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Should we show more respect to each other and is greater formality the way to that?

Just back from Florida - taking a very brief break from the day job - to present Americana which is broadcast on Radio Four this Sunday.

That's how I find myself sitting with America's foremost mezzo-soprano, , in her lovely piano room, dominated by a grand piano, the walls covered with photos and paintings of her most celebrated performances.

But it's very much a working room - the glass table in front of us is covered with sheet music for various parts for mezzo-sopranos - and she tells me she was up practising at six that morning. She says her daughter tells her to be quiet and "stop that noise".

What she was practising in the early hours was her tribute to in front of the president and much of the capital's establishment.

Dorothy Height was head of the for 40 years, known for her toughness and dignity, always very properly dressed in hat and gloves. Denyce tells me the service made her reflect on her own life.

She tells me: "I felt - my gosh! - I have been spending the whole of my life occupied with my own life and my family and I felt a bit ashamed that I haven't done more reaching out to the larger community. I think that it encourages us all to do more, we should do more."

I mention Dorothy Height's image, those hats and gloves.

"It reminds me of the ladies going to the church. That sense of dignity is very important and I think we've lost a lot of that. At the service you could see a lot of women wore hats in her honour. I do like that formality: it reminds us of who we are, I think it helps to keep us in check.

"I had a visit some years ago with and the entire time she called me Miss Graves, and there were people there who had worked with her for 25 years and she continually called them Mrs Smith and Mr Jones and I think it reminds us of our greatness. I think it shows such respect. It causes us to behave differently."

A bit old-fashioned, I suggested.

"I like it. It reminds us of who we are. A lot of Americans have become very, very casual with each other. It reminds us who we are and puts us in touch with our heritage. "

I said that many of the people in that cathedral had fought great battles together, but wondered if there was the same sense of solidarity among African Americans today.

"I would like to think it does. I am not sure in the same way, thanks to Dorothy Height and so many other greater trail-blazer. They have opened a lot of doors, but there's a lot of solidarity within the community."

I hesitate with liberal guilt and ask if I am making unwarranted assumptions - why should she feel any more solidarity with a woman from poor south Washington, than a well-off white man might with unemployed whites?

"It is different. It is very much there and alive. I liken it to after 9/11. There was a sense that you could feel that was quite visceral, that we were all Americans and something had happened to the whole of us. And I think that happens on a different scale with African Americans.

"I certainly feel it all the time, if I am walking down the street if I happen to pass another African American there is a sort of acknowledgement, that always happens - 'yes, I see you, yes I acknowledge you'. I am married to a Caucasian man and if we are out and I see a group of African Americans I always make real a point to make to say hello to say 'we are together and we are united and we are in this together'. It does exist still and I think it always will."

You can hear the rest of the interview and much more on Americana at 1915 Sunday on Radio Four and at numerous times on the World Service starting at 1430 on Monday in the Americas.

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Tallahassee, Florida

Preston Scott opens his show on WFLA Talk Radio with the typical break-neck patter of the right-wing radio host. He's as slick on air as he is thoughtful, intellectual when the red light goes off. Today he's also a man who feels he's achieved something worthwhile.

The Tea Party movement is on the verge of claiming its first major scalp, opting for conservative purity rather than the certainty of Republican victory. And a very well coiffured, silver scalp it is too, belonging to Florida's Governor Charlie Crist.

For Mr Crist is to announce he's abandoning his attempt to stand as a Republican candidate for the Senate and will instead fight as an independent (or "non affiliated" for any pedants or wonks among you: there is already a Florida Independent Party).

Preston Scott tells me why he has campaigned against the governor: "He doesn't really stand for anything. I've described him as a political windsock. Wherever the political winds blow, that's where he is. Many of us have grown tired of that."

I suggest that may be the definition of a good politician, someone who listens to the mood of the people.

"It may be, but it's not the definition of a candidate who is acceptable to people like me anymore."

He adds: "The [Republican] party has decided it has to win elections. I believe it has to win hearts and minds and with ideas that are based on rock solid conservative principles."

Mr Crist is standing as an independent because it is obvious he would be beaten by Marco Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida Senate, the son of working class Cuban immigrants.

He came from 6% in the polls in the internal party race to be 20% ahead now. But that may not be reflected in the autumn election for the Senate itself. The one poll that has been published suggests that Mr Crist, who will make it clear he is not leaving the Republican party and would vote with them if elected, would win that race.

