NEW VOICE COLUMN UP. It's a miscellany, offered under the excuse that it's summer and I should get to be trivial on that account, but really because I've been kept too busy to function at normal levels. You, being the real people, can be entrusted with the truth. I expect a letup or a nervous breakdown presently, after which things will go back to normal.

Meanwhile I see Ross Douthat is concerned that "the country suddenly has two political parties devoted to Mediscaring seniors," which is touching. Maybe he should be printing up large-type editions of his Sam's Club Republicans book and distributing them at senior centers. More than a few of them will think it's a government publication, and that Republicans are still in charge. Maybe it owes to my own advanced age, but I'm beginning to incline toward that explanation myself.