When tulip mania dies down, all that remains are pretty flowers. When bubbles burst, nothing is left but soapy residue. But the Internet revolution, for all its speculative excesses, really is changing the world.
Vampires are sleek demons for good times. They suavely leech off society - like investment bankers who plunder outsize shares of deals for themselves or rapacious fund managers.
The public has a right to know what kind of monitoring the government is doing, and there should be a public discussion of the appropriate trade-offs between law enforcement and privacy rights.
Supporters of tough voter ID laws are not afraid of vote fraud - they are afraid of democracy.
Being unemployed - or working at minimum wage - is rough in the best of circumstances.
It was not until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s that Congress got serious about the assignment laid out in the post-Civil War amendments.
If the FBI gets the 'back doors' it wants, Internet services would be required to create a massive online infrastructure for law enforcement to spy on members of the public.
For people worried about the Great Recession and the uncertainty of what is coming next, the characters of 'Mad Men' are good company.
It is hard to imagine an area in which Congress has more express constitutional authority to act than in protecting the right of minorities to vote.
Voter ID laws have a disproportionate impact on groups that lean democratic - including blacks, hispanics and students.
If the courts regarded tweets and other social media information as private, it would not prevent the law enforcement from getting information it really needs. But the government would have to get a search warrant, which requires it to show that it has probable cause connecting what is being searched to a crime.
The Enron scandal is worthy of the highest level of scrutiny, both because of the enormity of the crimes that may have been committed and because of what the largest bankruptcy in American history has already begun to reveal about the weaknesses in our nation's corporate structures and regulatory oversight.
The Senate should refuse to confirm nominees who do not take Congressional power seriously.
Mississippi's loose campaign finance laws allow lawyers and companies to contribute heavily to the judges they appear before. That is terrible for justice, since the courts are teeming with perfectly legal conflicts of interest.
Congress needs to toughen the laws protecting elections and make clear that anyone interfering with democracy will pay a stiff price.