That doesn't bother the Tea Party supporters I have spoken to here. Some believe it is important the Republican party sticks to its most important principles, others give the impression they don't give two hoots about the party itself as long someone represents their values, whatever label they have.

I get a very different view in Florida's political power house. Many state capitols look like delightfully shrunken down versions of the one in Washington. Florida's is more like an international hotel built by communists. Still, the fourth floor has a traditional political buzz. The rotunda between the chambers of the Senate and the House is abuzz with lobbyists. On the circular marble walls are carved "Florida facts" such as the state beverage (orange juice), animal (Florida panther) and butterfly (zebra longwing). If it had a space for "Republican strategist", Florida facts would probably say Mac Stipanovich.

He helped Reagan win Florida, was a chief of staff for one governor and helped several others to power. He's a long time friend of Charlie Crist. He tells me he started out as "a head banger" but now sees himself as a moderate. I ask what he thinks is happening in the party he has worked so hard for.

"After the electoral defeats in the last election cycle, Obama's victory, Republicans entered a period of re-examination, angst and conflict. People talk about a battle for the soul of the party. Florida is ground zero in that battle. Are the party doctrinaires going to be able to describe more exclusively what it means to be a Republican?"

His answer to his own question is that for a while they are. But he feels the desire for ideological purity is driven not only by anger at defeat, but anger at the recession, and will lessen if the economy improves.

But I ask Preston Scott if the party has to move to the right, with the hint of a threat from those who are loyal to an idea, not a party.

"I don't think it has a choice. As we are talking of Marco Rubio, he put it very well, we have one Democratic party, we don't need two of them. If the Republican party wants to remain a viable party and not give rise or birth to a viable third party it has no choice but to move right."

Some will argue this is just another battle in a war that has raged for 50 years or more. It will have one climax here in Florida in November, but I suspect it will rage well into 2012 and indeed beyond.

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Goldman is hot under the collar as the grilling continues.

Some of the top players in Wall Street's biggest investment bank, , are lined up in front of the facing a barrage of questions that sound more like accusations than an attempt to get answers.

The men from Wall Street spend their time rifling through folders of documents in front of them, looking tense and uncomfortable.

Senator Carl Levin, chairing the sub-committee, opened by saying that the company had stacked the decks against the buyers of a financial product. He said that Wall Street had turned bad mortgage loans into economy-wrecking financial instruments.

He said the thread that joined the strands together was unbridled greed.

The senators clearly feel that their witnesses are deliberately wasting time, hoping they will get off the hook and can dodge the questions, as they hunt for e-mails in their folders.

I am not so sure.

Some questions clearly make them uncomfortable, such as whether they have a duty to promote the interests of their clients. The reason is obvious. They often had several clients, with different interests.

But I also detected that they are frustrated by questions framed by amateurs who believe themselves well informed.

The charge of fraud names just one individual, Fabrice Tourre.

He has denied deceiving clients by designing a product that bundled together high-risk mortgages and was secretly designed to fail, benefiting a hedge fund.

He denied it with anger in his voice but he hasn't been properly cross-examined as yet.

The senators lecturing these would-be "masters of the universe" as if they were school boys caught with their fingers in the jam have warned them the hearing will continue until they get answers.

They haven't quite said that no-one leaves the room until someone owns up, but it has much the same feeling.

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We may have had the verdict, but that won't stop the trial being a good show.

The man in charge of has already announced that the company is guilty. Democratic Senator Carl Levin says that the "evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interest and profits ahead of the interest of its clients," adding that the firm had deceived its clients and was now deceiving the country by protesting its innocence.

I suspect the trick for Goldman chief executive Lloyd Blankfein will be to keep it ever-so humble. Wealth and power are not exactly divorced in the States; even here, though, politicians revel in the chance to scrutinise those who not only have more money than themselves, but more power - and power not hedged with rules and elections.

So Mr Blankfein is wise to sound a conciliatory note in . While fiercely defending his firm against the charges of fraud, he will agree that there should be more control of the derivatives market and say that he understands how the case looks to the people on Main Street:

"To them, it is confirmation of how out of control they believe Wall Street has become, no matter how sophisticated the parties or what disclosures were made. We have to do a better job of striking the balance between what an informed client believes is important to his or her investing goals and what the public believes is overly complex and risky."

Today, the "masters of the universe" would be wise to curb their arrogance and not vent their frustration by making wisecracks. More as we get it.

