Tim Griffin

The health care law's individual mandate forces nearly all individuals to buy health insurance or pay a penalty. The mandate cannot be severed from the rest of the law because it is the primary mechanism through which the law's changes are supported. Without the mandate, the law collapses.

It is only when you watch the dense mass of thousands of ants, crowded together around the Hill, blackening the ground, that you begin to see the whole beast, and now you observe it thinking, planning, calculating. It is an intelligence, a kind of live computer, with crawling bits for its wits.

My grandma actually put me in girdles when I was around nine or ten because I had hips even then, and she didn't want boys to be attracted to me. Having hips meant you were a full-grown woman, and I was too young for that.