Rarely have so many journalists, politicians and commentators so totally missed a headline. There are now five American hostages in Iran. Each case has been largely treated by itself, almost as if it were an oddity, something requiring a special explanation, instead of another piece in a luminously clear pattern whose meaning should be intuitively obvious to us all. Iranian and Iranian-supported terrorists have been trying unsuccessfully to capture armed Americans in Iraq for some time (a hostage-taking operation failed last September, for example), but they found that the Americans fought back. They have now snatched unarmed Americans within Iranian borders.  The five American hostages are:

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad has stepped up his support for terror since he received a friendly visit from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in early April. Human rights advocates in Syria have gone into hiding. "Many Syrian... pro-democracy activists have privately expressed dismay at Ms. Pelosi's message of friendship to the government of Syrian President Bashar al Assad," reported the New York Observer.  "They say that Ms. Pelosi's visit, no matter how well intentioned, has effectively pulled the rug out from under them." Ms. Pelosi's embrace of the Syrian dictator "made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria," said a human rights advocate interviewed by reporter Katherine Zoepf.  "This sends a message to the regime that the pressure is off, that it can do what it likes." Shortly after Ms. Pelosi left Damascus, Syria's best known human rights lawyer, Anwar al-Bunni, was arrested on a trumped up charge.  He reportedly has been tortured.

For a pretty decent, mild-mannered, soft-spoken guy, George W. Bush sure has a knack for engendering rage. Liberals tend not to like the president because of what he's trying to do.  Conservatives are upset with him chiefly because of how frequently he botches what he tries to do. President Bush is a stubborn man.  This is both a strength, and a weakness.  When he thinks he's right, the president sticks to his guns, come Hell or high water.  That's basically how he faced down congressional Democrats (whose positions on issues are driven more by polls than by a sense of right and wrong) over funding for the war in Iraq. But the president is often wrong when he thinks he's right.  At a press conference in Slovenia in June, 2001, Mr. Bush famously said of Russian president Vladimir Putin: "I looked the man in the eye.  I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy...I was able to get a sense of his soul." Since then the former KGB officer has been dismantling democracy in Russia and working night and day to frustrate U.S. foreign policy. Many conservatives could have told Mr. Bush that if you look into Ted Kennedy's eyes, you won't see a soul much more trustworthy than Vladimir Putin's.   

Here's an example of the false advertising for the Senate immigration bill. Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher asked an immigration lawyer friend what he thought of the bill.  This was his reply: "This bill has no enforcement at all.  It says, in effect, that no Y (guest worker) or Z (amnesty) visas will be issued to anybody until the following steps are taken.  But in the meantime, provisional Y and Z visas will be issued, with exactly the same effects and benefits except they can't be turned into green card status." This is madness.  To grant an amnesty before the border is secure is to invite another massive influx of illegals. It gets worse. 

Do you think the Republicans or the Democrats are winning the race to prove they are the dumbest and most incompetent political party? The Republicans were clearly winning the race until January 2007. They threw away their majorities in both houses of Congress, by not only failing to have a realistic postwar strategy in Iraq but by such things as greatly expanding government spending when they had promised the voters the opposite. The Democrats won the congressional elections by promising they would have a clear and coherent plan to end the stalemate in Iraq and to be "fiscally responsible" by holding down the growth in government spending and not increasing taxes. So, what have they done since they have been in power? Having fulfilled virtually none of their campaign pledges, the Democrats' obvious incompetence and incoherence have managed to give the Congress an approval rate of only 29 percent, even lower than the president's.  That's quite an achievement.