After all, there are between 3,500 and 15,000 Muslims serving in the American military, including many who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan. No doubt some have died for their country. But how often do conservatives write about them? Blogger Michelle Malkin lists a few bad apples she refers to as "Muslims with attitude." But they're a tiny minority compared to all the soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who confirm daily that you can be a practicing Muslim and a loyal American.

It may be that Hasan subscribed to a jihadist ideology that drove him to kill his fellow soldiers. But it could be that Islam is just a distraction from more fundamental problems, such as insanity or just plain viciousness. Hasan reportedly complained of being harassed by his colleagues about his religion. Maybe he didn't think Islam was hostile to America; maybe they convinced him that America is hostile to Islam.

In any movement, religious or political, there are a few dangerous people. As a rule, all that proves about the movement in question is that it is composed of human beings. If it turns out Hasan is guilty, Islam is not the problem with him any more than Jodie Foster was the problem with John Hinckley.

The administration claims the program has helped save or create more than 14,000 school jobs. Kankakee District 111, for example, supposedly had 665 jobs saved--even though that district has just 420 total positions. Even 420 would be way too much to claim, since in the absence of this aid, the school district would not have zero employees. 

Maybe this is just one of those weird Illinois things, like daytime baseball and Rod Blagojevich's hair? No such luck. The Wall Street Journal reports that of the 640,000 total jobs nationwide that supposedly owe their existence to the stimulus, at least 20,000 don't exist. "Some colleges and universities counted every part-time student work-study position as a full-time job," the Journal found. A lot of the money was used to fund pay raises, not save jobs. 

When asked about these discrepancies, presidential aide Ed DeSeve retorted that the idea is "to create jobs, not count them"--forgetting that it was the White House that started the counting endeavor. The program obviously had some effect: It created some jobs for people assigned to make excuses. 

Iraq has also been the biggest foreign aid recipient in our history. Stuart Bowen, the government's special inspector for Iraq reconstruction, told National Public Radio the other day that we have spent $52 billion over the last six years. Not only that, he said, but "at the outset, the United States anticipated spending perhaps two billion."

And the people getting the benefits have yet to step up to do their share. "The support that the Iraqis are giving to the capacity-building efforts we are trying to provide has been limited," said Bowen.

How much good all this spending will do is open to question. The effort has been riddled with graft and mismanagement. In 2005, Transparency International said that unless urgent actions were taken, it would "become the biggest corruption scandal in history." In 2007, it was reported that more than $8 billion of these funds had simply disappeared.

Right now, the president is considering whether to expand our efforts to turn Afghanistan into a stable, secure nation, relying partly on economic aid. But the experience in Iraq indicates that rebuilding poor nations is not something we necessarily know how to do.

So how can the elderly justify a payment that on average will amount to a 2 percent cost of living raise? I've heard lots of rationales from readers who disagreed with a recent column I did opposing the payments (along with a surprising number who agreed). But none of the arguments I've heard are convincing.

A common one is that regardless of what has happened with other goods and services, the cost of food and fuel, which are essential commodities, has risen. Not so. The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted a couple of weeks ago that "both the food and energy indexes have declined over the past 12 months. The decline in the food index is the first 12-month decrease in that index in over 40 years."

Some people insist that the CPI understates inflation. But among economists, the consensus seems to be that if anything, it overstates it. Northwestern's Robert Gordon (age 69) says the distortion is less than it used to be--but still present.

Then there is the complaint that Medicare Part B premiums are supposed to increase, so seniors should get a COLA to offset it. But lots of Americans are paying higher health insurance premiums, and lots of them are also not getting raises this year. And unlike most Americans, seniors don't have to worry about losing their coverage. Not to mention that it's not even clear Congress will let the premium increase go through.

Plenty of seniors are hard-pressed and could use the extra money. But the same is true of many non-seniors. A government that had a $1.4 trillion deficit in the fiscal year that just ended is in no position to satisfy either group.

The frenzy was always absurd. During the campaign, Obama made it clear he has made his peace with gun rights. He told an audience in rural Virginia, “I just want to be absolutely clear, O.K.? I just don’t want any misunderstanding when you all go home and you talk with your buddies, and they say, ‘Oh, he wants to take my gun away.’ You heard it here, and I’m on television, so everybody knows. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away." Not much wiggle room, is there?

Some NRA members may put no faith in such promises. But they should put faith in Obama's political savvy. He knows liberals will never get the kind of strict gun controls they would like. And about all the Democratic party has gotten for its efforts in that direction is to drive away the voters it needs to win presidential elections.

To try to ban the sale of widely used guns or ammunition, Obama would have to be crazy or stupid. He didn't get elected by being either.

Beck makes much of the mass murder produced by the Chinese tyrant. But Dunn wasn't talking about anything concrete he did, good or bad. She was merely quoting a banality about choosing your own path: "You fight your war, and I'll fight mine."

Dunn was not talking about goals; she was talking about strategy. And what she said about strategy was pretty vacuous.

She's not the first Washington figure to quote evil totalitarians. During the campaign, John McCain was fond of quoting Mao to the effect that "it's always darkest just before it goes totally black." Conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist has been known to quote Lenin about combating enemies: "Probe with bayonets, looking for weaknesses." But I don't think either of them is a closet Communist.

