Trade relations between the United States and Canada suffered an apparent rupture last year when candidate Barack Obama suggested that he would "re-open" the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada (especially) and Mexico. Then came a "Buy American" campaign once President Obama was in office.

The re-opening of NAFTA was quietly buried. Now we appear close to a settlement of the "Buy American" campaign, at least so far as Canada, our biggest trading partner, is concerned. The Canadians have kept their cool, as did America's professionals in trade diplomacy, and this issue, too, seems likely to fade. That's progress.

This was always about the politics of pleasing the unions in the U.S. But, one supposes, so much else has been done in that regard that the unions are willing to let this one slide.

Our senior fellow John Miller appears in today's New York Times to tell why international popularity polls are so unreliable. This is timely, given the defeat yesterday of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics bid. If President Obama's charisma was as overwhelming as some in the media imagine, one might have thought that after his personal arrival in Copenhagen to argue Chicago's case that Chicago would have come in first. Instead it came in fourth.

But, almost to console the President, Miller points out the way that international popularity is a poor guide to how well America is doing, or anything else.

Polls have very little use in domestic politics and almost none in foreign affairs. At least they shouldn't. Study human nature instead, Mr. President--and national interest.

One hopes the President bears this in mind as he develops his policies on Afghanistan and Iran.

Andrew Breitbart, who learned of the videos of Acorn staff making now-infamous suggestions to supposed seekers of federally supported home mortgages, is a conservative public relations man. He also is an internet entrepreneur who, ironically, was an organizer of the the liberal Huffington Post site.

This story, Breitbart saw, was huge. Here apparently were publicly backed non-profit Acorn staff--in one city after another--offering help to a man and woman who said they wanted to open a brothel; a brothel, no less, for young girls brought in from El Salvador.

Breitbart, who shrewdly suggested sending out the explosive videos ad seriatim, rather than all at once, made it possible for the story to break slowly and then build. The story marks another triumph for new media.

Regardless, what the young amateur investigators found, and Breitbart helped publicize, merits appointment of an independent counsel. An inquiry conducted within the Department of Justice will not suffice.

The videos may be just a glimpse inside Acorn. Lending credibility to suspicions of wider malfeasance are public lawsuits over alleged electioneering fraud by Acorn, including one attracting attention this past week in Nevada

The Census Bureau, stung by Judicial Watch FOIAs that inquired into Acorn activities with the coming 2010 Decennial Census and wisely worried about the perceived integrity of the census count, cut off relations with Acorn several weeks ago. Then other federal agencies did, as well. Congress fled for the exists--even many former friends of Acorn.

Now foundations are dropping Acorn, and some are saying (belatedly) that they have been suspicious of the organization for some time.

It also appears that Acorn benefitted from a number of possibly coerced deals with banks that were given to understand that their own good relations with the federal government, and such quasi-governmental bodies as Fannie Mae, depended on agreements to fund Acorn programs.

Special prosecutors have been over-used in recent decades. But a volatile scandal like this one needs to be put into conspicuously disinterested hands. If the problems aren't thoroughly and fairly investigated, they are likely to happen again in a new guise.

The fungible Mr. Cameron

The London Times tells us that a poll shows the Conservatives of Britain are more popular than the Labor Party, but only because the Laborites are so unpopular.

In other words, the U.K. public are prepared to throw out Labor and return the Tories, but only because they want to get rid of Gordon Brown and Co. They are not inspired by the Conservatives, just itching to show their displeasure.

That is not a sign of long term of hope for the Conservatives. To make matters worse, the Tory leader--the fungible Mr. Cameron--is more popular than his party.

Two thoughts: 1) Image is triumphing over substance in many countries these days. The British survey has no particular programmatic aspect to it, for example. 2) Polls, as Discovery senior fellow John Miller indicated in his New York Times piece Saturday, and as George Gilder has said repeatedly, are not reliable indicators of significant public viewpoints.

Partisanship and publicity distort rather than refine policy options today. It's not just in the U.K. The people who try to roll everything into a poll are damaging serious public deliberation. Parties that are poll-driven are making a glib mistake. Live by imagery, die by imagery.

