Constitution

I generally make New Year's resolutions in hopes of becoming a better person — more disciplined, healthier, or, at the very least, less pathetic. Some of these resolutions last until nightfall. Some don't. None ever sees February.

This year, I'm taking a different approach. I'm going to concentrate on giving up things. Not things like smoking — been there, done that. I mean giving up on ideas I have pursued through the years into one blind alley after another.

Ideas like climate change, for example.

The N-word is perhaps the most powerful word in the English language. It carries 400 years of brutal American history that can strike with the force of a lash.

Nice people don't say it. F-bombs are soggy firecrackers compared to the explosive power of…well, you know.

So it's easy to see why an educator and publisher in Alabama would choose to delete the word from a new edition of Huckleberry Finn, substituting "slave" in its stead.