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"Loooser!" is one of nastiest playground insults. For today, at any rate, the Democrats' Harry Reid won't mind being stuck with it.

Some might say he's just getting some practice in.

He doesn't look much like a winner, with a face that invites the description "bespectacled" even from those of us who wear glasses, and a manner that seems to always teeter on the edge of irascible. He is a favourite target for his Republican opponents, who frequently describe him as being on the hard left. This doesn't mean he's a revolutionary Marxist, just that he would find ideological soul-mates in any of the three main British political parties. He is almost certain to lose his Nevada seat in this autumn's elections.

His insistence on bringing forward a vote in the Senate on financial regulation when he doesn't appear to have enough votes to win it may be, rather than the signature of a loser, a canny political tactic. He needs 60 votes to win, which means all of his own side plus one - just one - Republican.

At the moment it seems that all 41 of them are standing firm against the bill. This is a vote for cloture. Yes, that's "cloture", not "closure", although it means roughly the same thing.

It stops a filibuster; that is, endless talking to make sure a proposal gets nowhere - and Americans think cricket is complicated. It's best seen as a symbolic head-count, answering the question: have they got enough votes to get the whole thing through?

So why might the Democrats invite - indeed, welcome - the defeat of a measure that President Obama says is necessary to prevent history repeating itself, not as farce but as a second tragedy for "ordinary Americans"? This is a bill that the president says will bring in tight new laws for banks and other financial institutions. It is a bill, he says, that will stop the reckless and the crooked, greedy conmen and the irresponsible gamblers from again heedlessly creating a new financial crisis and wrecking the lives of millions of innocents.

There are elections for all the seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the Senate in the autumn mid-terms, halfway through the president's term of office. Things aren't looking too good for the president's party, but if there is a place in the political atlas of the mind that is less popular than Washington, it's Wall Street.

If the Democrats can brand their opponents as the sort of Washington politicians who would line the pockets of their Wall Street friends rather than vote for a measure to protect the American people, it might or might not turn the polls around, but it might save a few seats. And it gives them that most important thing in politics - a story to tell, with heroes, villains and dragons to slay.

When that great chronicler of the Depression, John Steinbeck, portrayed a bank as a machine that might be loathed by every one of its human members but still moves like a machine almost against their will, he was tapping into a deep seam of American populism: a poll just out shows that two thirds of Americans want tough new rules on banks.

And like any good political trap, this one can be sprung either way: if the fear of being branded a friend of Wall Street drives one - just one - Republican into their arms. then they get a bill that they genuinely want. Win or lose tonight, in the short term, at least, they win.

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The most powerful politician in the world has not quite made it to the home of the most powerful financiers in the world to deliver his lecture.

President Obama's motorcade halted a few blocks short of Wall Street in the rather more bohemian East Village. The handful of protesters outside the barricades was accusing him of being in league with Goldman Sachs, of failing to break up the banks, of being too soft on the money men.

The president's plan faces a tough fight in the Senate and on the surface at least, he is appealing to Wall Street to join him, rather than back the bill's Republican opponents.
He's told them that a sound financial system for the 21st century needs tough new rules to prevent the "turmoil and devastation" of the financial crisis ever happening again.
They have nothing to fear unless they are bandits, rely on milking people, or want to take reckless risks.

So, he says, rather than spending millions on sending lobbyists to Washington to kill or cripple the proposed laws, they should be leaning on the politicians who want to stop them.

But the real message is intended not for the people in the room or those a few blocks away. It's for the satellite trucks outside and the viewers in the Midwest and the Deep South, people all over America who resent the power of Wall Street. His message is that it is he who is on their side, and not the Republicans.

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The US will have a new justice on the Supreme Court by the end of next month, and between now and then there's going to be a lot of speculation if it will make the court more liberal, more conservative, more ethnically diverse and so on.

One thing is for certain: It will make the average age lower. At the moment it stands at 68 years and 10 months.

The gap is because has decided to retire. It was his 90th birthday yesterday, which he celebrated with a quietish day in court.

The president sent him birthday wishes saying:

"For the last 35 years of your remarkable 90, the nation has benefited from the rigor, courage, and integrity that have marked your service on the Supreme Court. Our system of justice and our nation are stronger and fairer because of your sterling contributions."

President Obama says he'll choose a successor for Justice Stevens by the end of May at the latest and .

Although he describes himself as a moderate and started life as a Republican, . That means it is not as much of a challenge, or indeed opportunity, as if the president were replacing a conservative.