America's national interest and the safety of the world lies in successful prosecution of the war on terrorism--by whatever name you call it. Accordingly, a full year before the next Congressional election it ought to be possible to forge a bi-partisan consensus on a crucial element in that struggle: the war in Afghanistan. This is not just about tactics. It is about political will and a determination to sustain it.

If the two parties in Washington, DC can get their respective acts together, the public will agree. In to win--and there is no other reason to be there.

Richard Dawkins, oleaginous Oxford intellect, was in Seattle this week and I decided to beard him when he appeared on the Michael Medved show to promote his latest book, The Greatest Show on Earth. The source of my irritation was an assertion by Dawkins early in the interview that his comparison of Darwin doubters to Holocaust deniers only applied to creationists, not to intelligent design proponents. I am not a creationist, but I found that statement bigoted.

It should be annoying to anyone that Dawkins would try to fasten creationists with the Holocaust denier label. Creationists may be wrong on the age of the Earth, but they can't deserve Dawkins' moral opprobrium. Pressed by Medved about the Holocaust reference, Dawkins issued so many qualifiers (the creationists' failing, he warbles, is not moral--no, of course not--only "historical") that the reference loses all meaning-- except as a propaganda tactic. The stink of unjustified anti-Semitism remains even after Dawkins' rationalizations. This is like a McCarthyite calling a liberal a "communist sympathizer." Just an historical reference, mind you. No reason for anyone to take umbrage.

In any event, asked by me as a caller why he would not debate Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell,, on the scientific arguments against Darwinian evolution and for ID, Dawkins referred to ID as "creationist". He had just said that he was not tarring ID with the same brush as creationism, and then he used the same crude brush to do just that.

Dawkins' new book actually is notable in that he makes no mention of ID authors or their arguments. He instead battles a straw man: creationists who think the world is a few thousand years old. He knows that they are not his real problem, but he attacks them anyhow. Watch Richard shred the Book of Genesis as a science document! How daring!

Heaven (or whatever) forbid that he should address ID for real. A few years back he managed to review a book of Michael Behe (The Edge of Evolution) for the New York Times without making any serious reference to its arguments. Instead he wallowed in ad hominem aspersions. Plainly, he doesn't even bother reading the case presented by the likes of Behe, let alone the new book by Meyer. (I hate to disillusion the reader, but not all book reviewers actually read the books they are assigned to review.) In the Behe case, Dawkins offered smears in place of refutation.

Dawkins is accustomed now to uncritical notice because (I contend) his metaphysical position confirms the disposition of his reviewers. As an intellectual he is not curious. I guess he feels he doesn't need to be. He doesn't debate opponents (Meyer, Behe, Berlinski) because he really doesn't have any idea what they think. He can make up a crank position for them and assign them to it, secure from contradiction by a supine press.

But even his own current reviews, once the ritual praise is over, hint that the man has become lazy.

Those who say that President Obama has achieved nothing in foreign policy are wrong. He has achieved the Nobel Peace Prize. That's something.

In the real world, however, we are left with terrible indecision on Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan. (On Israel, we are left with a terrible double standard.)

Charles Krauthammer is at his best when things are at their worst. I can only laud this column.

It is helpful when the media cover major industry conferences, for seemingly boring meetings sometimes reveal real news. That is what happened at the World Gas Conference in Buenos Aires recently, as reported by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph in England.

The confirmation of new gas supplies is cheering Americans eager to diminish the nation's reliance on foreign oil and Europeans who feared over-commitment to Russian resources.

By the same token, it is upsetting to some Russians, understandably.

"Needless to say, the Kremlin is irked. 'There's a lot of myths about shale
production,' said Gazprom's Alexander Medvedev.

"If the new forecasts are accurate, Gazprom is not going to be the perennial
cash cow funding Russia's great power resurgence. Russia's budget may be in
structural deficit."

We wrote about the Canadian and U.S. potential supplies years ago. Now the visions apparently are coming true.

The Joint Committee on Taxation was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch to figure out who will bear the brunt of the cost of the Baucus bill just passed in committee. Here is an account of the resulting report: the middle class, mostly.

There are certain statements by presidential candidates that you know, when you hear them, are destined for the contradiction of experience. One was Jimmy Carter saying, "I will never lie to you." Another was George W. Bush saying that anyone on his staff even caught in an apparent unethical lapse would be fired at once. Another, for sure, was Barack Obama's promise never to raise the taxes of anyone making under $250,000 a year.

