Thus begins one of the most quoted passages of the Declaration of Independence, adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. That sentence sets the stage for the freedoms and rights that we enjoy, argue about and defend to this day.

But do you remember how the document ends? "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

We mutually pledge to each other. That's a statement not about rights, but about responsibilities. That's an acknowledgment by American revolutionaries that they would succeed or fail in their experiment in democracy together, as citizens of the United States. And so it resonates with a question that is just as relevant and critical today as it was 232 years ago: What are our responsibilities as Americans? What are our responsibilities to each other?

Yes, elections balkanize us. They spur us to talk about patriotism as if it were some sort of measurable commodity, as plain as a lapel pin or a flag backdrop. But some of us fly the flag on the porch, and some in the heart. Makes no difference.

Sometime Friday, after the parades and barbecues and fireworks, skim the Declaration of Independence - down to that final passage.

Celebrate the glory of what has been given to us. And think about what that demands of us.

Click below to read the text of the Declaration of Independence.

'IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment

No, we don’t suppose that’s going to happen any time soon. But it should.

The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is evidence that, while the founding fathers were brilliant men, they could have used an editor.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

If the founders had limited themselves to the final 14 words, the amendment would have been an unambiguous declaration of the right to possess firearms. But they didn’t and it isn’t. The amendment was intended to protect the authority of the states to organize militias. The inartful wording has left the amendment open to public debate for more than 200 years. But in its last major decision on gun rights, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that that was the correct interpretation.

On Tuesday, five members of the court edited the 2nd Amendment. In essence, they said: Scratch the preamble, only 14 words count. (Click here to read the full decision)

In doing so, they have curtailed the power of the legislatures and the city councils to protect their citizens.

The majority opinion in the 5-4 decision to overturn a Washington, D.C., ban on handgun possession goes to great lengths to parse the words of the 2nd Amendment. The opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, spends 11 1/2 pages just on the meaning of the words "keep and bear arms."

But as Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in a compelling dissent, the five justices in the majority found no new evidence that the 2nd Amendment was intended to limit the power of government to regulate the use of firearms. They found no new evidence to overturn decades of court precedent.

They have claimed, Stevens wrote, "a far more active judicial role in making vitally important national policy decisions than was envisioned at any time in the 18th, 19th, or 20th centuries."

It’s a relief that the majority didn’t go further in its policy-making on gun control.

The majority opinion states that the D.C. handgun ban and a requirement for trigger locks violate the 2nd Amendment. By virtue of this decision, Chicago’s 1982 ban on handguns is not likely to survive a court challenge. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the Chicago ordinance was filed on Thursday by the Illinois State Rifle Association.

The majority, though, did state that the right under the 2nd Amendment "is not unlimited." So what does that mean? The majority left room for state and local governments to restrict the carrying of concealed weapons in public, to prohibit weapons in "sensitive places such as schools and government buildings," and to regulate the sale of firearms. The majority allowed room for the prohibition of "dangerous and unusual weapons." It did not stipulate what weapons are not "dangerous."

Lower courts are going to be mighty busy figuring out all of this.

We can argue about the effectiveness of municipal handgun bans such as those in Washington and Chicago. They have, at best, had limited impact. People don’t have to go far beyond the city borders to buy a weapon that’s prohibited within the city. (Click here for gun-related crime statistics)

But neither are these laws overly restrictive. Citizens have had the right to protect themselves in their homes with other weapons, such as shotguns.

Some view this court decision as an affirmation of individual rights. But the damage in this ruling is that it takes a significant public policy issue out of the hands of citizens. The people of Washington no longer have the authority to decide that, as a matter of public safety, they will prohibit handgun possession within their borders.

Chicago and the nation saw a decline in gun violence over the last decade or so, but recent news has been ominous. The murder rate in Chicago has risen 13 percent this year. Guns are still the weapon of choice for mayhem in the U.S. About 68 percent of all murders in 2006 were committed with a firearms, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment? Yes, it’s an anachronism.

We won’t repeal the amendment, but at least we can have that debate.

Want to debate whether crime-staggered cities should prohibit the possession of handguns? The Supreme Court has just said, forget about it.

