I am reporting live from

I am reporting live from the thirtieth annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington which I am attending with Little Trunk. This morning before the conference formally convened we had the pleasure of meeting the proprietors of the invaluabe Web site RealClearPolitics, Tom Bevan and John McIntyre. They couldn’t have been nicer.
The conference kicked off in glorious style with a keynote speech by Vice President Cheney. The vice president stated at the outset that 2003 is “going to be a consequential year in the history of our nation and in the history of freedom…We will answer every enemy of the United States.”
He limited himself to reiterating each one of the themes of the president’s State of the Union address and of course concluded with a summary of the administration’s position on Iraq. The vice president stated that Iraq constitutes a continuing threat to the United States and that its disarmament is not a distraction, but is “absolutely crucial to wiinning the war on terror.” He made it clear more or less expressly that the threat posed to the United States by Iraq post 9/11 is the existence via al-Qaeda of a delivery system for Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. He concluded by comparing President Bush with President Reagan, stating that as President Reagan proved equal to the challenges of his years in office, President Bush was proving equal to the challenges of his.