FrontpagMag.com interviews the always insightful Victor Davis Hanson regarding the recent events in Spain and the Middle East, and how Americans and Europeans have reacted to them. Thanks to Occam’s Toothbrush for the link. The entire interview is a must read, but one sentence about what could defeat America stands out:

I am talking about a secular religion of anti-Americanism brought on by our very success that allows such utopianism and cheap caring-and it does weaken and tire our efforts to win this war.

Clearly worn down by the prospect of dealing further with the Harris County Commissioner’s Court, ChevronTexaco announced yesterday that it had closed the deal to buy the former Enron Building in downtown Houston. In light of the County’s recalcitrance, I suspect that the seller threw come additional consideration to ChevronTexaco to get the deal done.
As noted in this earlier post on the matter, this closing frees Harris County taxpayers from having to deal with Commissioner Steve Radack’s delusions about having the County buy the building.

The Bush Admininistration’s conduct in promoting the Medicare prescription drug legislation last year is coming under increasing scrutiny. Already of dubious financial merit, this NY Times article reports on the opening of a House inquiry into bribery allegations that are based on a Republican congressman’s public comments made immediately following the close vote last year over the controversial bill.
In related news, this WSJ ($) article and this NY Times article report on the controversy swirling around Richard Foster, Medicare’s chief actuary. Mr. Foster was warned last year that he could be accused of “insubordination” if he shared information with Congress about the White House-backed prescription-drug bill without the approval of his politically appointed superiors, according to e-mails from the top aide to Thomas Scully, who was then the Bush Administration’s administrator for the health-care program. A WSJ copy of the email can be reviewed here. The gist of the story is that Mr. Foster was pressured to reduce the estimated ten year cost of the Medicare prescription drug program by about 30% in order to make it more politically palatable. While Republican leaders say the allegations are overblown, no one doubts that release of the higher cost estimates last fall would have probably killed the prescription drug bill, which only passed by one vote after hours of arm-twisting in the House in November.
Again, my sense is that the Bush Administration’s handling of health care finance issues is a major, and largely underappreciated (at least by administration officials), political problem for the administration in the upcoming election.