Victor Davis

There are a couple of things Victor Davis needs to know about Mission Viejo. First, you don't try to bargain with the merchants in the local mall. And second, you don't come to the Speedo Swim Meet of Champions prepared to go fast. These things just aren't done. It's not suburbia chic. But then the Canadian world record-holder never was one to adhere to convention. Saturday, he went to the mall looking for sunglasses and found a pair he liked. "They were marked $17," Davis said.

England's Daley Thompson moved from one controversy to another but swept to a third successive Commonwealth Games decathlon gold medal in the pouring rain Monday. For the second straight day, Thompson delighted the spectators but angered officials with his behavior. He won 8 of the 10 decathlon events, slipping up in the discus and taking things easy in the 1,500 meters, when he was already assured of adding another gold medal to his collection.

It's only the second week of play in the Orange Empire Conference basketball races, way too early to start calling games "vital" but not too soon to label a few "important." On the women's side, Golden West (20-2, 1-0 in conference) plays host to district rival Orange Coast (18-2, 2-0) at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Golden West is ranked second in the state and OCC is fourth. Golden West, which has a 10-game winning streak, is averaging 82 points. Melanie Iwamasa, a freshman guard, is averaging 20 points.

I don't believe I ever met a farmer who wasn't, deep down, mad about something--parasites, fallen prices, freak rain, drought, skittish bankers, bad neighbors, rapacious middlemen, fickle consumers, environmentalists, bureaucrats, city folk, society in general. The System. Stoics, they don't advertise the anger much, at least not to outsiders. Instead, they vent among themselves over coffee, across a vine, or maybe they slap a "Let 'em Eat Oil" bumper sticker on the pickup and let it go at that.

U.S. swimmers, their international status dropping in recent years, looked as strong as ever Sunday at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Tokyo. Janet Evans, Tom Jager, Dave Wharton and Mike Barrowman set world records, the first time in modern swimming history that U.S. swimmers set four in one day, team officials said. Evans, who won three gold medals at the Seoul Games last year, broke her world record in the women's 800-meter freestyle with a time of 8 minutes 16.

The Army is getting desperate. Having fallen 25% short of already reduced recruiting goals last month, it is raising enlistment bonuses to $40,000 in some cases and lowering standards to accept and retain soldiers who would have been turned away in years past. A minor criminal record? No high school diploma? Uncle Sam still wants you. Down this way disaster lies -- the undoing of the finest armed forces in U.S. history. But what choice is there?

WHICH WOULD you rather have in your capital city: a terrorist attack in the center or a weeklong riot on the outskirts? After the experience of last July, most Londoners would probably be tempted to opt for the latter. The damage inflicted by the Tube and bus bombings far exceeds the cost of the recent mayhem in Paris' eastern suburbs. On the other hand, the perpetrators of the 7/7 bombings could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

Starting Monday, the winners of the Nobel Prize will be announced. Current asked several writers and columnists who they think should be a laureate. --- "John Updike should get the Nobel Prize for literature. The Swedes have a predilection for whimsicality and like to give it to unknown authors writing in small languages. If they awarded the prize for medicine in the same style, it would go to a chiropractor in Saskatchewan.

Like the neoconservatives who brought us this war on Iraq, Victor Davis Hanson (Commentary, April 10) confuses two separate principles: fighting for one's own freedom and preemptive attack. A name like Operation Iraqi Freedom deliberately equates the two, but Hanson's histories of war show the importance of acts of self-liberation that cannot be performed by proxy. The only people who can liberate the Iraqis are the Iraqis themselves, in whatever way they can manage in keeping with their own values.

It could have been a scene straight out of a western movie. The friendly rivals--the two fastest alive--sat across from one another, calmly planning the big showdown. There was no discussion of .44s at high noon, though, when swimmers Alex Baumann and Jens-Peter Berndt met while competing in Montreal earlier this spring and decided when and where it would be.