By Pat Widder

Unedited videos of the Countrywide civil suit press conference:

For all those who are too busy leading normal lives to keep score on the subprime housing mess, here’s how the winners and losers stack up at the moment:

***

Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation’s largest mortgage company, leads both categories. The tarnished company at the center of the mess has to be labeled a winner after its shareholders Wednesday approved a takeover by Bank of America. Without that rescue under fire, Countrywide might well have sunk under the weight of its damaged mortgage portfolio and the growing number of lawsuits it will have to defend.

Countrywide also has to be called a winner because the housing bailout plan working its way through Congress could minimize the financial damage of that mortgage portfolio. The bailout has passed the House and survived a key test vote in the Senate Tuesday. Under the plan, the Federal Housing Administration would refinance troubled mortgage loans as long as lenders like Countrywide agree to reduce the loan amount. That lets lenders and borrowers avoid the cost of foreclosures.

But Countrywide also came up a loser Wednesday when Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and her California counterpart sued the company. These separate civil suits come on top of numerous private civil suits facing Countrywide and federal investigations into whether the company committed crimes. Illinois charged Countrywide with using unfair and deceptive trade practices to market mortgages to unqualified borrowers and gave its brokers incentives to push those mortgages.

***

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and GOP Sen. John McCain, the presumptive presidential nominees, were winners when Politico.com’s poll of the Senate revealed Wednesday that they did not have Countrywide mortgages and apparently received no preferential treatment. McCain has no mortgage. Obama has one through Northern Trust. (For the record, Sen. Dick Durbin has two mortgages, one on his Springfield house with the Bank of Springfield and one on his Chicago condo from CitiMortgage.)

***

Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Kent Conrad of North Dakota still rank high in the loser category. They had to admit that they received special treatment on mortgage loans from Countrywide. They insist they had no idea they got a break—everybody else in the country is saying, "gimme a break." Conrad is chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. They are two very powerful senators whose committees have jurisdiction over Countrywide’s business. It turns out they were also "Friends of Angelo," as revealed by Conde Nast Portfolio Magazine. That’s Angelo as in Angelo Mozilo, chairman and CEO of Countrywide.

It’s a pretty seedy story: When Conrad was looking to buy his Delaware beach house in 2002, he called his good friend, former Fannie Mae CEO James Johnson, Conde Nast reported. Mozilo happened to be in Johnson’s office and Johnson handed the phone to him. Countrywide financed the beach house and, later, an investment property of Conrad’s. Mozilo instructed a subordinate via email to "(T)ake off 1 point" and in another email wrote, "Make an exception due to the fact that the borrower is a senator." Dodd never spoke directly to Mozilo, but Dodd was aware that his two Countrywide mortgages were in a "VIP section." Dodd says he assumed that was just some kind of "courtesy." The Senate Ethics Committee is investigating.

Incidentally, Johnson is the same guy who was briefly tasked by Obama to vet potential running mates. Johnson stepped aside when it was revealed that he had received preferential loans from Countrywide.

As of this writing, 17 senators still haven’t responded to Politico.com’s request for information on their mortgages. A proposed Republican amendment to the housing bill would force lawmakers to disclose all that information.

***

Taxpayers could be losers if the risky refinanced loans taken off Countrywide’s books and added to the FHA portfolio go belly up. They got no special treatment. Ninety-five percent of them pay their mortgages on time, so they’ll get no special congressional bailout. But then, they aren’t "friends of Angelo."

Also check out Politico.com, which details the senators' mortgages.

By Steve Chapman, for Thursday, June 26

With photos of Lenny Bruce (left) and George Carlin (right):

On Dec. 5, 1962, comedian Lenny Bruce was arrested in a Chicago nightclub—not for fighting or flinging beer bottles but for obscenity. His comedy routine, which typically used lots of four-letter words, was too raw for police to tolerate.

But he wasn’t the only one hauled in by the cops. So were two people in the audience, one of them, the Tribune reported, "George Carlin, 25, of 20 E. Delaware Pl"—the same Carlin who died this week at age 71. (You’ll find a reproduction of that 1962 Tribune story on today’s Commentary page.)

The charge of disorderly conduct was eventually dismissed, but it wasn’t the last time Carlin’s proximity to bad language got him in trouble. In 1972, he appeared at the Milwaukee Summerfest, where he recited his famous seven dirty words. A spectator complained, and police arrested Carlin for obscenity and disturbing the peace. Carlin’s obituaries reminded Americans of a certain age how much things have changed.

