New York City police issued a whopping 9,016 tickets during a 24-hour crackdown on phoning-while-driving.

Department spokesman Paul Browne says that compares to 500 on a typical day. The ticket blitz ended Friday. But the law is still the law. Get caught driving while using a hand held phone and you could be fined $120.

If you can drive with your phone and not be a retard, that would be O.K.  But — how many times have you been behind someone going half the speed limit or driving somewhat erratically – you think they’re drunk – but no, just obliviously talking on their phone.

The most discussed foreign policy issue of this campaign centered on Barack Obama’s primary debate argument that the U.S. needed to talk to its enemies. In earlier, more reasoned times, this was known as diplomacy. Sometimes diplomacy – talk, negotiation and compromise – keeps young Americans from dying in foreign streets and fields. It doesn’t mean that the president of the United States will personally sit down with Hugo Chavez or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It does mean that the U.S. State Department and the professional Foreign Service will be free to do its job.

Most importantly, Barack Obama has said over and over that defending the U.S. is supreme. Also important is that with an Obama presidency we will exit the era of viewing the world through very narrow neo-conservative ideological blinders. I believe Barack Obama will look out for U.S. interests while respecting the reasonable differences of others around the world.

I believe Barack Obama will finish the war on terror where the Bush Administration has prolonged it with our bloody detour through Iraq. His focus on Afghanistan and the accidental or not-so accidental new state sponsor of terror, Pakistan, is correct.

Finally, is temperament. The world’s patience is fairly thin with U.S. policies that have more unintended bad consequences than benefits. The U.S. could be the world’s leader, but only with justice and humility. Under the Cheney foreign policy these two qualities have been dead. I believe Barack Obama’s intellect, demeanor and worldview will revive our standing in the world and resurrect an ascendant, just and humble American foreign policy.