The Meaning of "Is" and the Meaning of "Isn't"

All the publicity for Bill Clinton's excessively long autobiography -- what, is he trying to top David Foster Wallace? -- has me thinking about that gold-misted era when the nation was worried about the President's definition of the word "is."

These days, our attention has been focused on the word "isn't" instead, as in, "We can torture this man, because he isn't a citizen of a state we recognize as a party to the Geneva Convention."

Personally, I'm all for accentuating the positive.

Sleepy

Today I leave for Los Angeles. After two days there, I head to the Bay Area, where I will meet my parents on Saturday and pick up Kim and Skylar at the airport on Sunday. I made a point of getting decent sleep, instead of staying up all night before a trip, as is my wont. But I'm still feeling sleepy. Not as sleepy as the Bean, though. Two swimming sessions a day at her pre-school's summer camp have her worn out. Today, she rushed out of her room and flopped on her sofa -- also Tibb's sofa, incidentally -- as she does most days. Only this time she fell back asleep.

Is that the hand of a future doer of big things, or what?