By DAN K. THOMASSON, Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON - The nation's insurers may never be the same by the time Barack Obama is through tarring them as the bad boys of the nation's medical care problems. The president's latest gambit in his obsessive effort to "reform" health care at any cost seems to be to indict the insurance industry as the leading conspirator in runaway medical costs.

WASHINGTON - Firearms mania seems to fall into several broad categories with elements of each in the other.

WASHINGTON - In this time of economic turmoil and high unemployment, try this on for size: The chances are that the person you elected to represent you in the U.S. Congress not only has been traveling around the globe on your tax dollars but also has been pocketing what's left of the daily expense money when the trip ends.

WASHINGTON - The late Gov. Earl Long of Louisiana had a way of refining things to their basest element. Asked one time by another official about how to define the importance of ethics in politics, he allegedly replied, "Son, we certainly use ethics in politics. We use anything we can get our hands on."

WASHINGTON - The only trouble with Mitch Daniels is that he is one of those who should consider running for president but probably won't for the right reasons.

WASHINGTON - Tiger Woods wants us to "believe" in him again, a rather presumptuous request if for no other reason than it assumes we ever did. "Believing" in someone or something is usually reserved for a deity or one's relatives or a political philosophy or a religion but hardly for one whose celebrity is derived from striking a little white ball with a stick.

WASHINGTON - The other day I asked a liberal friend whether he considered someone arrested in an attempted act of terror a warrior or merely a criminal? He replied that he definitely felt the person, particularly if not a citizen of this country, should be considered a warrior or enemy combatant if caught on U.S. soil or, for that matter, in a war zone.

FRANKLIN, Ind. - After a week of talking politics in the Midwest the one thread connecting voters of all stripe -- independents, Republicans and even many Democrats -- in their assessment of Barack Obama's presidency is the strong belief that lack of experience has marred his first year and led to policies that have deleterious long range implications for the nation.

WASHINGTON - A major concern of most wire service editors in the old days was a bad taste practical joke story that inadvertently found its way into circulation and ended up in dozens of newspapers in too much a rush to verify it. Young reporters were told repeatedly to keep their humor to themselves and away from the filing system at the risk of permanent damage to their careers.

WASHINGTON - As kids during World War II most young American boys fought imaginary battles against the Axis powers right along with the real ones being fought by their brothers, fathers, cousins and those of their friends.