Last week the far-left Middlebury Institute, which wants Vermont to secede from the United States, joined with the far-right League of the South, which essentially wants to re-establish the Confederacy, for a two-day secessionist convention. Why wasn't Connecticut represented? For that matter, why wasn't Fairfield County?

If we understand the common thread between scores of monks arrested and beaten in Burma and the rationale behind civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson in defending six violent black teenagers in Louisiana, we will get a glimpse into the mind of George W. Bush and the war in Iraq.

Last week a student named Andrew Meyer barged his way to an open microphone to pester Sen. John Kerry at a forum hosted by the University of Florida. His "question," such as it was, was a rant about the Skull and Bones society Kerry was in at Yale, a criticism for not impeaching Bush, curiosity about why Kerry didn't contest the 2004 election results, and a bunch of other random stuff. In the inevitable YouTube video, Kerry can be heard to start responding to Meyer, calling it an "important question."

"We have a name in the studio," Alfred Hitchcock once explained, "and we call it the 'MacGuffin.' It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story. In crook stories it is most always the necklace and in spy stories it is most always the papers."

Do you know that feeling of instant camaraderie you get when another person shares a deep passion of yours? You may not even know their real name or age or where they live but to you, the shared characteristic speaks volumes about their soul. I feel an immediate kinship with someone if I find out they are a libertarian, or if they're a Celtics fan, or if they have ever owned a Commodore Amiga.