But the president has to decide whether he wants to pick someone who Republicans will endorse or whether he doesn't mind a bit of a fight in the Senate.

Whoever it is, and there's apparently a list of about 10, some Republicans will object that the pick is too liberal and is otherwise unsuitable, largely on the grounds that it is the traditional thing to do, and would be almost rude not to engage in a bit of political showmanship.

But there is one interesting question at least. Justice Stevens is the last WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) on the Supreme Court.

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That was John Paul Jones, currently with the group Them Crooked Vultures, which clearly has no connection with lawyers.

So discounting the need for a heavy metal bassist, the matter of religion remains.
There is no shortage of white men, it is just that Justice Stevens is, as I understand it, the only Protestant on the bench. It will be interesting to see if that is a consideration.

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Hear that dog yelping in agony? That's a cry of freedom! So the US Supreme Court has decided, ruling that a law aimed at banning videos of animal cruelty is an infringement of the first amendment, freedom of speech.

Robert J Stephens, owner of a business called Dogs of Velvet and Steel had been sentenced to three years in prison for producing videos like Japanese Pit Fights and Pick-A-Winna which showed pit bulls fighting and attacking other animals, including a "gruesome" scene of an attack on a farmyard pig.

The Supreme Court has ruled in his favour agreeing with the argument that the law is "over broad" and so invalid under the first amendment.

The original law against material depicting animal cruelty has a curious history. It was designed to outlaw what are apparently known as "crush videos".

Given that the Supreme Court has invested time and money in a graphic explanation of what these are, I can do little better than quote them.

"Crush videos often depict women slowly crushing animals to death with their bare feet or while wearing high heeled shoes, sometimes while talking to the animals in a kind of dominatrix patter over the cries and squeals of the animals."

Given there is a sexual element in these, the Supreme Court appears to be sympathetic to the rationale behind the ban. Simple cruelty they find less offensive.

They find that while dog fighting is outlawed in all 50 states and there is a long tradition of laws against animal cruelty there is no such "tradition prohibiting depictions of such cruelty".

They find the law is of such "alarming breadth" that it could include merely killing and wounding animals and find no reason why it should not also apply to videos about hunting.

On the face of it, the ruling sounds perverse, although not as perverse as crush videos.

But there is a hugely important logic that lies behind the ruling. The Supreme Court honed in on government arguments that such videos fall outside protected free speech because they are not historical, instructional or of use to society and have "a minimum redeeming value".

That, they say "as a free floating test for first amendment coverage...is startling and dangerous" adding:

"Our Constitution forecloses any attempt to revise the judgement simply on the basis that some speech is not worth it."

The court points out that most speech doesn't have much intrinsic merit (there is a learned argument about the gap between "scant", "trifling" and "serious") and that doesn't mean that it can or should be banned.

I don't think the argument differs much in practice in most Western democracies, but in theory there is a huge distinction between a state that under a constitution allows freedom of speech, and permits the government to make argument for exceptions and one where the government doles out permission to say or do specific things.

Have they got the balance right here?

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America's top brass has pointed to the elephant in the Iranian room, only to make it clear it's a particularly unattractive beast.

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He added it was not his call, but the president's. It sounds pretty clear he doesn't want the bombers to fly. Ever.

"There are those that say, 'come on, Mullen, get over that. They're going to get it. Let's deal with it'. Well, dealing with it has unintended consequences that I don't think we've all thought through. I worry that other countries in the region will then seek to, actually, I know they will, seek nuclear weapons as well. That spiral headed in that direction is a very bad outcome."

This follows the fuss about a top secret memo from Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

, arguing that the USA does not have an effective long-term policy for dealing with Iran.

Mr Gates took the unusual step of releasing a statement saying the New York Times had got the memo wrong and "mischaracterised its purpose and content".

He said that it wasn't a wake-up call but had raised a series of questions and options to go along with "the Administration's pivot to a pressure track on Iran earlier this year".
Pivoting to a pressure track sounds like an unwieldy and possibly painful manouevre, but apparently refers to the energetic pursuit of sanctions and what might follow if they don't work.

Mr Gates continues to say that "there should be no confusion by our allies and adversaries that the United States is properly and energetically focused on this question and prepared to act across a board range of contingencies in support of our interests."

So the elephant will find itself talked about more and more this year, but the administration's approach to military action seems to boil down to "we could, we might (but we won't).

