Arms still crossed, Lindsay's clogs tapped on the sidewalk. __o Sam didn__ tell you I was a desperate orphan child with no life outside of work? This isn__ some kind of intervention, some kind of lame attempt to cheer me up?_ He grinned.__hy would she do that?_ __ecause that__ how it sounded._ Nudging her shoulder, he grinning down at her. __ou don__ look desperate, Dr. Lindsay, not by a long shot." __hat__ because you don__ know me._ Lindsay bit her lower lip, arms still crossed, clogs still tap-tap-tapping. Her chest heaved. __y parent__ died in a car accident almost two years ago. It__ a difficult thing to get over. I__ still not exactly right. I guess she worries about me._ Ty sucked in his breath, thinking fast. ____ really sorry about your parents, Linds._ As he put an arm around her shoulder, she broke into a self-conscious smile and shook her head. __pend any time with me at all and you__l find that Sam__ right. I__ a desperate orphan child, completely paranoid and irrepressibly horny._ __hoa!_ She looked so cute, but vulnerable, too. He closed the arm around her shoulder, squeezing her sideways to his chest. Embarrassed, she smiled as she elbowed his rib. Then she dropped her arms and stayed put, tucked close against him. It felt right, having her there.

George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism__he willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it__s the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger's brains with that evil fantasy. But what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, "Hell yes, I'm from Texas," deserves whatever happens to him.

I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty

cross-national studies show that the U.S. poverty rate, which stands persistently above 12 percent, is not only the highest poverty rate of any advanced industrial nation, but is more than twice the average for that group.Pursuing the American Dream, 9, 276