As a youngster at bedtime, I remember being immensely entertained, and more than a little frightened, listening to the opening lines of Kipling's "A Smuggler's Song": If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse's feet, Don't go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street, Them that ask no questions isn't told a lie. Watch the wall my darling while the Gentlemen go by ... "Smuggler's" is all about smuggling in nineteenth-century Britain, but its theme is that children best turn their head to the wall when something scary seems to be going on outside in the dark. A lot of fun.  Even today, when you have to explain many of the antiquated terms to a child. But never in the long history of this poem would you have expected to find its theme parading around as the ruling principle of an American president, as it does in Barack Obama's administration – so much so that it should be emblazoned on the lecterns he...(Read Full Article)