LONDON -- Benjamin Franklin once famously said there was no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. Leaving aside the fact that the man from Philadelphia would never get a job in the Bush administration, I wonder what he would say about good and bad elections.
LONDON -- If a columnist should ever feel neglected, he or she can change that immediately by mentioning Israel. One e-mail I received about the Middle East last week, from Roy Frisvold of Santa Fe, N.M., quoted Fulke Greville, the 16th-century British parliamentarian and poet: "Silence augmenteth grief, writing increaseth rage ..."