Almost Every Key Indicator Of The Current

California Is Now A Valuable Touchstone To The Country, A Warning Of What Not To Do. Rarely Has A Single Generation Inherited So Much Natural Wealth And Bounty From The Investment And Hard Work Of Those More Noble Now Resting In Our Cemeteries-and Squandered That Gift Within A Generation.

I Think People Are Beating Each Other Up In The Halls Of Congress, As They Did In The Late 1850s.

A Country That Cannot Count Its Own Illegal Aliens - Estimates Range From 8-12 Million - With A Porous 2,000 Mile Border Is Not Secure Despite Twelve Carrier Battle Groups. We Must Accept That It Is A Cornerstone Of Mexican Foreign Policy To Export Illegally Each Year A Million Of Its Own To The United States To Avoid Needed Reform At Home And To Influence American Domestic Policy.

Politicians In Their Hubris Who Believe They Can Ignore Debt Or Wish It Away Are Sorely Disappointed - As We See Now With The Plummeting Approval Ratings Of Both The Administration And Congress.

For All The Criticism About Warlords, It Is Now Likely That Afghanistan Will Never Again Be Turned Over To Al Qaeda To Train Thousands To Conduct The Type Of Murder We Saw On September 11. For All Real Problems With Ambushes And Sabotage, There Will Be No More Gassings, Mass Murdering, Invading Neighbors, Sending Guided Missiles Across Borders Or No-fly Zones In Iraq, But Rather The Hard Work Of Consensual Government - A Difficult Process Easily Caricatured, But When Completed Universally Admired.