Thanks, Jack. I was on the old show thrice. It was great fun. Good for Milt. Never say die!

Damned if I know. Bob is pretty well known as a legal scholar -- and this book tries to turn everything upside down.

Thanks for the kind words. My years in Tulsa were wonderful. When I retire from Hillsdale (whenever that may be), we may move back there.

I  suspected that -- when my cousin got aggressive prostate cancer in his early sixties and died of it and when my brother got the same, had a successful prostatectomy, and lived on and on -- I should keep my eyes open. I did; I got the cancer; last summer, they scotched it -- and I am glad.

What Angelina Jolie did was to face the music. It must have been and it must be awful. But consider the alternative.

That would be great fun -- if the powers that be were to organize it. Russell's erudition is truly remarkable, and he has a very interesting take on the manner in which liberal polities have a way of turning into quasi-religious communities. Think of the manner in which Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Barack Obama have all posed as Messiahs. We were, after all, waiting for "the One."

I apologize for not noticing this before (I turned in my grades this week, and graduation took place yesterday). I have not yet read the comments. So bear with me if I repeat what someone else has said. I will try to read the comments a bit later, but I may miss them I am off to Rotterdam tomorrow.

The first thing that I would say is that Russell Hittinger is worth attending to. I know him well. We once were colleagues; we taught together; and he is the godfather of my younger daughter.

The second thing that I would say is that one must draw a distinction between America before the Progressives carried out their coup d'etat via the New Deal, the Great Society, and Barack Obama's New Founding. The old America was suspicious of Catholicism but nonetheless hospitable. It left us alone, and we flourished here in a way that we had never flourished in the Old World. Where Church and State are not at all intertwined, the Church does best.

The new America is dominated by a desire to achieve heaven on this earth by way of rational administration. It has no place for Christianity.

A secretive, off-the-record pre-briefing with selected reporters? Hmm. It would be good to know the names of those reporters. Presumably, they are political operatives posing as members of the Fourth Estate. They should be outed and shamed -- for openly and brazenly accepting instruction from the White House on the spin to be applied to the latest revelations.

A year ago in June, I gave a talk on the Arab Spring at the annual meeting of the Institute of Current World Affairs (of which I was for five years chairman of the board), and, at the end, of the talk, I remarked, "The civil war in Syria will end when the Turks march in -- and not until then." Had we been willing to back them up -- with supplies and a replenishment of ammunition and weaponry -- the Turks would have gone in some time ago.

Keep in mind that Erdogan's unsolicited advice to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was that they should ostentatiously embrace the secular state. He may be difficult, but he is no fool.

Charlie's instincts are right on this. It would be quite a tale.

Cornell in 1969 was a glimpse into the future of academe. I enjoyed being there, but once I saw clearly where things were going I was horrified and shifted from left to right almost overnight. Don remained more optimistic than I quickly became. My sense is that he is no longer the optimist he once was.

I asked. He has no particular project in mind. But, as he said to me, I have written all that I intended and a great deal more. Perhaps something will stir him up.

Don Kagan was my Doktorvater. We first met forty-five years ago when I was in a discussion section he taught in connection with his course at Cornell on Roman history. I was unable to make the talk but we spent an hour-and-a-half together a week ago Monday, talking Greek history and old times. His retirement, at the age of 80, is a real loss for Yale.

Mollie, you are too gentle with Ms. Eilperin. She is not stupid. She knows that she is providing cover for Obama -- who has decided that Planned Parenthood is right now just a bit too hot to handle. Ms. Eilperin is, like most Pravda-on-the Potomac reporters, a political operative posing as a reporter. She should be outed as such.

Or better, "I prefer Hillary!"

John Kerry has always been a clown. The people of Massachusetts deserved better. But that is what happens when one gets to be a one-party state.

I was once invited to brunch with Moynihan at his house (as the guest of an old friend of his, with whom I was staying), and I could not go. I have always regretted that I was so constrained. He was among the very few members of the Senate who gave it, rather than took from it, distinction.