All this must have come as a shock, though, to anyone who’s grown up in the laissez-faire world of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. They may find it hard to picture cops barging into entertainment venues to gag potty-mouthed comics. We as a society now generally let people make their own choices about exposing themselves (or their children) to such material.

Even things that are regarded as extremely offensive are subject mainly to the discipline of the marketplace. When radio host Don Imus called the Rutgers women’s basketball team "nappy-headed hos," he didn’t get kicked off the air by government regulators but by his employer. When he made another racial comment this week, he had a lot to explain, but not to a judge.

When it comes to radio and broadcast television, the government does still impose decency standards in an effort to protect children from exposure to raunch and gore. But those rules are much looser than they were in Bruce’s day. And they are increasingly irrelevant in a world where most homes have cable TV—whose content is largely unrestricted—and where grade-schoolers routinely surf the (uncensored) Internet.

Nor is it clear that most parents worry too much about their kids’ exposure to mature content. Nearly a decade ago, the federal government required TV makers to include a device called a V-chip to let parents block out programs with too much sex, violence or profanity. But though V-chips are now widely owned, they are seldom used.

Over the last few decades, Americans have reached a rough consensus: People should be free to express themselves as they choose, even in jarring or repellent ways, and other people should be free to decide for themselves what they want to enjoy or endure. Instead of expecting local or federal authorities to protect children, most of us see that as mainly the responsibility of parents.

There are times when almost anyone has to admit that the consequences of unfettered speech are not always pleasant. Ask those Rutgers basketball players. Freedom inevitably has unwelcome side effects. But compared to a regime in which comedians have to answer to cops, it’s clearly an improvement.

Read Paul Weingarten's take on commencement speeches here:

By Paul Weingarten

I've been trying to remember what, if anything, I could recall about the commencement speaker at my graduation, whoever that might have been and whatever he/she might have said. But hey, that was quite a while ago and the memory's not what it was.

You current Northwestern University grads won't have that problem. You'll remember that Mayor Richard M. Daley was your commencement speaker on Friday, even though some of you dissed him in e-mails to NU's president, Henry Bienen.

Too bad about that. Apparently, Bienen raised hopes when he told the student newspaper earlier that the speaker would be an "extremely well-known person" and someone who "doesn't make a habit" of giving graduation speeches. Some of you were hoping for the Dalai Lama or Sen. Barack Obama or at least Apple deity Steve Jobs.

But no. You got the mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world, who has single-handedly reinvented Chicago, who's got his share of enemies and gnarly corruption scandals and who knows where all the bodies are buried. The choice, some of you said, was "lame" and "the final letdown."

He couldn't be interesting, could he? Funny thing about jumping to conclusions like that: You could be wrong.

Yes, some things are reliably disappointing, like cell phone connections and "Star Wars" prequels.

But the trick in much of life is to keep an open mind and a receptive ear to people you might think have nothing to say. If you're looking for wisdom, not just bragging rights about a marquee name at commencement, it could come from surprising places. Take another recent NU commencement speaker, TV sleazemeister Jerry Springer. Some NU grads ranted about that choice too. But excerpts of Springer's speech ran on the Commentary page a while back. If you missed it, you might want to try it (chicagotribune.com/jerry). It was good. Who'd a thunk?

Of all the speeches anyone ever gives for any reason, the commencement speech is the toughest. What do you say to a sea of bright young people bristling with ideas and absolutely dead certain that you are creaking history, that you have nothing to teach them that they haven't already seen on the Web or YouTube?

We all know about grade inflation. But it seems like there's been commencement speech expectation inflation on campuses too. No longer can the college president give one of those drowsy, platitude-laden, instantly forgettable speeches to cap the year. The intense pressure to wow the audience has even seeped into high school graduations. Witness the disgrace of that Naperville Central High School principal, caught plagiarizing a former student's speech because he said he was dissatisfied with what he wrote on his own.

The NU naysayers who dissed Daley said they were expecting someone like Jerry Seinfeld. It's like, after spending all that money on tuition, the grads are expecting a send-off ceremony with tickets that could be scalped to bring Cubs World Series-like prices.

