Things not seen: It's hard to figure out what's more disturbing. Is it the fact that 18 percent of those participating in a survey on religious belief conducted by Baylor University expressed a belief in creatures such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster, and 24 percent think we've been visited by spaceships from other planets? Or is it the fact that the survey by a Baptist-sponsored university even asked such questions as part of a survey about religious faith?
Reconstruction: The site of the World Trade Center may still be a gaping hole in the ground, more favored as a political prop than as the location of a proper memorial. But there is evidence that the Constitution of the United States is being rebuilt, brick by torturous brick. First the Supreme Court started reasserting the separation of powers when it comes to the legal rights of people held as suspected terrorists. Now leading members of the president's own party in the Senate John McCain, John Warner and Lindsay Graham have moved to reclaim the proper role of Congress in making the laws of war. They've blocked a Bush administration initiative to set ridiculous rules for the military commissions that will try terror suspects and substituted a properly American system that does not allow secret evidence or coerced testimony. And, oh, yes, Gen. Colin Powell, who wrote in favor of the senators' version and against the president's, is no longer MIA.
