Say goodnight, Fred.  Last night, Saturday (5/12), in a huge ballroom at a hotel in Washington I can't name at a meeting of a group I can't mention, Fred Thompson was the dinner speaker to 500 of conservatism's crème de la crème.

The energy in the room was crackling.  Here's the guy, everyone was either thinking or hoping - the big man who could fill Reagan's shoes, a true conservative who could electrify Republicans and sweep them to victory in 2008.

There were cheers and yells when he was introduced, as everyone stood in sustained applause, then sat down in quiet excited anticipation.

I'm not at liberty to reveal what he said, as this was a closed meeting, a private off the record address.  But I can tell you my reaction and that of the several dozen folks I talked to afterwards.

What a bummer.

[Note:  this essay may be most fruitfully read in conjunction with Terrorism and Tiny Zibbs from September 2003-JW]

When the Kurdish peshmerga forces broke the siege of Mount Sinjar last week, there was no trace of the 5,000 Yazidi women and children abducted from the area in August.

It is thought that they have been mostly sold as concubines to jihadist fighters of Islamic State. When the London Times reporters posed as two British girls interested in joining Islamic State, they were told: "The only way to guarantee being together is marrying the same man."

Meanwhile, the 219 girls still missing in Nigeria after being abducted in April have been "married off," according to the leader of Boko Haram.

My point in connecting these incidents is that throughout history polygamy has fueled violence. Might it be worth suggesting to Moslem leaders, religious and secular, that they push for monogamous norms as one way to reduce violence and bring more peace to the Middle East and to north and west Africa?

Do you want the Obama administration sharing all of your financial information with the Russian, Chinese and Saudi Arabian governments? You may be thinking, not even President Obama would go that far. Not so, read on.

This past week, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released its full proposal for a global standard for the automatic exchange of financial information. The rationale behind this despicable idea is to more effectively enable governments, such as that of France and the United States, to identify tax evaders.

This might sound like a good idea until one realizes that every individual and business will be stripped of all of their financial privacy if this becomes the law of the land - and it is very close to being just that.

Under the OECD proposal, all of the information that financial institutions now report to the U.S. government to try to ensure income-tax compliance, including your account balances, interest, dividends, proceeds from the sale of financial assets - would be shared with foreign governments.

The United States and other governments will, of course, claim that your sensitive financial information will remain confidential - and that you can trust the governments.

It is bad enough when American officials leak or misuse sensitive financial information about U.S. citizens and businesses, but just think what is going to happen when all of those corrupt officials in foreign governments get ahold of it.

Okay, it's time for a fun story.  It is, of course, not fun when someone passes, as Kitty Carlisle did last week (4/17) at age 96.  But it prompts me to reveal how I met her, as it was pretty hilarious.

She was a Broadway and Hollywood actress, but she became a household name as a panelist on the TV show To Tell The Truth, which first aired in 1956.  It was three years later, at age 15, that I was a guest on the show.

You know the setup.  Three contestants, each claiming to be the same person;  four panelists interrogating them and guessing who's real.  Each wrong guess was worth $250.  When I met my two impostors before the show, I asked them:

"Isn't the object of this game to fool the panel, fool all the panelists so we can win the most money, which is $250 times four or $1000?" I asked.  "So what would be the best way to do this?  I think it would be by my pretending to be dumb.  I have to tell the truth, the rules are that I can't lie, but I can pretend to stumble and be unsure.  You guys act confidant. If all the panelists fall for it, we get all the dough."

They both thought this was a great idea.