Leo Acton didn't think this career path was open to him. He considered being a musician, but he always thought of himself as a physical comedian. "In a lot of ways, I've always been a clown," he said last week in a phone interview.

But "I always thought you had to be born into the circus," he added. "I never thought it was really an option."

Silly guy. Everybody knows you can run away to join the circus.

In title and in summary, the Clean Water Restoration Act sounds benign enough.

But Dan Parmeter, executive director of the Minnesota-based American Property Coalition, calls it "the biggest federal power grab probably in the history of the country."

Frank Sundram is diplomatic to the degree that in an interview last month, he refused to acknowledge death.

Discussing WVIK, the Augustana College-based public-radio station that broadcasts at 90.3 FM in the Quad Cities and 95.7 FM in Dubuque, Sundram said: "The challenge for us is how we replace our audience. As members leave us - due to life circumstances - how do we start a relationship with the next two generations below us? ... It's going to happen through the Internet. It's going to happen through our digital channels. It's going to happen through other means."

The truth of history usually takes decades to emerge from the overload of the present, but in 1876 Frederick Douglass made an assessment of Abraham Lincoln that remains succinct, elegant, and accurate: "From a genuine abolition point of view, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent, but measuring him by the sentiment of his country - a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to discuss - he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined."