Opinion - Mona Charen

Creators Syndicate - "I warn you to abandon the filthy Zionist entity, which has reached the end of the line." That, from earlier this year, was but one of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's hysterical verbal assaults on a fellow member of the United Nations.

Creators Syndicate - Everyone in our region and many beyond has heard of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ). A public magnet school in Fairfax County, Va., it is always rated among the top 10 or 20 high schools in the nation — and it packs off scads of students to the most selective colleges every year. Admission is highly competitive. Last year, more than 2,500 eighth-graders applied for 485 seats in the freshman class.

Creators Syndicate - The rescue of three Americans from the jungles of South America is a terrific Fourth of July present to the nation. (And John McCain gets high marks for timing in being present for the happy event.) American contractors Keith Stansell, Thomas Howes and Marc Gonsalves had been captured by the Colombian communist guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) when their antinarcotics surveillance plane crashed in rebel territory five years ago. At the time, considering the weakness of the Colombian government, the growing strength of the neighborhood bully Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and the terror that FARC inflicted upon the Colombian people, the future looked grim for them and for the hundreds of hostages held in various remote areas. Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate who was likewise snatched and held by FARC, was freed with the Americans on July 2.

Creators Syndicate - In the United States today we no longer enjoy the rule of law but instead the rule of lawyers — robed lawyers with the exalted title "justice" — but still unelected lawyers enacting their own policy preferences.