The announcement of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney's running mate late last Friday sent a shockwave through the political and media world. The snap judgment of what passes for conventional wisdom among the chattering class is that the Ryan pick was bold (as opposed to safe), and that the election will henceforth be all about wonky details from the Ryan budget plan. "A campaign of Big Ideas!" the pundits excitedly gasped. "Just what we've always wanted!"

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This is the story of two political movements. As with any such movement, both eventually got to the point where they asked themselves the fundamental question of what they were attempting to achieve, and (more importantly) what methods they were going to use to accomplish their goals. This fork in the road can be summed up as: do we work within the existing system, or is the system itself so broken we should work outside the system in order to reform the workings of the system itself. One group chose one path, the other chose to head the other direction.

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No matter where you stand on gun control, this is where the country stands politically -- like it or not. Democrats learned, back in the 1990s, that they could get thrown out of office when they voted for new gun control laws. You can quibble over whether the assault weapons ban was the sole motivating factor for any individual lawmaker's defeat, but in this case perception has become reality, at least in Democrats' thinking. "Once burned, twice shy" is the party's mantra now on gun control.

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To begin, we're not going to have our normal partisan talking points today. We're going to follow the lead set by Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and we're just not going to go there today. There will be plenty of time for many vicious partisan talking points in the upcoming weeks, never fear. But today, it just doesn't feel right.

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The name "Romney" has historical significance in Massachusetts, but the story goes back a lot further than just a recent ex-governor. In fact, a "Romney" played a significant part in the American Revolution -- on the British side. The name, however, does not refer to a man, but rather to a man-of-war, the H.M.S. Romney, a 50-gun British ship that sailed into Boston harbor in 1768.

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Happy Second of July, everyone! Happy Independence Day!

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For political wonks, this has been a week of waiting. Starting last weekend, we've all been waiting for Mitt Romney to address the issue of Barack Obama's new immigration policy. This waiting has been fruitless, and will continue for some time to come, apparently. Picture a phone ringing endlessly with nobody there to answer it... but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

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This week, an important milestone was achieved. A private rocket company launched a capsule with supplies for the International Space Station on board. This is the first of a series of tests in the attempt to eventually use the system to take astronauts up and down from the I.S.S. While SpaceX is the first to get this far, other private companies are also developing their own launch systems in competition to "privatize" this part of what N.A.S.A. does.

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We speak today, instead, on the subject of verbizing. Verbizing, for those who have never heard the term, is the process of turning innocent nouns into verbs. This verbizing interlude is brought to you today by the trademark: "Etch A Sketch."

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Which brings us back to John Quincy Adams. In 1825, newly-installed in the White House, Adams bought a billiard table for $50 (to liven the place up a bit, one assumes). He used his own money for this purchase, and one would think it wasn't really all that big a deal. One would be wrong.

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