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"We stand here today to reclaim our destiny!" proclaimed the speaker at the Tea Party movement's rally in the centre of the capital. It marked the culmination of a day of protests, to mark the date when all Americans have to hand in their tax forms. It was a gorgeous, sunny Thursday evening, better suited to lounging around on the grassy hill beneath the Washington Monument than counter-revolutionary fervour.

"Make them pay - make them go away!" he yelled repeatedly but the crowd failed to take up the chant. One woman said to her friends: "Make him go away." Not that she disagreed with the sentiment, he just wasn't very inspiring.

A few thousand people had come out to mark the culmination of a day of protests. When I asked why so few, people pointed out, absolutely fairly, that it was an evening in the middle of the week and that their were rallies not just in the capital, but all over the country.

The mood was more like a good natured rock concert than the fury of last summer's town hall gatherings. Perhaps a sort of guarded optimism has replaced the anger. But it is hard to know where the Tea Party movement is heading.

The harsh speeches from the stage, the banners depicting Obama as Mao, the warnings of loss of liberty and dictatorship only a step away are in contrast with the often rather measured worries of the people holding them.

Behind the rhetoric tax is the very traditional concern. The president , paying $1,792,414 in federal income tax from his income of $ 5,505,409. Few of the people gathered a stone's throw from his home will pay that much, but they all feel what they do pay is too much.

Lauren Boer sits on a wall beneath the monument watching the speeches. She is not rich and she tells me she is fed up with the bailouts, which she says have helped people who bought homes far above their means. She says when her husband was made redundant they lived on rice and beans for eight months to make ends meet and to pay $10,000 tax on what she says is a "shoebox" of a home.

"What am I, some sort of idiot to get up and go to work at 4.45 every morning while they sit at home on the coach in a mansion watching Oprah?"

She is of course holding her own hand-made banner.

One of the noticeable features of Tea Party rallies is the lovingly-crafted placards, some with stinging slogans - "If you don't love America, leave!" - others with cramped words, detailed arguments and even graphs.

But Washington's canny street sales men have wised up to this gathering of free market enthusiasts. A man in dreadlocks waves printed banners with the Tea Party patriots snake and "Don't step on me", and the dollars roll in. The politicians and think tanks too want to capture and directed this inchoate force.

A indicates that the average Tea Party supporter is a well-off, well-educated married white man over 45. It seems to me a bit more diverse than that. Almost exclusively white certainly, but there are many women, quite a few young people and lots of families. A prim looking mum, dad and two kids all weaning T-shirts proclaiming "Parental rights group" watch as a lanky Goth woman in extremely skimpy shorts goes by shouting "Liberty!"

"I suspect the politicians will succeed in harnessing and neutering this force. The Tea Party has beliefs, aims and ambitions by the barrel-load but no focus. Movements prosper when they have a clear - and achievable - objective. In fact, curiously for people motivated by a distrust of politicians and disliked of Washington, most of their energy will be spent on electing more Republicans and more conservative Republicans in November, and then trusting them to do the right thing when they get to Washington.

This is very far from a programme.

Matt Lewandowski is watching the rally with his family, all in Patriot T-shirts. He tells me: "Every day they are taking more rights, taxing us to death. Charging their charge card to the moon." He says he doesn't want his grandchildren to pay for the debt the government is creating.

So I ask him how he would cut the deficit. Do away with Medicare (free health care for the retired) for instance? Not that. Cut the huge defence budget? No, not that either. So what? He says: "Cut people out of government, get rid of a lot of people. Get rid of all the waste."

After years covering politics I rather despair when I hear politicians fall back on this, but it is said so often that voters can hardly be blamed for thinking it is a solution. When push comes to shove, politicians in government never quite find those huge savings. Not that there isn't waste, but it is not significant compared to big projects. But real choices are hard.

Outside the park a young man sits with a small banner that tries to point this out. It reads "Stop socialized medicine - close military hospitals". I wonder what sort of response he's been getting.

"Mostly thumbs up. They don't get it. It's kinda funny."

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.

Around 50 million tweets a day going back to March 2006. You work it out.

One of the big problems for journalists these days is sifting through the huge volume of material available.

Imagine the workload of historians of the future.

The library announced the news (how else?) on Twitter. It cites President Obama's tweet that he'd won the election as history in the making.

So it's competition time: no prizes beyond a warm feeling of your own cleverness.

