Week of March 9, 2009

Friends, this is not a test. Economically, this is the big one. This is August 1914. This is the morning after Pearl Harbor. This is 9/12.

Political correctness has reared its ugly head once again in America, but this time it has stepped on the wrong toes. The folks at Roudebush Veterans Medical Center who decided to remove the 63-year-old framed newspaper proclaiming"Japs surrender" from a hallway were misguided at best and treasonous at worst. They are trying to rewrite history by getting rid of tangible evidence that documents an extraordinarily important event in this country's history. And all because an employee was"offended" by the truth.

This kind of backward thinking is no different from trying to equate the Confederate flag with racism, which is ludicrous. Like them or not, these are a part of America's heritage (not hatred, as their opponents insist) and cannot be diminished by destroying symbols and pretending they never existed. Veterans Affairs should honor the memory of the 300,000 U.S. servicemen who died and the 600,000 who were injured achieving that historic headline instead of kowtowing to the whims of an employee with an ax to grind.

President Obama’s “new era of responsibility” has already drawn criticism as a magician’s math act: Add a trillion-dollar universal health care plan to a trillion-dollar (including interest) stimulus package to another quarter-trillion for bank bailouts to 7% average increases in domestic agency spending and — voila! –the federal deficit drops by half in four years.