Be careful what you sign!

The Ninth Circuit Court, in an extremely terse opinion, has reversed a lower court ruling that the Washington State Secretary of State could not release the names of people who signed Referendum 71, the proposal to roll back recognition of homosexual unions.

My own terse opinion is that the Ninth Circuit has set in motion actions that either will lead to a state legislative fix (disallowing the publication of initiative and referendum names in the future) or it permanently will chill the tradition of direct democracy in Washington and other supposedly progressive states in a fashion that many of those celebrating this decision have not bothered to consider.

As a former state Secretary of State and a former Director of the U. S. Census Bureau I cannot imagine anything more sure to deter participation in the initiative and referendum process than the threat that one's signature may be made public. No, it is not the same as voting, but neither is jury decision-making or filling out a Census form. Think what would happen to participation in the Census if one's information could be made public. (It can be, but only after 70 years!) And as in those other cases of civic participation, the government should be eager to assure participants that their actions will not lead to the danger of harassment or public notoriety.

Maybe the Initiative and Referendum petitions from now on should have a "Warning" label on them that "Signing this list is a political activity and can result in publication of your name." After all, ordinary people are now advised that their privacy is to be set aside in the same way that politicians' privacy was set aside years ago.

I personally think the initiative and referendum process is overused in Washington State and elsewhere. But this solution, unless reversed on appeal, is a perverse way to deal with such a defect.

The political left is looking for a safe and relatively easy way to continue the war in Afghanistan while lowering American casualties. Strategist Max Boot shows why that won't work (except to exasperate the American public further), and why painstaking counterinsurgency is the way to go. Over time, the hard way is the shortest way.

Slim Pickens rides a missile down in Dr. Strangelove

Discovery Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter, author of The Long War Ahead, is working increasingly on the topic of nuclear proliferation. Here is a lecture that he gave at the Discovery headquarters in Seattle on September 30. I asked John to "terrify us", but also "give us some hope at the end," and he complied beautifully.

Ross Douthat's column in The New York Times today shows the benefit of a generalist's attacking a specialist's problem, in this case health care. The problem itself, as we have known for years, is a mare's nest of complex, often-hidden trade-offs. Douthat manages to clarify while simplifying. His solution of universal care for catastrophic illness is sensible and useful.

Universal coverage for catastrophic health care may not be as difficult, however, as Mr. Douthat believes. It's my personal view that we don't need vouchers for such policies (the conservative choice), or a federal insurance policy (a liberal alternative). We can provide the catastrophic health care covered in most insurance policies today, and then subsidize existing public health hospitals and clinics for all those not included in the private system.

It is a remarkable, but largely unremarked history: the Pullman Porters of America's legendary passenger rail past. A short article in the AARP Bulletin's November/December issue connects to a longer site online and a five minute film by Seattlite Thomas H. Gray on one of the most significant chapters in the rise of the black middle class and the success of the civil rights movement. There is ambivalence in this story. On one hand, a segregated, servant class job. On the other, the dignity of upwardly mobile opportunity in the pre-civil rights era.

Fine men were engaged in this hard work. In all cases, the story is surrounded by the haunting call of the train whistle, leading on, moving ahead.

NPR has run a story about an atheist schism. It runs roughly between the nice, old fashioned folk who don't believe in God and demand the right to their position, and the new "edgy" atheists who demand that you give up your belief in God. The former are getting fed up with the latter. The latter are annoyed by the former.

This is refreshingly un-P.C., since it displays the coterminous relationship of Darwinism and atheism. (Mainly, Darwinism is atheism in a lab coat.) The growing tactical fight within the Darwinian camp has gone under-reported for some time, perhaps because it makes the culture war even more complex--and harder to cover. The old idea was that there were "creationists" (anyone who disputes the Darwinian account) and "science". It's was a nice, cozy conception for the Ruling Class. But then came intelligent design, positing a scientific case against Darwinism and making a scientific case for design (viz, Signature in the Cell, by Stephen C. Meyer). ID had to be conflated with "creationism" to keep the story simple. And then there came the structuralists--materialists who nonetheless doubt Darwin--and they, tremulous rebels as they are, were mainly ignored.

