Hawkeye Republican

Indeed, the Supreme Court's ruling was atrocious to say the least. Earlier last week, the high court was busy allowing drug companies more leeway to infringe on patents, and now they're basically allowing governments to seize homes and businesses with almost unlimited authority. The WSJ wrote a fairly interesting editorial on it.

Additionally, I agree with you all that Congress's meddling in the Schiavo case was the wrong thing to do, but we should be clear about what they actually did. The Congress allowed a federal court to hear the case. This wasn't an effort to usurp power over the will or change the case through legislation. It was an effort to allow a federal court to hear the case, which ironically is the same right given to someone on death row. As it turned out, the federal court didn't overturn the state court's ruling, so nothing really happened. I think the action by Congress has fallen prey to demagoguery. The Congress was well within its Constitutional right to do what it did. One can disagree with meddling in the matter, which I do, but I think it is misinformed to say Congress was acting in an unconstitutional manner.

A few more things...last night I was flipping back and forth from Game 7 of the NBA Finals to the Senate hearing on Iraq. Luckily, it was halftime when Senator Kennedy had his time for questions, because he was absolutely killed by Rumsfeld. He gave the ole' quagmire line, and the Secretary explained that it wasn't that situation at all and that the generals at the table would back him up (which they did). It was quite interesting!

Additionally, General Abizaid noted that confidence among U.S. forces in the field "has never been higher." If only the political mood in Washington and the media would follow suit. "I've never seen the lack of confidence greater," said Abizaid.

So why is there this disparity between the attitudes of the actual people doing the work in Iraq who really know what's going on, with people at home who don't see the progress being made on a daily basis? Maybe the media and mainstream Democrats could tell us something about that! The fact is that people are being pessimistic because it's a hell of a lot easier to be pessimistic than optimistic. If I write a column on how bad things are, I look like a concerned, informed citizen. If I write a column on how there's progress being made, then I'm naive and irrationally idealistic. Democrats have an inclination to be negative about everything and that's why they're losing. As I said yesterday in my column, they are allowing their irrational hatred of Bush to cloud the clear importance of winning in Iraq.