Chris Broussard

I was in a Christian bookstore with my 7-year-old daughter recently when she picked up a cross with the American flag emblazoned across it, literally covering every inch of its surface. She stared at it for a moment, turned it over in her small, innocent hands and then looked up at me with a puzzled look on her face. "What does Jesus' cross have to do with the American flag?" she asked me. Indeed. She's extremely bright, my daughter. So, after we got home I asked her to explain what she had meant in the bookstore. "Well," she began, "Jesus died for everyone, right?" "Right," I answered. "Not just Americans?" I could see where she was going with this, and I could see she had a point. "No, not just Americans." She looked at her feet, thought for a second and then looked up. "Are there crosses with other people's flags on them?" I doubted it, but told her I wasn't sure.

Boy, the tone sure has changed in Washington, hasn't it? If you remember, changing the mean-spirited tone on Capital Hill was one of the goals Dick Cheney set for this administration back in 2000.But, times change, I understand that. Besides, I think Mr. Cheney is getting nervous. It's not easy for war profiteers his age to start a new career. The war in Iraq is getting nastier by the day, a second term is starting to look like a fantasy and then there are those pesky congressmen murmuring about war profiteering. Thus, the "F word." According to Reuters, Vice President Dick Cheney blurted out the "F word" at Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont during a heated exchange on the Senate floor. Cheney ripped into Leahy for the Democratic senator's criticism this week of alleged war profiteering in Iraq by Halliburton, the oil services company that Cheney once ran, telling him to either "'F' off" or "go 'F' yourself.&qu