There's no danger that I'll ever be invited to give a commencement address. But what would I say? After a couple of decades of dispensing advice—to a daughter, on the editorial board, and to a lot of relatives in general who didn't ask for it and never follow it—you might think I've already got the speech written in my head. But not really.

OK: Don't smoke. It's one of the surest ways ever devised to cut your life short.

Loneliness is painful, so make time (and allowances) for friends and family even if they aren't perfect like you.

Just because your parents say it doesn't mean it is wrong—or right.

Life, like the stock market, is all about expectation. Not just about career, family, job. But expectation of happiness. What makes you happy? Do you really know?

People often try to predict how happy or sad or angry events in the future will make them. If I just had that new (FILL IN OBJECT OF DESIRE HERE), then I'd be happy. They try to avoid the bad things and steer toward the good. But research shows that people are really, really bad at predicting how happy they'll be when good things happen or how depressed they'll get when bad things happen. Sometimes, the good things aren't as happifying as you may expect, and even the worst things don't sting as bad and as long as you'd figure.

You never know.

Paul Weingarten is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.

Hence, the map below, an attempt to help you reconnect, to grasp some of the complexities of Iraq, to put the battles, strategies, setbacks -- and, yes, triumphs -- into a broader context. Take time to let your eye wander. To continue reading today's editorial, look below the map.

The big picture? The U.S. and Iraq have suffered terrible losses in the five-year war. The toll for U.S. troops: more than 4,000 dead and 30,000 wounded.

There are tremendously encouraging signs, though, that Iraq has come through the worst. The breathtaking violence that rocked the country after the U.S.-led invasion is ebbing. A government once derided as incapable of securing Iraq has an increasingly effective military. It enjoys more cooperation from the different ethnic and religious groups. Hotbeds of Sunni and Al Qaeda resistance have been defanged—and now rely on Iraqi forces to keep a relative peace. This nation's decisions about its commitment in Iraq need to acknowledge these specific realities:
•Violence is down sharply. American casualties in May were the lowest since the invasion in 2003. Iraqi military and civilian deaths are also falling—even as Iraqi fighters carry more of the security burden.

•The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is gaining strength. It has routed Shiite militias that his critics said he, a Shiite, wouldn't dare attack. He and his government and his army are flexing muscles that many critics here and in Iraq didn't think they had. They've retaken the southern Shiite city of Basra and confronted the Mahdi Army of anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr. They've taken the fight to Sadr's Baghdad stronghold, Sadr City, and forced Sadr to back down. In a recent military operation to crush Al Qaeda in Iraq at Mosul, its last major stronghold, al-Maliki took personal charge of the campaign, which netted hundreds of insurgent arrests.

•Progress by the Iraqi military has allowed the government to gain confidence. The long-elusive political reconciliation that is so important to Iraq's future is advancing, albeit fitfully. Earlier this year, the Iraqi parliament passed a law to ease some former Baathists into society. It has passed a law on provincial powers and has offered amnesty to many detainees. The next major event: provincial elections, expected this fall.

•Iraq is riding an oil bonanza. It has more money than it can responsibly spend. Last year, Baghdad spent about half of its capital budget; in the provinces, the figures were even lower. Iraq doesn't need money, al-Maliki said recently, but it needs technical assistance to execute its budget efficiently, making sure the money isn't wasted or lost to corruption. That's a strong signal for Washington: After more than five years of underwriting the war, the American taxpayer deserves some relief.

Those are the broad strokes.

Focus for a moment on how things have changed for the people of one town, Basra. It has been liberated from the religious militias that until recently held sway. Here's a recent passage from The Washington Post:

"Weddings in Basra had become silent affairs. Kidnappers often targeted them, and gunmen sometimes tossed grenades into the wedding processions of rivals. The sounds of drums and dancing now fill the streets every Thursday, when most weddings take place. Cars and buses are decked in flowers and play loud music as revelers head to local hotels for ceremonies. 'It's like a gift from God,' exclaimed Abdul Emir Majid, 52, whose nephew was getting married on a recent day."

Last year, the U.S. increased its troop strength in Iraq, the hotly debated "surge" of forces. That turned out to be a phenomenally successful decision. Iraq is a far more peaceful place than it was a year ago, and the forces that were part of the surge are now coming home. Gen. David Petraeus has said more reductions may be possible this fall.