But then, like an old South Park episode we seem to remember, the atheist/Darwinists started attacking one another. In Seattle recently, Richard Dawkins couldn't resist a swipe at Chris Hitchens. And Flock of Dodos producer Randy Olson, in The New Scientist, tussled with Dawkins himself. The NPR story by Barbara Bradley Hagerty marks a fresh mainstream awareness of such developments.

I am willing to hold the coats for both sides in this brawl.

Western fears that Russia may use its dominance in gas production and distribution to influence political decisions in Europe are dealt another blow with word that the Azeris and Turks are making considerable progress on an alternative route.

The Russian "threat" thereby diminishes.

The Vatican's expanded opening to Anglicans this week has provoked many published analyses of what the policy might mean to the future of the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church in the United States. The significance actually is far wider. Notably, on cultural issues it may strengthen the relatively conservative Roman Catholic Church and weaken the relatively liberal Anglican/Episcopal Church. That, really, is the source of so much media interest.

For breakaway Episcopal parishes and dioceses in the U.S., the Vatican offer may not mean much at first. Many are in property disputes with their former Episcopal co-religionists, and are losing in the courts. But they also are well along in forming new Anglican churches. Perhaps 100,000 Episcopalians have decamped so far to the new Anglican branches, while additional defectors already have converted to Catholicism, various evangelical churches, or Orthodoxy, or are just sleeping-in on Sundays now. The headquarters of PECUSA, The Episcopal Church of the United States, is declining to report on the latest membership changes.

Regardless, the tectonic plates of Christianity are moving, and not just because of this latest Vatican announcement. The ecumenical cause is gaining force again after decades of stasis. A long, powerful dialogue on theology that yielded a book and follow-up essays called "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" has influenced laypeople for almost a generation. Leading were such Catholics as George Weigel and the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, and such evangelicals as Charles Colson and J.I. Packer. The latest development in the dialogue is an essay on perhaps the most difficult issue for Protestants, the place of the Virgin Mary.

A similar dialogue has gone on quietly for four decades among theologians in the two largest Western liturgical churches (those whose sacred services center on the Eucharist)--the 1.130 billion Catholics and the 75 million Anglicans. The Anglican Roman Catholic International Commission, an enterprise called ARCIC, also has produced one agreement after another, so much so that one has to ask, Couldn't a lot of these misunderstandings have been ironed out 500 years ago and spared Western Civilization a load of pain?

Regardless, while theological problems are dissipating, ecclesiological differences--over the meanings of priesthood and the operations of Church hierarchy-- have become more evident. After years of frustration, the Vatican plainly has given up on most discussions with Canterbury on ecclesiological matters; and, hence, the opening to dissident Anglicans. Representatives of the latter have been descending on Rome for five or six years now, pleading for succor. This week they have it.

Creation of "Anglican Rite" services and even whole Anglican Rite Catholic parishes now anticipate retention of the beautiful Anglican Book of Common Prayer--the only literary product of a committee to rival Shakespeare--as the liturgical basis for an additionally acceptable orthodox Catholic mass. One may well see Anglican Rite services in the calendar of regular masses at certain cathedrals and other large Catholic churches, as well as separate, predominately Anglican Rite chapels and churches and seminaries that--like the Eastern Rite Catholic churches--express a culture, but also recognize the primacy of the See of St. Peter.

In England, one idea that eventually may find resonance is shared use by Catholics (including Anglican Rite Catholics) and official Anglicans of the great, under-used and under-funded medieval cathedrals, such as Salisbury, Lincoln and Wells. They were built in the era of Christian unity, after all.

Meanwhile, the Russian Orthodox and other Orthodox branches (330 million) also are in discussion with Rome, while a respected Anglican seminary, Nashotah House in Wisconsin, has been in talks with the Orthodox Church (Antioch) recently. What will come out of all this? For the old liturgical churches of Christendom, divided since the 11th century, full reconciliation on some basis is likely; rather sooner than later, it now seems. One thousand years late, old wrongs will be righted, injuries healed.

The circle widens in ways still unforeseen to the orthodox in "mainline' denominations of Protestantism (Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) and to the strong, growing number of nondenominational evangelicals. There is no knowing the particularities of revised association, of course. What matters is that orthodox Christians are finding their commonality. C. S. Lewis already has called his Office.

