I drove 400 miles round trip to have dinner with a friend on Wednesday evening.  I always enjoy my time with him immensely.  Very, very, funny, and thought provoking.  I'll share his solution to our war with Muslim extremists in some other post but a newspaper article I saw this evening reminded me of something else he said.  He made a comment about Bush's State of the Union speech being insane if you read between the lines. "Oh?", I asked. "How is that?" The answer I got was, "He wants to export freedom to everyone. That's not much different than Caesar saying he wanted to bring civilization to everyone and the Conquistadors bringing Catholicism to everyone."  Interesting viewpoint.  I hadn't thought of it that way before.  My friend doesn't exactly think everyone is ready or capable of handling freedom as we know it.  I'm not so sure but he has a number of data points from dealing with other cultures that I don't have direct experience with.  Anyway the news indicates, insane or not, foreign governments are taking Bush seriously.

From the LA Times:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Saturday for a constitutional amendment to allow other candidates to run against him for the first time, a surprise move that could be a historic turning point in a country that has endured decades of repressive rule.

The announcement by Mubarak, a staunch U.S. ally, came days after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a trip to the Middle East this week amid mounting tension over the autocratic Egyptian leader's crackdown on political opponents.