It makes little sense that America considers an 18-year-old mature enough to marry, to sign a contract, to vote and to fight and die for his country, but not mature enough to decide whether or not to have a beer.

So for all of those drawbacks, has the law worked? Supporters seem to think so. Their primary argument is the dramatic drop in the number of alcohol-related traffic fatalities since the minimum age first passed Congress in 1984. They also cite relative drops in the percentage of underage drinkers before and after the law went into effect.

But a new chorus is emerging to challenge the conventional wisdom. The most vocal of these critics is John McCardell Jr., the former president of Middlebury College in Vermont. McCardell's experience in higher education revealed to him that the federal age simply wasn't working.

It may have negligibly reduced total underage consumption, but those who did consume were much more likely to do so behind closed doors and to drink to excess in the short time they had access to alcohol. McCardell recently started the organization Choose Responsibility, which advocates moving the drinking age back to 18.

The question of electability in the general election is the only one that matters anymore in the race for the Democratic nomination, and ABC’s moderators did a good job because they kept that in mind. Gibson and Stephanopolous asked questions about the candidates’ personal associations and the controversies surrounding some of their public positions (such as Obama’s decision to stop wearing a flag lapel pin). When the questions did focus on substantial matters, they concerned things like the right to bear arms, affirmative action, Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the capital-gains tax.

Blogger Andrew Sullivan’s reaction was typical of many -- he called it “one of the worst media performances I can remember -- petty, shallow, process-obsessed, trivial where substantive, and utterly divorced from the actual issues that Americans want to talk about.” By those, he meant things like “the environment... interrogation [of terror suspects]... [and] healthcare.” But ABC’s debate was a success because it steered clear of issues like these, i.e. issues on which the candidates mostly agree. How many times have we heard Clinton and Obama argue endlessly over what amounts to a very minor difference in their health-care plans?  

One reason egalitarians might ignore non-monetary inequality is that it is irrelevant. They could argue that making people equally happy is less important than trying to help those who are unhappy to get happier. For example, it might make more sense to help depressed people than to worry because some folks are enjoying a disproportionate share of our nation's happiness.

But if one believes that "happiness inequality" is irrelevant, why is income inequality so different? If greater income inequality is our end goal, bringing the top down is as useful as bringing the bottom up. This is about as sensible as depressing the happy for the sake of the sad -- which reminds us of the old proverb, "The misfortune of the many is the consolation of fools." It does precious little for the living standards of poor people simply to confiscate the resources of those at the top. On the contrary, it lowers the incentives of successful people to produce, and thus to create jobs and generate tax revenues which benefit the poor.

I have no doubt the egalitarians among our politicians and pundits want the best for America. And if creating opportunities to prosper requires public resources and thus taxes to pay for them, so be it. But to focus on inequality -- and then only inequality in income -- creates policies based on either rank materialism or raw envy. These motivations do little to inspire, and even less to lead.

Men and women home from the war acknowledge that there are many questions from the old co-ed combat debate still unresolved, despite years of experimentation.

Shock integration happened when the administration decided to wage a war in Iraq on top of an increasingly complex operation in Afghanistan. And now women in unprecedented combat roles have become essential to sustaining force strength overseas. This situation, and all its unacceptable consequences, will only get worse as long as the Bush administration refuses to initiate troop reductions and limit deployments. The candidates contending to replace Bush, meanwhile, offer little prospect of saner policies: the Democratic candidates have been silent on the realities of co-ed combat, while the Republican nominee insists that we may be in Iraq for another century.

America never consciously chose to send women into combat, but they are there now and in some cases are paying a tragic price.