Safe at home

The new Homeland Security Secretary acknowledged that you can't protect all of the people, all of the time, so the government is going to put its resources into preventing the most serious attacks. It's a sensible approach and one that the Bush administration should have adopted publicly almost immediately after Sept. 11, instead of trotting out John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge every other week to send Americans to the hardware store in search of duct tape.

Republicans have long nurtured a reputation for law and order, and critics--myself included--believe they exploited the 9/11 attacks and intruded on civil liberties out of proportion to the real risk of a terrorist attack. A key principle of conservatism--and conservatism and Republicanism are not always mutually inclusive--is that life is inherently risky, tragic even, and that there is a limit to what government can do to mitigate that risk. It's a sensible philosophy.