Rather than damaging relations between Christians and Jews, the serious discussions on matters of faith among Christians likewise may be improving understanding, mutual respect and appreciation between Christianity and what John Paul II called "our older brothers in faith."

Reconciliation, at least for those of orthodox faith, will provide an assist for a culture groping for firmer ground.

Peter Huber is one of our best science writers, mainly because he sees through the hooey of official jargon. In Forbes this week he disassembles the Chinese position on carbon, which, itself is a response to disingenuous pleas from the West.

You do not have to be a statistician (I'm not) to appreciate the work of someone like Carl Bialik who writes the Numbers Guy column for the Wall Street Journal. When I served at the Census Bureau during the Reagan Administration I privately urged the Journal editors to create such a post and find some who not only could crunch numbers, but write well. Belatedly (by a few decades), it has happened. Bialik is the man. Regardless, there is nothing else like this column in mainstream journalism.

Yesterday's Numbers Guy piece, "Ill-Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate", is a fine example expert reportage made pertinent to everyone. I especially like the article because it validates some of the assertions on health care I made a few days ago (October 19, below)!

Benjamin Netanyahu

Israeli prowess in technology is the subject that started George Gilder on the path to writing The Israel Test, and it is the subject also that Gilder will emphasize in the upcoming Gilder/Forbes Telecosm 20009 conference in Tarrytown, New York November 10-12.

In Israel last week to promote his book and to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Gilder talked to many old and new friends in the remarkable Israeli technology industry that now is second only to America's. Among the topics he investigated was the invention of new long life batteries at Technion, "the MIT of Israel."

The batteries seem destined to revolutionize electronics and eventually to lead to the long-sought, long term electric automobile battery that was discussed this past week, also, at the "Beyond Oil" conference sponsored by the Cascadia Center at Microsoft's Redmond, WA campus.

(Reminder to the media: Gilder is director of Discovery Institute's Technology and Democracy program, and Cascadia is a center within Discovery Institute.)

"Bibi" Netanyahu, in his meeting with Gilder, apparently expressed enthusiasm about the varied themes of The Israel Test, which he recently read; not just the explanations for Israel's dramatic contributions to technology in the past decade, but also Gilder's original insights about Jews, Israel, capitalism and the nature of creativity.

Gilder has lined up a stellar cast for Telecosm 2009, a project co-produced with Forbes, and he says he expects the political and cultural vibrations to nearly equal the investment and technology interest this year. The annual Telecosm conference is not a program of Discovery Institute, although a number of our fellows, in addition to George Gilder, take part.

In Israel, The Israel Test already is the number one book (in English) on Israel.

In America we are a century and a half away from the "Know-Nothing Party", a secret political society that fulminated against the Catholic Church and Irish immigrants. (Asked about its composition, members would say, "I know nothing;" hence, the moniker.) Formed in public as The American Party, the party's hateful, nativist politics took a long time to expunge from our shores. But we now have an Englishman, Richard Dawkins--one of society's "Brites" according to his fellow-Darwinist, Daniel Dennett--in a screed against the Catholic Church that proclaims the same frothing bigotry exemplified by the Know-Nothings. This and Dawkins' various other attacks should remind us that the hoary religious hatreds of old (including those of the angry atheist) were a European legacy. Catholics and other Christians need to realize that Dawkins and Company aim to revive them.

Rome is possibly "the greatest force for evil in the world," Dawkins announces, "a disgusting institution" that is "dragging its flowing skirts in the dirt and touting for business like a common pimp." That kind of language is like a blast of stale air from the 1850s.

You cannot expect his fellow Darwinists to repudiate Dawkins for the simple reason that a number (e.g., P.Z. Myers) share his prejudices and his paranoia. Darwinism never was mainly about science; it is about metaphysics. It is a worldview that has no space for the sacred, no regard for the exceptionality of human life. Darwinists, who operate few if any hospitals or homeless shelters, cannot recognize the humanity of those who do.

Dawkins is not an oddity. He is the world's leading Darwinian spokesman. He is hailed at universities, museums and foundations. Publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times--that simply will not run an article by scientists presenting the evidence against Darwinism--can't showcase him enough.

Other than such Know Nothings, what other modern bigots are regarded as so fashionable?

