The pro-Gingrich New Hampshire Union Leader/Sunday News published an editorial attack on Ron Paul Sunday, calling “Renegade Ron” a “gadfly, not a contender” in  New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation presidential primary. Perhaps it's a sign the editorial board is worried that the Texas congressman, who has moved into first place in the latest Iowa poll, may overtake Gingrich in New Hampshire as well.

They arrive now with monotonous regularity. Another day, another announcement by a New Hampshire politician of his or her endorsement of Mitt Romney for President. Former Governor John Sununu. Former Governor and U.S. Senator Judd Gregg. Senator Kelly Ayotte. Umpteen members of the New Hampshire House and Senate. Romney's the one. A businessman. A leader. The one who will create what all America wants — jobs, jobs, jobs! Overseas, seas, seas. Yet the Romney record suggests he'll be creating the jobs overseas, seas, seas, and that's what we'll be hearing from the Obama camp from here to reelection.

On Monday, November 21, I was chatting with a longtime acquaintance about the anniversary that would fall the next day, on November 22. On that date 48 years ago, John F. Kennedy was assassinated by ... well, there's the rub. For skeptics, the official version of Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin still rings hollow.

Millions no doubt have read or heard the Hans Christian Andersen tale of how some alleged weavers of long ago convinced their emperor that the new clothes they were selling him were made of such fine and rare material that only the stupid and incompetent could fail to see the exquisite threads. The emperor, not wishing to be exposed as either stupid or incompetent, bought the story and the invisible “clothes.” He wore nothing else as he went though the streets in a grand parade, hearing nothing but praise from his subjects on the excellence of his royal attire. Until one simple, unschooled child broke the spell by crying out the simple, unadorned truth: The emperor was wearing no clothes at all.

It's amazing that most of the presidential candidates manage to find time to run for president when they're so busy running for national superintendent of schools. Republican candidates typically tell us in one breath they want to get the federal government out of education and in the next that they have some really swell ideas for educational reform they'd like to implement (impose?) once they're in charge of the federal government.

Do we really understand what courts are for in America? I mean, do even really smart, educated people like (I realize I’m going out on a limb here) lawyers and people with prestigious titles like “U.S. Senator” in front of their names really understand and appreciate the role of the courts? Or does it all get run over and crushed by the pressure of politics?

Asked about newspaper publishers who opposed his presidential candidacy in 1952, Adlai Stevenson was prepared with a characteristically witty rejoinder:

"Their job is to separate the wheat from the chaff and then print the chaff, " the Illinois Democrat said.

Another Memorial Day has arrived and I again have it in mind to finally get to the end of a book I have begun reading several times but never finished. It is David Halberstam's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of how our nation got bogged down in what might be called the Q (for Quagmire) War — World War 'Nam in Southeast Asia. Before I had reached the Goldwater days of my youth, I didn't even know there was a Southeast Asia. I was hardly aware of Asia at all. But once I learned our fellow Americans were fighting Communist aggression there, the righteousness of the war appeared self-evident. In the words of a song that became a hit in the 1960s, the young men of my generation heard the sound of "Distant Drums."

I recall encountering, in the misspent days of my youth, a comic book character who had come up with an ingenious way to break the habit of eating between meals: He would simply never stop eating, in which case there would be no "between meals." Unfortunately, some have given up drinking in similar fashion. The late Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois long ago compared most alleged fiscal conservatives to reformers who cry out for temperance "in the intervals between cocktails." Little has changed since then, save perhaps the brevity and infrequency of the intervals.

Has the next shoe fallen yet? And what is the next shoe? Already our government has been warning us that a "backlash" response to the reported killing of Osama bin Laden is likely, as our enemies in terror will almost certainly seek to avenge the death of their holy martyr. They will try even harder to penetrate America's anti-terrorist defenses and inflict major damage and heavy casualties upon American people and property, CIA Director Leon Paneta has assured us.