The best things about the latest Republican debate were the candidates. Even the ones I don’t particularly care for, like Rand Paul and John Kasich, had their moments, although I’m not sure I can say the same for Jeb Bush, who more and more resembles the tallest nerd in everyone’s high school yearbook.

The worst things were the moderators, who displayed their liberal bias so blatantly that even Democrats would have been hard-pressed to dismiss their snarky attacks as objective reporting.

On the other hand, the candidates all got to display verbal jujitsu as they turned the endless insults back on CNBC’s John Harwood and his merry band of left-wing inquisitioners. Although the evening was a triumph for Marco Rubio, Carly Fiorina, Chris Christie and even Mike Huckabee, allowing all of them to display their grasp of the important issues plaguing our nation and to offer a range of solutions, the evening’s highlight came when Ted Cruz finally confronted Harwood.

Looking and sounding every bit the Texas state prosecutor he used to be, Cruz said: “The questions that have been asked so far in this debate illustrate why the American people don’t trust the media. This is not a cage match. Look at the questions—Donald Trump, are you a comic book villain? Ben Carson, can you do math? John Kasich, will you insult two people over here? Marco Rubio, why don’t you resign? Jeb Bush, why have your numbers fallen? Why don’t you ask about the substantive issues that people care about?”

Predictably, he received an ovation in the Colorado auditorium, but he also received one in my house and, I’m willing to bet, in a great many others.

As for CNBC, a station I had never had occasion to watch, they merely convinced those of us who were tuned in that they’re definitely not ready for primetime.

For me, other highlights included Gov. Huckabee neatly turning one of the gotcha questions into an attack on the Clinton machine; Chris Christie speaking of the necessity of reforming entitlements which represent 71% of the federal budget, an act of courage comparable to performing the limbo under the third rail of American politics; and Mrs. Fiorina, who delivered a tutorial on the evils of crony capitalism.

I have no idea if the moderators have any idea what a whipping they got. As we all know, those in the media tend to exist in an echo chamber where their only responsibility is to parrot the words of Barack Obama and root for Hillary Clinton. So, for all I know, Harwood and the rest of his lynch mob may have gone to sleep that night, imagining that they put those GOP yokels in their place and garnered super ratings — keep in mind we’re talking about CNBC — in the process. But on the chance that they woke up to reality, they have no right to gripe about it. As James Boswell once said, “He, who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.”

In other news, John Kerry is preparing to sit down once again with Javed Zarif and Russia’s Sergey Lavrov, who already took him for his shoes, socks and skivvies, at the nuclear negotiation, to discuss a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian civil war. Normally, one would conjure up the image of a lamb and two wolves sitting down to discuss what to have for dinner, but the image fails when the lamb is a donkey who manages to resemble both ends of a horse.

Somebody sent me a photo of Chuck Norris with a caption that reads: “I, too, was once a male trapped in a woman’s body, but then I was born.”

People occasionally ask me to name my all-time favorite movies because they know I used to be a movie critic and because, as a few of them are also aware, I am an inveterate list maker.

When they ask, I am only too willing to oblige. The one thing I always make clear is that my favorites are those I’ve enjoyed the most and seen the most often, not necessarily the ones accepted as classics. The lists are not static because I may see one I haven’t seen in many years and be reminded how good it was or, as is more often the case, because I see a former favorite once too often. In those cases, as has happened with “Casablanca,” “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” and “A Walk in the Sun,” I still have fond feelings for them, but I can’t imagine ever wishing to sit through them again.

The top 30 (in alphabetical order): “A Foreign Affair,” “A New Leaf,” “Apartment for Peggy,” “Bachelor Mother,” “Defending Your Life,” “Die Hard,” “Field of Dreams,: "Force of Evil,” “Hail the Conquering Hero,” “Groundhog Day,” “Hoosiers,” “House Calls,” “I Remember Mama,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “L.A. Confidential,” “Midnight Run,” “Murphy’s Romance,” “My Cousin Vinny,” “Nobody’s Fool,” “Quigley Down Under,” “Remains of the Day,” “Shane,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “Support Your Local Sheriff,” “Sweet Smell of Success,” “The Best Years of Our Lives,” “The Fugitive,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Princess Bride” and “The Untouchables.”

I believe that what makes this list unique is that nearly half of them are comedies and that the only people to appear in two of them are James Garner, Kevin Costner, Walter Matthau, David Niven and, of all people, Emile Meyer!