There are still formidable threats to Iraq, inside the nation and beyond its borders. That was evident Tuesday, when a car bomb in Baghdad took at least 51 lives.

The gains of the last year have largely been ignored in U.S. political discourse. But those gains should be reflected in the debate over our choice of a president.

They may make it easier for Sen. Barack Obama to argue that a withdrawal of U.S. combat troops within 16 months will not cripple Iraq. They may make it easier for Sen. John McCain to argue that U.S. strategy, after so many mistakes, is now getting it right.

Let's hear that debate. Let's hear them debate how to build on belated success, how to secure a lasting benefit from the U.S. sacrifice, how to assure that when the U.S. leaves Iraq, it will leave a stable, thriving, democratic ally in a tough neighborhood.

News from the e-mail inbox:

Jobless women in Germany can’t collect unemployment benefits if they decline work at brothels.

Black citizens will lose the right to vote unless 38 states ratify an extension of the Civil Rights Act.

Rapper 50 Cent’s hand was surgically reattached after being slammed in a car door.

A Philadelphia woman sued her pharmacy after becoming pregnant despite eating contraceptive jelly on toast.

All false, according to snopes.com, a Web site devoted to finding the truth (or lack thereof) behind urban legends, rumors, gossip and other forms of hearsay. Thanks to the snoops at snopes, we know that Coca-Cola is not an effective spermacide, mixing a pregnant woman’s urine with Drano does not reveal the gender of her unborn child, and the Make-A-Wish Foundation will not donate 7 cents for the medical care of dying children every time you or someone in your address book forwards them a copy of the e-mail that spawned this fiction.

Snopes hasn’t weighed in on whether Michelle Obama was captured on videotape spewing off about "whitey," a story that’s been making the rounds for weeks despite no sign of an actual video. But her husband, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has set up his own truth-squad site, fightthesmears.com, to counter such claims.

Barack Obama and John McCain have the personal integrity to make this a tremendously uplifting presidential campaign. But a lot of other people seem to have something else in mind.

Perhaps a copy of "50 Lies Told By Barack Obama" has already hit your inbox. Maybe you’ve read that the Ku Klux Klan has endorsed Obama, or that his erstwhile opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, refused to meet with members of the Gold Star Mothers, whose sons were killed in combat. In 2000, George W. Bush supposedly refused to sell his Dallas home to blacks. Again, all false. And probably not by accident.

Back when misinformation was spread by word of mouth, half-truths often fizzled before causing much harm. Now, though, they can rocket around the globe in the time it takes to hit the "forward" button. That’s much less time than it takes to reflect on whether they’re true or fair.

That’s why a story about Satanists using the Harry Potter books to recruit new members can take on a life of its own before someone points out that it originated in The Onion. It’s why the U.S. Postal Service still gets angry messages about a fictional bill in Congress that would levy a 5-cent charge on every e-mail, and why many Americans think they have to call a toll-free number and "opt out" to prevent credit bureaus from selling their financial information. Don’t believe it. Don’t believe that "whitey" business, either. Just ask: where’s the proof?

That’s a good rule to apply to anything you hear or read that sounds too good (or bad) to be true. Now if everyone will please forward that advice to 10 people and nobody breaks the chain, we’ll all win a million dollars...

There’s really no off season for DUI. Pick any night, and there will be drunk drivers on the road.

This time of year, some of them will be teens, fresh from graduation parties where alcohol is served—sometimes when the parents aren’t watching and sometimes when they are.
Some will be adults who’ve already been convicted of DUI and are still endangering themselves and other drivers.

Yes, it’s incredibly dumb and destructive. But they’ll figure they won’t get caught. Or if they do, they’ll find a way to escape punishment.

But here’s the reality. The laws are stronger than ever. The cops are finding new ways to catch drunk drivers. And the penalties are stiff. That goes not just for the driver, but for those who may have a role in providing alcohol.

So before you drink and drive—or look the other way at a graduation party—consider:

 Under a new Illinois law, parents who knowingly permit underage drinking in their homes can face up to three years in prison and a fine of $25,000. That’s a response to the case of Jeffrey and Sara Hutsell, the parents who were convicted of endangering a child and other charges after they opened their Deerfield home for a teen drinking party in 2006. In the aftermath, two teens died in a car crash near the Hutsells’ home. The driver’s blood-alcohol limit was nearly twice the legal limit.