Catholics and other Christians probably don't care what anyone says about them anymore, given the relative lack of outrage over Richard Dawkins' comments in The Washington Post this week. (See blog post below). So who will notice what Christopher Hitchens just unloaded on the Dennis Miller show this morning? Miller, let it be said, was not buying it at all--merely letting Hitchens spout this about abortion and Mother Theresa:

"Mother Theresa spent her whole life saying (that what Calcutta needs) is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn't a complete fanatic? She took - and I would directly say stole...millions and millions of dollars and spent all the money not on the poor, but on the building of nearly 200 convents in her own name around the world to glorify herself and to continue to spread the doctrine that, as she put it -- when she got her absurd Nobel Peace Prize -- that the main threat to world peace is abortion and contraception. The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it's a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to."

Christopher Hitchens is a regular contributor to The New Republic, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair.

Electric vehicles on display at "Beyond Oil" 2009. From left to right, the Ford Focus, RAV 4 and Tesla Roadster. Mike Wussow/Cascadia Center of Discovery Institute

If you walked by Microsoft's Executive Conference Center late last week and saw more than one dozen cars lined-up on display outside the main entrance, you could have been forgiven for thinking the future hadn't arrived. The electric vehicle display (which included cars, trucks, motorcycles, a van and bicycles) was part of Discovery Institute's annual conference about the convergence of transportation and technology. What was surprising for some conference attendees was that with the exception of a power outlet instead of a gas tank, many of the world's most advanced electric vehicles look so very, well, normal.

Bruce Agnew, director of Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center--the institute's transportation policy center--says things weren't always that way and technology and design have changed dramatically in the six years since the institute held its first "Trans Tech" conference. Back then, he told The Seattle Times in a front-page Sunday story about the conference, the "parking lot was full of funny-looking cars." But now, he says, electric cars have gone "from a quirky passion shared by some Northwest drivers to a mainstream interest." Among the all-electric cars on display at the conference were the sleek and speedy Tesla Roadster, the Ford Focus and Toyota's RAV4. (In addition to The Seattle Times, Seattle television stations King 5 and KIRO 7, along with KOMO 1000 radio, covered the conference. Links to coverage of the conference by Seattle's public affairs channel can be found on the event site.)

Patrick McDonald, whose regular job is with the Elections Division of the Washington Secretary of State's office, is a member of a 200 member Washington National Guard unit that just returned from a second tour of duty in Iraq--helping train elections officials and providing logistics for its Iraqi hosts. Master Sergeant McDonald has two Purple Hearts from his tour three years ago, but this time he came home in much better shape, healthy and happy. Among the things he told us in a speech this week at Discovery Institute:

* Safety is much improved, despite the recent violent bombings. You can drive from the airport ("Route Irish") without fearing for your life, you can shop on Haifa Street, you can dine out--unless you look like a really good target. A few years ago, none of this was possible.

* The crucial oil industry has recovered to pre-invasion levels of production and shipment, about two and a half million barrels a day, enough to fuel many of the needs of the new government.

* Electricity is up to about 20 hours a day, far better than even under Saddam--before the war.

Usually it is productive for left and right to get together on a common reform; but, not always. Instead of getting the best of both perspectives, you can get the worst of both. That is what happened in the early 70s when liberals who wanted to free the occasional sane person from mental hospitals teamed up with conservatives who wanted to save the money they thought was being wasted on state hospitals for the mentally ill.

"De-institutionalization" may have offered freedom to the unusual person who had been confined unwisely, but it resulted in many more people with disabling mental conditions being set loose on the streets.

We wound up liberating people with serious disorders from those who could help them, and ending the relative minor costs of mental institutions and greatly adding to the costs of emergency health care, police protection and assorted housing and food expenses. Addled street people can be, and often are, dangerous to others. And the homeless can wind up dead. Read Mike Johnson of the Union Gospel's Mission's account and ask yourself why public officials are not addressing this problem in the ways he describes.

Can't liberals and conservatives come together again: this time to find a pathway--not backward to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--but forward to humane, common sense policies that provide long term mental care for some and part time care for others? There are many homeless people who aren't insane, of course, but it would be a huge improvement for those who are mentally ill--and for the homeless problem overall--if they were separated out and provided treatment.