of a person--in particular, of a public official--judged on the basis of the things they say and the facial expressions they wear in private conversations . . . as opposed to the decisions they make, the policies they pursue, and the priorities they establish? (*)