Detroit Free Press

And so this morning, like a boxer standing before the mirror after his handlers have gone home, we examine our face to see how badly we are bruised.

It was a crisp autumn Sunday, a day when churchgoers shook hands in parking lots, and men grabbed rakes to gather leaves before the football games started. A chill was in the air, and we pulled up our collars against the oncoming winter.By sunset, our perspective had changed. As the news came that bombs had been dropped in Afghanistan, and missiles had been launched and threats were flying back and forth across the oceans, we realized that chilly shiver was more than just the change of seasons.War had begun.

Well, you have to admit, the guy can definitely win a tip.I mean, Yao Ming didn't control that opening jump, he knocked it into next season. If that ball were lettuce, it would be salad. If that ball were a balloon, it would land in Oz. If that ball were . . .Well, you get the idea.

In the end, it doesn't really matter if it was a bribe, a strong-arm or a good old-fashioned threat. What happened recently to a Michigan congressman was enough to make you give up on politics -- if you haven't already.Nick Smith, from south-central Michigan, is not a majordomo in Congress. He isn't a media lightning rod like Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi. But he counts. One district, one vote.

Ilove the Ten Commandments. I can recite them. I don't always succeed in obeying them, but I still try, and I think the world would be better if we all did.Having said that, I can still say this: The Ten Commandments do not belong in a state courthouse. But last week, in Montgomery, Ala., they arrived in a big way.In the still of the night, a 2 1/2-ton monument featuring the Ten Commandments was trucked in and positioned in the rotunda of the state's judicial building. The building is home to, among other things, the Alabama State Supreme Court.

MITCH ALBOMEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The final buzzer sounded, and the Pistons hugged in the eerie silence of a disappointed crowd. Or maybe it wasn't hugging. Maybe, after what they had done -- enduring those swelling and dwindling leads, snaring an exhausting victory, saving themselves from the fires of elimination -- maybe they were just holding each other up."If there was ever a doubt about this team's heart," Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president, said when this was over, "they answered it tonight. They never gave up."Dumars looked tired. And he didn't even play.