As for the wisdom she invoked, it seems obvious that Dunn was being tongue-in-cheek, since the other of her favorite political philosophers is not a political figure at all--Mother Teresa.

And it's entirely believable that, as she claims, she got the Mao line not from a biography of Mao but from something written by the late Republican political strategist Lee Atwater. I asked China historian Arthur Waldron of the University of Pennsylvania if he recognized the reference. He didn't but eventually tracked it down. What Mao was saying, Waldron explains, is "if you can win, you fight--if you cannot win, you don't fight." Dunn didn't seem to get the point. But whatever the point, it had nothing to do with Mao's ideology.

Dunn, whatever Beck imagines, is the antithesis of a revolutionary guerrilla--a veteran Washington establishment operator who has worked for such centrists as Bill Bradley and John Glenn. Clearly, she's spent far too much time over her career having power lunches with capital big shots and not enough time studying the history of 20th-century China. If she knew anything about Mao, she'd know better than to say something nice about him.

So the best explanations for her words are shallowness and ignorance, not a fondness for communism. I'm pretty confident Dunn has about as much in common with Mao as she does with Mother Teresa.

Law or not, can't they read? By now, everyone knows that research has shown that drivers who are using phones are four times as likely to have accidents as other drivers, making them as dangerous as motorists who are drunk. Yet many people persist in the face of these stark facts.

They seem to think they are exempt from the normal effects of such multitasking. Well, most people think they are better than average drivers. But even at Harvard, 50 percent of students finish in the bottom half of the class. Trust me, cell-phone addict: You can't drive well while you're yakking on a cell phone. You can't even walk well while you're yakking or texting on a cell phone.

In recent decades, drunk driving has declined sharply, and not just because of stricter laws. Most of us would no more take the risk of causing a fatal accident while intoxicated than we would feed arsenic to our kids. But a lot of people continue to delude themselves that driving while phoning is a harmless activity. It's not. We shouldn't need laws to stop us from doing things as manifestly stupid as this.

The oil tax, by the way, was a major failure. A 2007 report by the Congressional Research Service found that it reduced production while garnering only one-fourth of the revenue expected. A similar levy on health insurers would not yield much money to the government, but it would discourage investment in the industry. Scaring off companies is not exactly the way to promote greater competition, as President Obama says he wants to do.

Nor will it encourage them to cover people with higher risks. In fact, it will raise the cost of covering anyone, which is an inducement to focus only on the most profitable customers.

But this approach fits the Democratic conviction that the cost of health care reform has to be hidden from the public. They're the ones who would ultimately bear the cost of a windfall profits tax. But Pelosi either doesn't understand that or assumes the American people don't.

Apparently, the Norwegians grade on a more generous curve than the comics on "Saturday Night Live," where their Obama impersonator got laughs last week by running through a list of all the things the president has failed to accomplish.

The award does present a logical dilemma for his fiercest critics on the right. Last week, they were crowing that Chicago's Olympic defeat reflected justified anti-Obama sentiment abroad. This week, they have the task of disdaining a regrettable outbreak of pro-Obama sentiment. The IOC decision was one of the few instances where conservatives gleefully aligned themselves with foreign opinion. With the Nobel announcement, they can go back to their more natural habit of scorning whatever the rest of the world thinks.

Maybe the prize should have gone to the American people for electing someone who represents a clear break with the recent past. Obama has raised America's standing in the world, but after the acrimony sown by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, any Democrat who got elected probably would have done the same thing.

I'm inclined to agree that Obama has the potential to leave the world more peaceful and humane than he found it. But as they say in Texas, potential means you ain't done it yet.

Let me lay them out for you. The obvious one is that St. Louis is not only a fellow member of the National League Central division, but another Midwestern city with an appreciation for baseball and beer. Really, how could any self-respecting heartlander cheer for the Dodgers, whom the Cards play in the first round? We have nothing in common with L.A.

If that's not enough, remember, it was L.A. and not St. Louis that displaced us from our place as the Second City. Colorado (Denver) and Philadelphia, the other cities in the NL mix, are not exactly kindred spirits either.

If the Cards should advance to the World Series, they would face a team from either New York, Boston, Anaheim or Minnesota. It's hard to dislike the Twins, but it's easy to dislike the others. And in a St. Louis-Minnesota showdown, Cubs fans can hardly swear even temporary allegiance to a team that plays in a dome instead of one that insists on fresh air.

Cubs fans can also take some credit for any success the Redbirds have. After all, without the spur of those T-shirts making an obscene play on Albert Pujols' name, he might not be the almost-certain MVP. And its inferiority complex toward its bigger, grander neighbor undoubtedly accounts for St. Louis' drive to succeed on the diamond.

Finally, a Cardinals victory only makes the rivalry sharper. Cubs fans enjoy beating the Cardinals. But wouldn't it be even more fun to beat the defending World Champion Cardinals?

C'mon, Cub fans. There's still room on the bandwagon. And I promise: If there's ever a year the Cubs make it to the post-season and the Cards don't, I'll be with you all the way.