The Long, Hard Slog to Victory
By mid-December 1944, Allied forces in northern Europe were in full retreat. Entire divisions had been cut off and surrounded, communications had been disrupted, English-speaking SS infiltration units had sown mistrust and discord in the ranks, and more American troops surrendered to the enemy than in any other campaign in the battle history of the Republic. So tell me, during the Battle of the Bulge were we winning or losing the Second World War? The insurgency continues in Iraq, but that doesn't mean we aren't winning.

Article III
There is continual gossip about the "impending" retirement of United States Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Yes, Rehnquist is eighty years old and sick as a dog with the cancer, and yes, with an ideologically friendly administration in the White House he can step down confident in the knowledge that he will be replaced by someone of his own judicial-political ilk. These are good solid reasons for a sick old man who has nobly served his country and our nigh-sacred Constitution for a very long time to retire with the just thanks of a grateful nation. My question is this: Justice John Paul Stevens is eighty-five years old, five years beyond the ailing Chief Justice; why are not more people asking when he will step down? Has he publically declared that he intends to die on the bench? Is he holding out for a Democratic White House? Is he just being delightfully stubborn (a position I could respect most enthusiastically)? Why the "death watch" on Rehnquist but not on Stevens? There are only nine of these people at any one time, surely it is not beyond our abilities to pay moderate attention to two of them simultaneously.

I sometimes joke about repealing Article I of the United States Constitution, but I would never joke about repealing Article III. The law, as it is applied in this country, often makes no sense to me, and sometimes it seems to be naught but nonsense. Nevertheless, without the law we are lost.