Surely, the gas can is protected. It’s just a can, for goodness sake. Yet he was right. This one doesn’t have a vent. Who would make a can without a vent unless it was done under duress? After all, everyone knows to vent anything that pours. Otherwise, it doesn’t pour right and is likely to spill.

For government to be us, elected representatives and their publicly stated policy preferences — not an unelected “permanent government” of civil servants and corporate lobbyists that start coopting those elected officials the same day they enter office – would have to be the primary influence on what government does. How’s that workin’ out for ya?

For government to be us, it would have to actually matter what the law said — all those “constraints” Obama says he and other elected officials operate under. But if constitutional protections like the Fourth Amendment meant a damned thing, warrantless wiretapping would never have been an issue in the first place. And by his very threat to veto the proposed CISPA cyber-security bill, Obama made it clear it doesn’t really matter what the law is. The FBI has long privately assured Internet Service Providers that they’re protected from prosecution if they cooperate with “the authorities” in providing confidential customer information.

Next time Obama or anyone else of his ilk says “government is us,” give them a one-fingered salute.

If it were to be built close to land, it would interfere with shipping lanes, Mr Salmond said, and it would also interfere with military radar installations. No windfarms will be built there, he said.

My company continued to invest in the resort in good faith. It wasn’t until August 2009 that Mr Salmond began to show his true mindset. My son, Donald Trump Jr, and George got a call from the First Minister’s special adviser, Geoff Aberdein, lamenting the ‘terrible criticism’ over the release of al-Megrahi.

Last week, I asked whether you could think of any new ways to help people understand what £1.2 trillion means. There were lots of fantastic answers, but the prize goes to M. B. Evans who pointed out that, if they were seconds, our 1.2 trillion pounds of national debt would be equivalent to 38,052 years! Or, in other words, if we paid down the national debt at a rate of £1,000 a second, it would still take over 38 years before we had paid it off!

The issue of humanism is vita for several reasons. Although fundamentalist religions will likely always be part of human life, there is also a growing awareness that ethics and morality, including our sense of justice, must gain a footing apart from theology or religion. The reason is that faith is ineffable, ultimately. It is too personal, too subjective, and thus it tends toward schism rather than harmony. Whereas the humanist idea that an understanding of human nature, based on science and ordinary human reason, holds out promise.