 If you refuse a Breathalyzer test, figuring it’ll be harder for prosecutors to convict you, the police have authority to draw blood to test your blood-alcohol level. Kane County authorities used that threat recently on what they called a “no-refusal weekend.” It was aimed at repeat offenders who exploit a loophole in Illinois law. Refusing to blow into the Breathalyzer brings an automatic three-year license suspension for a driver who has a prior DUI (or six months if you have no prior conviction). But that’s not as steep as a second DUI conviction, which brings a five year-license revocation.

Of the 14 DUI suspects arrested in Kane County over the Memorial Day weekend, eight drivers refused to take the breath test. They were threatened or served with a warrant that required them to provide either a blood or breath sample. In the end, none was physically forced to give blood, said Kane County State’s Atty. John Barsanti, because “there could be a fight and you’ve got people with needles.”

But the threat worked: Eventually, only one suspect refused to provide either a blood or breath sample. He will likely face contempt charges, prosecutors said.

Barsanti called the weekend “wildly successful” and vowed to do more of them. “We got seven samples we never would have gotten,” he said. Six of the seven drivers were over the legal limit, he said. The seventh case is pending results of a blood test.

We know that all the laws and checkpoints in the world won’t stop some people from drinking and driving. They’re convinced that they can slide by. Too many of them are, tragically, wrong.

This is a time of year for celebrations. Graduation. New jobs. A time to savor summer after a long winter. Don’t make it a season for premature funerals.

Here's a pitch your Little Leaguer won't swing at: In this month's journal Pediatrics, two sports injury experts at Ohio State University recommend that pitchers and infielders be required to wear helmets and face protection. Aware that this is a tough sell, the researchers plan a follow-up study to explore why ballplayers hate the idea so much.

We'll save them the trouble: Because A-Rod doesn't wear a face mask, that's why. The occasional line drive to the head is as much a part of youth baseball as spitting sunflower seeds in the dugout. A well-struck ball can seriously injure, even kill, a young fielder, but that's the sort of thing that happens to other people, very rarely and far away. Batter up!

One group likely to embrace the call for protective headgear in the infield is the sporting goods industry, which stands to make lots of money selling helmets and face masks. Many of those companies already make lots of money selling the metal alloy bats that strike fear in the hearts of bleacher-bound parents. Anyone who suggests the rise of the infield face mask has something to do with the decline of the wooden baseball bat is in for some serious blowback from the bat makers, who insist metal bats are as safe as wood. Still, we're sure they'll be happy to sell you a mask if it will make you feel better.

Coaches and players love the metal bats. They have a bigger sweet spot than the traditional wood version, so it's easier for little batters to get a hit. That's why so many Little League games have scores like 19-17, which is a heck of a lot more fun than 2-1. Kids (and adults) will tell you the bats hit the ball harder, faster and farther, and from the stands you'd swear it's so. Manufacturers, though, swear it isn't. Youth models are engineered so the ball comes off the bat at the same speed it would come off a major league wood bat, they explain, as if that tells something about how it compares to a lesser wooden bat swung by a 12-year-old.

Backed by youth sports organizations, including Little League and the American Baseball Coaches Association, the bat makers have fiercely resisted attempts by local and state governments to outlaw metal bats. The campaign to ban metal bats, they say, is being waged by overprotective politicians relying on anecdotal information.

But anecdotal information is what you're stuck with when the data is inconclusive or unconvincing, as it is here.

Ignore it at your peril. It's what you see with your own two eyes, when a spherical leather projectile glances off your little infielder's glove and beans him in the braces. It's that thud in your gut when you read about the 18-year-old Montana boy who died after a ball struck him in the head, or the 12-year-old New Jersey boy who suffered brain damage when a batted ball hit his chest hard enough to stop his heart.

It's the same evidence that makes you think maybe you should buy your kid a face mask and insist that he wear it, especially now that you have a major medical journal to back you up.

Step out of the box and think about it. Who's the grow-up here?

We can send our kids onto the field wearing $200 helmets to protect them from balls hit by $300 bats, or we can tell the kids, the leagues and the bat makers that enough is enough and go back to the days when a home run ball didn't sound like someone dropped a wrench on the sidewalk.

A-Rod doesn't wear a face mask. He doesn't use a metal bat, either.