After the chaos and carnage of September 11th it is not enough to serve our enemies with legal papers.

As for leadership I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.

Three centuries after the appearance of Franklin's 'Courant ' it no longer requires a dystopic imagination to wonder who will have the dubious distinction of publishing America's last genuine newspaper. Few believe that newspapers in their current printed form will survive.

Fifty percent of people won't vote and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand however is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands it also seldom works properly.

In my view far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting the New York Times the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

In the Pentagon Papers case the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory you don't have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

We live under a government of men and morning newspapers.