Two things should be clear from Roland Burris' admission that he spoke with six different associates of Rod Blagojevich before the governor gave him a seat in the Senate--after testifying under oath on Jan. 7 that he had contact with only one. The first is that he should have the decency to resign.

In the final version of the stimulus package, the House and Senate agreed to insist on a "Buy American" clause that requires all iron, steel and manufactured goods used in infrastructure projects to come from the United States. It may play well with some voters, especially in organized labor, but it's likely to do more harm than good.

President Obama thinks, and Congress agrees, that it is time for the government to stop debating fiscal stimulus and start implementing it. One reason is that he believes--or wants us to believe--that there is really no serious disagreement among experts about the wisdom of this course. That's not true. He gives the impression that the issue is whether the crisis is serious enough to warrant action. But the real issue is: Will the action work?

President Obama is frustrated with opposition to his stimulus package from Republicans, who voted unanimously against it in the House. On his visit to Elkhart, Indiana today, he dismissed the GOP criticism as "posturing and bickering." Bipartisan good will is a good thing if it means looking for ways to accommodate legitimate goals on both sides of the aisle. But it's a bad thing if it means one party is abandoning its better principles.

If you're in a minority of 48 to 2 on an issue, you may be seeing truths that other people miss. Or you may be refusing to admit reality. In the case of Illinois' refusal to allow citizens to get permits to carry concealed handguns, it's the latter. It's the only state but Wisconsin that doesn't allow it. But there is a glimmer of hope of change: The Illinois Sheriffs' Association has endorsed a law to afford Illinoisans this type of protection.

Our leaders in Washington didn't know how to prevent the current financial crisis, don't how to solve it, and don't know how to keep it from ever happening again. They haven't figured out how to eliminate the drag of toxic debt, stem the flood of foreclosures or revive lending. But they do know one thing: how much money bankers should make.

Anyone who discovered Pat Quinn in the 1980s, as I did, would have been amazed to learn that he would someday be governor of Illinois. A hard-edged leftish demagogue with a flair for grandstanding, he was the sort of person who could get on your nerves even when you agreed with him. A 1986 Tribune editorial applauded his appointment to head the Chicago city revenue department, but not without noting that he could be "a pain in the neck and a tiresome nag." But he's probably not the worst person to be governor right now.

For an impeached governor to be making the talk-show rounds when he could be defending himself in his Senate trial may indicate to most Illinoisans that he is detached from reality and throwing away his career. Actually, his delusions may be worse than we suspect. Blagojevich's actions this week make sense only if he thinks he has a political future after he's removed from office. And given his capacity for implausible dreams, I suspect that's exactly what he imagines.

During the Vietnam War, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu vowed, "We will fight to the last bullet, the last grain of rice." But when Saigon was about to fall to communist forces in April 1975, he had a change of heart and fled the country, which still had ammunition and rice. Thieu would have felt a certain kinship with Rod Blagojevich.

If I were a Christian, I'd have been embarrassed by Rick Warren's invocation at the Inauguration. It was aggressively evangelical, serving to exclude everyone who doesn't accept the divinity of Jesus. Warren invoked his name four times, in four different languages, and closed by reciting the Lord's Prayer, a specifically Christian supplication. He seemed to think he was at a revival rather than a secular event meant for all--in a country whose constitution rejects official sponsorship of any faith.