How would past historical events have been tweeted by participants and observers in under 140 characters?

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This summit is just one part of a drive by President Obama to demonstrate that he and the United States are in the lead in an ambitious, some would say grandiose, quest to reduce and eventually completely eliminate nuclear weapons.

Those who have spoken to the president about this say it is a real and fundamental passion. But there are a number of ways to read what he is up to and why.

It could be the pursuit of a long-held radical dream. His biggest admirers and detractors might agree that the campaign for nuclear disarmament was a core belief of the left in the 60s and 70s, and might believe that he is trying to make that dream a reality.

It could be pragmatic. He's right that terrorists setting of a bomb in a major city would change international politics for ever. So much so, that it is hard to imagine how the world would or could react.

The idea of an unfriendly country using a nuclear missile against a US ally is not a lot better. It is clearly something no president would want on his watch.

Cynics might see it as a carefully clothed exercise designed to reinforce US dominance and the status quo. After all, his plan, if successful, would remove nuclear weapons from the hands of the enemies of the US, move a lot of weapons-grade material to America and leave the US with more nukes than anyone else.

At any rate his plan has three prongs. he first and easiest was the Start treaty, the agreement that Russia and the US would reduce their vast stockpile, still leaving them far more weapons than they could possibly use.

The second, the purpose of this summit, is making sure that terrorists cannot make a weapon by getting hold of nuclear material that is poorly secured.

President Obama told the conference that this problem could only be solved by nations coming together with a new mind set.

"Just the smallest amount of plutonium - about the size of an apple - could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people. Terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda have tried to acquire the material for a nuclear weapon, and if they ever succeed, they would surely use it. Were they to do so, it would be a catastrophe for the world - causing extraordinary loss of life, and striking a major blow at global peace and stability. In short, it is increasingly clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is one of the greatest threats to global security - to our collective security."

He went on to say it was an irony that the risk of a nuclear confrontation between nations had gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack had gone up.

Still, his third and trickiest challenge is dealing with those nations which the US believes pose a threat because they have, or are apparently trying to get, nuclear weapons.

He announced South Korea would hold the next such summit. The country is next door to North Korea, a nation which has not been invited to this gathering because it has its own nuclear weapons programme in defiance of UN resolutions.

More pressing still is what to do about Iran. The West believes Iran is bent on getting its own bomb and wants new sanctions.

After a meeting between President Hu of China and President Obama, the White House said China was working on sanctions. But a spokesman for the Chinese foreign minister said pressure and sanctions could not fundamentally solve the problem.

This is the president's biggest challenge as there is nothing obvious that can be done to solve the problem. After all, the two previous US presidents couldn't find a solution.

You could argue the Iraq war was all about sending a message to Iran and North Korea. If so, they didn't get it. Neither country appears willing to change its approach. Military strikes set back programmes, but don't eliminate them. I can hardly imagine the world has much appetite for two new wars and occupations.

Many experts believe the world will have to learn to live with a nuclear Iran, just as it appears to be living with a nuclear North Korea. But it wouldn't do much for a president who has made a less nuclear world a top priority.

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Outside the conference centre two marines do duty as traffic cops, stopping cars and lorries and waving them on.

A police car blocks the next street, and a trailer from Homeland Security's emergency response unit is parked alongside. A ring of big trucks provides further discouragement to would-be car bombers. The high security is understandable. The prime ministers and presidents of 40 countries are inside.

But all this high security would be blown away like paper in the wind by what President Obama is talking about. A nuclear bomb set off by terrorists. He says it is the highest threat to US security.

Of course film makers and novelists have long made us shiver at the sheer thought of such a possibility, and the whole perception of the danger of weapons of mass destruction after 9/11 led us into the Iraq war.

But perhaps some threats seem too much like fiction to be taken seriously. , only 12% of Americans agree with their president that it is the biggest threat to their country.

President Obama appears to worry that other world leaders are just as complacent. Guarding or removing highly enriched uranium and plutonium is often seen as rather technical, almost geeky.

This summit is intended to give the world a signal that the president doesn't see it that way.

For him, it is an urgent political priority.

The carefully choreographed announcement that Ukraine is giving up its highly enriched uranium (HEU) is a first triumph. Expect more.

But I wonder if this is a danger that can ever really be eliminated.

More tomorrow, but thanks for all your good wishes for Easter (it was terrific), and nice comments about the eggs.

And I'm glad to see you can keep a discussion going without my prompting!

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