Many Obama supporters are angry and desperately want Barack to fight back. Time to pick up the mud and get to slingin'! But Barack is asking us to do something different. He is asking us to trust that he is tough enough to absorb the blows and remain firmly planted on the political high road he is trying to blaze for the country.

We cannot abandon the high road just because it is rocky. We must peer even harder into our unknowable future to try to see a beloved community that is outlined there. Nobody promised us a crystal stair, but it is time to keep climbing.

When I told my 13-year-old daughter Alice I was taking her to get a vaccine that could help prevent cancer, she was mildly intrigued. "Cool," she allowed, "but I hate shots." Luckily, she didn't put up much resistance, and so we plunged into the heart of the most heated public-health matter of the moment: vaccinating tweenage girls against a sexually transmitted virus long before (one hopes!) they become sexually active.

To me, protecting my child from cancer outweighs any reluctance to ponder her sexual future. "But some parents are totally in denial," says my longtime pediatrician, Dr. Marc Wager of New Rochelle, N.Y. It's his practice to discuss the vaccine when parents bring a daughter for a checkup at 11 or 12. But he doesn't force it on those who resist, and he's willing to edit his discussion of HPV transmission for those who don't want a child to hear it.
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My heart aches for Silda Wall Spitzer. Not only do she and her children have to weather the storm brought on by her misguided husband, she also has to endure the judgments of the commentariat, many of whom have asked, with some frequency, why on earth she would stand by her man during his public -- and anemic -- mea culpa.

As someone who has stood by her politician husband during his public -- and anemic -- mea culpa, all I can say is: It’s a personal decision. There’s no right or wrong answer.

Decency respects the dead, whereas the First Amendment respects freedom. Which kind of respect should prevail when the two collide?

Specifically, can funeral protests be outlawed without abridging the First Amendment? That question is being widely ignored in the rush to enact federal and state laws to ban such forms of free expression.

It is a simple truth: The highest respect we can pay to our fallen war dead is to respect the principles for which they made the supreme sacrifice. We honor them by honoring those principles of freedom — even when a callous few vainly attempt to demean the dignity rightfully due them.