Next week Thursday, April 20, four days after what many Christians consider their holiest day, Easter, and celebrate the resurrection of Christ, President Bush will meet with Hu Jintao, President of Communist China, in the White House.

The purpose of the meeting is being billed as an attempt to settle "trade differences" between the US and China.  Bush may very well wheedle some minor trade concessions out of Hu, which will be piddling in terms of coming remotely close to correcting the gargantuan trade deficit we have with China.

Bush may also attempt to extract a concession from Hu regarding less Chinese oppression of Tibet - given that Hu was for some years the Chicom governor of Tibet and had a horrible record of tyranny over the Tibetan people. 

If we had Ronald Reagan here with us today, he would be puzzled over the entire debate on "illegal immigration."  He would recognize that just like the Cold War, the liberals are arguing for appeasement and the conservatives for containment.  He would be asking conservatives, "Don't you fellows realize that just playing defense doesn't work?"

Of course, defense is critical.  You've got to prevent the other team from scoring touchdowns.  So you've got to build the fence authorized by the Sensenbrenner bill in the House.  You've got to shut the border down regarding the illegal flood.  You've got to disallow illegals (and, yes, their children) from access to government benefits.

There are many other things you can do to defend America from this invasion - but, the crucial but for Ronald Reagan, would be we can't just play defense. We've got to go on the offense.

Which means an offense against Mexico.  Not with guns and soldiers, but with ideas and information.  "To explain the truth and go on an ideological offensive against the Soviet Union," Reagan would say, "we had Radio Free Europe beamed to the Soviet colonies of Eastern Europe, and Radio Liberty beamed to people within the Soviet Union itself."

"So, obviously," Reagan would conclude, "now you need a Radio Free Mexico beamed to the people of Mexico for the purpose of liberating them from the socialism, poverty, and corruption in their country that drives them to leave it."

Ronald Reagan won the Cold War against the Soviet Union by supporting anti-Soviet liberation freedom fighters in Nicaragua, Angola, and Afghanistan with arms and money, and in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union itself with money and communications technology. 

Ronald Reagan realized there was no need to militarily attack the Soviet Union to defeat it.  All he had to do was support people oppressed by Soviet tyranny who were willing to fight for their own freedom. 

George Bush needs to have the same realization with Iran.  The opportunity to give the Tehran regime more trouble than it can handle internally so it can no longer trouble its neighbors is being handed to him on a silver platter.  It is not Iraq that is about to split apart - it is Iran.

Please sit down.  Pour yourself a stiff drink.  You're going to need it.

Something is being whispered on Capitol Hill that is so radioactive sweat breaks out on staffers' brows at its slightest mention.  Here's the context.

For a long time now, we've been telling you in To The Point that Dick Cheney will step down, Bush will appoint and the Senate will confirm Condi Rice as Vice President, that this will catapult her into being the Republican presidential nominee, and that she will be elected President of the United States in November 2008.

A Rice Presidency will destroy the Democrat Party.  The Democrat Party depends on blacks living on the Victim Plantation.  A Rice Presidency obliterates the myth of Racist America, and it is upon this myth the modern Democrat Party is built.

Democrats cannot get elected without 90% of the black vote.  Rice would deny them this 90% and more.  At most they would get 50-60% if that.  Any and all chance of Democrats regaining substantial political power in America would be over.  The entire power structure of the Democrat Party would be in ruins.

Any chance of the Clintons being back in the White House would be over.  A Condi vs. Hillary presidential race in 2008 is a fantasy.  Hillary, the most hated woman in America, wouldn't stand a chance against Condimania.  If Rice runs, Hillary won't. 

I don't know when the term "March Madness" regarding the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship came into usage, but it was well after my college days in the 1960s.  This year's madness is focused on the sympathetic favorite, George Mason, and the nostalgic favorite, UCLA.  It certainly has caused me to recall a March Madness of my very own.

The nostalgia is for the greatest achievement in the history of college athletics, Coach John Wooden's 10 NCAA championships in 11 years (1964-75), including seven in a row (1966-73), the NCAA winning-streak record of 88 consecutive victories and 38 straight NCAA tournament victories.

But none of that had happened by Thursday, March 19, 1964.  The Bruins, led by center Fred Slaughter and guards Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard, were undefeated in the regular season, 30-0, had won the regionals the previous weekend at Corvallis, Oregon, and for the first time in UCLA history, were in the Final Four.  UCLA was to play Kansas State in the semi-finals at Kansas City, Missouri tomorrow, Friday, March 20.

The way I look at things, the best news of the week is the story of Abdul Rahman being on trial and facing the death penalty in Afghanistan for converting from Islam to Christianity. 

What a fantastic opportunity to put Sharia Islam on the defensive, make it once again the laughingstock of the world, and start forcing it out of the Dark Ages.  The case of Abdul Rahman shines a spotlight on the moral inferiority of Sharia Islam compared to the world's other major religions.

Once again, like the Cartoon Jihad, Islam has demonstrated a mortal vulnerability.  The lesson to be learned here is that the key to victory in the War on Islamofascism is to be on the constant search for its vulnerabilities.

On August 3, 1492, Christopher Columbus departed the Spanish port of Palos at the mouth of the Rio Tinto.  After discovering islands he named San Salvador (in the Bahamas), Juana (Cuba), and Hispaniola on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, he returned from his epochal voyage, reaching Palos on March 15, 1493.  According to the journal of Spanish physician Ruy Diaz de l'Isla, the pilot of Columbus's ship had contracted a previously unknown disease marked by severe fever and frightful skin eruptions.

The pilot wasn't the only one.  By the time Columbus reached Barcelona, several of his sailors had come down with this strange new disease and were treated by the mystified Dr. de l'Isla.  Unbeknownst to them, the sailors had acquired the disease through cohabitation with infected native "Indian" women on the discovered islands.

Europe had finally begun to recover from the Black Death of the bubonic plague in the middle 1300's, which had killed fully half of all Europeans.  Once again, Europe was ravaged by a plague to become known as morbus gallicus, the French Disease.  It would kill one third of the entire population of Europe.

Today we are witnessing the effects of another French Disease on the streets of Paris and on the campuses of dozens of universities throughout France.  The social disease of the French Anti-Capitalist Welfare State has obviously caused severe brain damage among French students.