Two hundred thirty years have elapsed since Jefferson's document was signed in Philadelphia, declaring the 13 colonies to be independent forever of the England of George III.
"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."
"There is an awful feeling that everything is lurching downward," the Western diplomat told The Washington Post.
In 1938, the year of Anschluss and Munich, a perceptive British Catholic looked beyond the continent over which war clouds hung and saw another cloud forming.
On the political roundtable "21 This Week," on Maryland's tiny Access Montgomery cable channel 21, Robert J. Smith has been a regular panelist. Introduced as a "Republican activist," Smith was also Gov. Robert Ehrlich's appointee on the Metro Transit Authority board.
To buttress crumbling support for his interventionist policy, President Bush played his ace of trumps, sending his most popular champion, Condi Rice, to the Southern Baptist Convention.
Addressing a gathering of Hispanics last week, President Bush declared: "There are those here in Washington who say, 'Why don't we just find the folks and send them home.' That ain't gonna work."
In almost every poll, the three front-runners for the Republican nomination in 2008 are Rudy Giuliani, Condi Rice and John McCain.