The more presumptive Barack Obama's nomination becomes -- which should serve to unify and strengthen the party — the more presumptuous Hillary Clinton's campaign becomes — which serves only to divide and weaken the party. But whether you find that bilateral paradox frustrating or fatiguing, you have to admit the Clinton camp's singular presumptuousness is also quite fascinating. In itself it has become our political "Show of Shows," pretty much the only thing readers care to read, or viewers view.

What is clearer today than yesterday is that Obama will be the nominee, and tomorrow that will be even clearer. That is no longer the issue or concern. The real problem now arising for the Democratic Party is that Hillary is toiling to convince a critically marginal number of her supporters that Obama's coming nomination will not be on the up-and-up — that it was, in mysteriously assorted ways, stolen, and that "They was robbed."

In short, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is systematically delegitimizing the Democratic Party's presidential nominee. I have never seen anything like it — and it is genuinely fascinating in all its paradoxical squalor.

These days you hear a lot about the world financial crisis. But there’s another world crisis under way — and it’s hurting a lot more people.

I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.

Eight years ago we could not have imagined what our country was headed into.

We could not have imagined how many protests, how many marches, how many letters, phone calls, emails, posters, banners, and campaigns we were in for. We could not have imagined the amazing people who have come into our vision, for good and for ill. We could never in our wildest imaginings have come up with a story about how the US would attack countries at will based on phony propaganda, how we would become a country that tortures people, how we would become a country that spits on the grave of every patriot who lived or died for our freedoms under the Bill of Rights. Just those eight years ago, we could not have imagined stolen elections, an eviscerated and cowardly Congress, or eviscerated and cowardly national news organizations that refused to see and report the obvious, or editorial pages that refused to call for the obvious. It has been a remarkable time.

“I am sick, son, I am sick,” my father cried when I spoke to him two days before his death. He died alone on March 18, waiting to be reunited with my brothers in the West Bank. He died a refugee, but a proud man nonetheless.

My father’s struggle began 60 years ago, and it ended a few days ago. Thousands of people descended to his funeral from throughout Gaza, oppressed people that shared his plight, hopes and struggles, accompanying him to the graveyard where he was laid to rest. Even a resilient fighter deserves a moment of peace.