Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen had this to say about President Barack Obama's prime-time speech last week on ... well, that's the question -- on what?:

"Excuse me, but what was President Obama's Oval Office speech about?

"Was it about Iraq, as we were led to expect, or was it about Afghanistan, as we were not led to expect? Was it about the economy, which the president mentioned, or education, which he also mentioned? Could it have been directed at Iraqis, whom the president praised in terms they would not have recognized, or was it about our troops, whom the president praised over and over again -- a kind of rhetorical tick that suggested he had run out of things to say?

"As a speech, Obama delivered a version of the pudding once served Winton Churchill. 'Pray, remove it,' he supposedly said. 'It lacks theme.' "

Also in The Washington Post, columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos writes that "the contributions by unauthorized immigrants to Social Security -- essentially, to the retirement income of everyday Americans -- are much larger than previously known, raising questions about the efforts in many states and among Republicans in Congress to force these workers out.

"... Stephen C. Goss, the chief actuary of the Social Security Administration and someone who enjoys bipartisan support for his straightforwardness, said that by 2007, the Social Security trust fund had received a net benefit of somewhere between $120 billion and $240 billion from unauthorized immigrants. ... The cumulative contribution is surely higher now.

"... Someone ought to say thank you."

Chris Briem at his Null Space blog noted a recent op-ed in The New York Times about the failure of revenue-sharing in Major League Baseball to lift above mediocrity teams like the Pittsburgh Pirates:

"So the Pirates finances have become the poster child for everything from the state of Major League Baseball to the national recession. Is there a silver lining somewhere? You would think the Marcellus Multiplier could apply to MLB somehow? Maybe the [Sports and Exhibition Authority] is negotiating drilling rights underneath PNC Park?

In Dawn, a Pakistani daily, Kamran Shafi finds one thing on which he agrees with a former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan: what it's like to deal with Pakistan's government. He quotes Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef:

"Pakistan, which plays a key role in Asia, is so famous for treachery that it is said they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head so they can speak everybody's language; they use everybody, deceive everybody.

"They deceive the Arabs under the guise of Islamic nuclear power, saying that they are defending Islam and Islamic countries. They milk America and Europe in the alliance against terrorism, and they have been deceiving Pakistani and other Muslims around the world in the name of the Kashmiri jihad. But behind the curtain they have been betraying everyone."

Nevada GOP Senate candidate Sharron Angle is lucky she's running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and not running for office in Pittsburgh.

At his Political Animal blog, Steve Benen notes one of Ms. Angle's big issues when she ran for a county school board:

"Angle opposed a local high school using black athletic jerseys, which she considered un-Christian and wicked. She won, and the jerseys changed to a different color. Asked about this the other day, Angle didn't quite deny it, but said it wasn't relevant to the Senate race."

Mr. Benen then said Jonathan Chait of The New Republic summed up his own reaction:

"Knocking off Harry Reid is a delicious opportunity for the GOP, and Angle would be a reliable party vote against President Obama's agenda. But isn't there some risk in identifying your party with such an obviously crazy person?"

Cartoonist Rob Rogers does "Rob's Rough," an early look at his work and his creative process, exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.