Dear Readers,
After 25 years of writing this column, I am retiring from the field.

I have wondered about the efficacy of our nation’s counter-terrorism efforts ever since the embarrassing Albany Muslim case of 2004-2006.

Just so we’re all clear on the 2 percent tax cap imposed on local governments and school districts last year, it’s not really a 2 percent cap.

As for Roy McDonald facing the loss of his state Senate seat, it illustrates something I haven’t seen before — a politician taking a principled stand and paying the price.

I have been studying the report just issued by the New York Civil Liberties Union regarding sex education, and, even as I blush to the roots, I take no stand on this vexing subject.

In case you’re wondering if I hold Mitt Romney responsible for the decline of the cable-box-repair company Contec and the loss of hundreds of jobs in Schenectady, the answer is, I do not. Contec would probably have laid off all those workers over the years and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection the other day even if Mitt Romney had never been born.

Steve Downs, a retired state lawyer, and Shamshad Ahmad, professor of physics at SUNY Albany and president of a local mosque — were meeting with two other activists who had come up from New York City in a pizza shop at 328 Central Ave., having lunch and discussing the raid on Shamshad’s mosque that coincided with the arrest of two mosque members, Yassin Aref and Mohammed Hossain, back in 2004 on charges of supporting terrorism, when in walked four Albany cops. The cops asked them to step outside, where several other cops were waiting, asked them what they had been talking about and demanded to see identification.

You cannot get ahead of the New York State Department of Transportation, and I suggest you not even try.

The Equine Welfare Alliance met the other day in Saratoga, and afterward I caught up with the president, John Holland, to ask him what he thought about horse racing, this being the season and all.

There are not enough heartening things in this world, but one occurred last weekend in Albany, and I was pleased to be present for it.

It’s true, there is an idea afloat in Schenectady to make the county sheriff simultaneously the city police chief, and the person who put it afloat, he freely acknowledges, is Mayor Gary McCarthy, even though he hasn’t said anything publicly.

I’m certainly glad I live in a free country, a country where I can walk into a gun store and buy a semi-automatic rifle if I feel like it, without anyone hassling me.

Yes, they’re off at Saratoga for the 144th season, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t be a perfectly jolly season as long as you don’t look too closely and can concentrate solely on the “sport of kings” glamour and glitz of the thing.

I happened to be in Atlantic City the other day and it was quite an experience, I can tell you, just looking around.

In January, abandoning my customary prudence, I ordered a $2,000 telephoto lens from an online company I had never heard of. I had a slight catch in my nervous system when I typed in my credit card number, but I did it anyway.