WHILE researching this week's column, I read Harry Reid's
autobiography, "The Good Fight".  If the Senate Majority Leader
has any deep thoughts about policy, he did not include them in
his book. But it is nonetheless a gripping read.   • Mr Reid
learned to swim at a whorehouse. Every Thursday afternoon, the
local whoremonger, "a kindly bear of a man", would ask the girls
to clear out and invite the children in town to splash in his
azure blue pool. "[W]e would live the life of Riley for a couple
of hours," recalls Mr Reid. [page 23]    • Having grown up in a
shack with no plumbing and watched his father get drunk and beat
his mother, Mr Reid says:  I've never had much sympathy for
people saying: "The reason I'm so screwed up is because my
parents are screwed up. I would have been stone sober if my
parents hadn't done this or had only taken me to church more
often." [It is] probably a shortcoming on my part, but I'm just
not very sympathetic to those kinds of stories. [page 53]  • As
a young man, Mr Reid loved