More than 835,000 books have the word "seven" in their title. I estimate that about half of them are currently in our apartment, largely because my spouse, the esteemed Jackie Leo, has been writing the definitive book "Seven,"and she refused to do that without a decent amount of room-filling research.

Are we all looking around for rules to break for the holidays? Well the Gap thinks we should be. One of the company's new ads shows young people prancing around to celebrate "Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa or solstice," while singing "86 the rules, do whatever you like, have a happy do-whatever-you-wannakah...

President Obama drew praise from both parties today for retracting his offhand comment on the David Letterman show that he was asking wealthy Democratic nominees to put their investment portfolios in a "blind trust" before joining his administration. Visual-impairment spokespersons called the comment "hurtfully sightist" and demanded $2.1 million more...

Gay activists are giving Rick Warren the full treatment, accusing him of homophobia and hate speech and of comparing gay marriage to incest. None of this is true, as the mainstream press will eventually get around to mentioning, perhaps as early as next week.

Warren supports full rights and...

The late great journalist Murray Kempton once wrote that everything is known about the Mafia except whether it exists. I feel the same way about the great wave of racism and rage detected at McCain-Palin rallies by bloggers and pundits from E. J. Dionne to Frank Rich. The...

Barack Obama isn't the only presidential contender with a prominent bigot among his supporters. John McCain accepted the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee, who regularly attacks the Catholic Church as "the great whore of Revelation," a "false cult system," and "the anti-Christ." McCain deflected concern about Hagee's bigotry simply by...

• He never wasted a minute. One night at the Buckleys, Bill rose from the dinner table, patted his breast pockets absently and excused himself, saying he had to find his cigars. When he returned seven or eight minutes later (cigarless), it seemed clear he had batted out a column at...

Washinton Post reporter Anthony Shadid is at it again. Shadid is the world's foremost practitioner of "They Killed My Baby!" journalism.

His technique is to appear at a war scene after a bombing and conduct an emotionally loaded interview with someone who has just lost a child or a spouse....

The theme of Superman as a Christ figure isn't new, but it has never been stronger or more obvious than it is in Superman Returns. Bryan Singer, the director, had mentioned "the Judeo-Christian allegory" as well as other themes -- Superman as a gay outsider and as an immigrant trying...

Our Sag Harbor summer softball game held its 30th anniversary dinner the other night in Manhattan. The entertainment was a good-natured roast featuring jokes about our foibles, mishaps and legendary incompetence. (Sample slogans: "The game in which you can't possibly be the worst player" and "The most important Long Island...

New Jersey pride is hard to express, but I think the new official state slogan has finally done the trick: "New Jersey: come see for yourself." I think we can all agree that this goes to the heart of our state's variety and dynamism. Among the things you outlanders can...

Brian Ross of ABC reports that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia missed the swearing-in of new Chief Justice John Roberts because he was attending a legal seminar at a resort in Colorado. On Good Morning America today, ABC switched back and forth between Scalia playing tennis at the Ritz-Carlton...

Hillary Clinton said the House of Representatives is being run like a plantation. For some reason, her comment is being treated as a big story, linking Republicans to slavery. "The use of the term plantation is foolish and my guess is that she will live to regret this," said human...