U.S. Senator Craig Thomas (R-WY) has died. Apparently, although the governor is a Democrat, he will choose a Republican replacement, so the balance of power remains unchanged.

Victor Davis Hanson (who, by the way, I will get a chance to meet when we interview him for our Bloomberg radio show in NYC next week) says we have the power to defeat the Islamists in Iraq and elsewhere, but he also describes the conditions that make it unlikely we will do so.

A U.S. court has rejected FCC broadcast decency rules. This will certainly go to the Supreme Court.

The Democrats plan an assault on Capitol Hill this Summer. No, not against our Islamist enemies, but against the GOP. By keeping up the pressure they hope to peel off enough Republicans so that they can get a withdrawal from Iraq. I believe it will work, because polls like this one show the public increasingly weary of the war.

Michael Yon, as always, does some of the best on-the-scene reporting from Iraq that one can find anywhere. This time, he is travelling through the desert with some of Her Majesty's finest.

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on why the surge is not working. Today, Frederick Kagan tells us why the New York Times is wrong.