This is the kind of thing that really drives home how screwed our foreign policy is. I'm not that interested in what the governments are saying - they've mostly lost touch with the real world in every country anyway. But it's the opinions of the people you meet everyday on the street that worry me.

In this case, Colin is being humorous if sharp-edged. But I'd wager that even some Canadians - polite as they usually are - would have angry words for Americans visiting their country. This is what bugs me - we're so far out of step with what the rest of the world agrees is the proper, civilized course of action that being an American doesn't engender respect or admiration anymore. It engenders scorn, disgust and anger.

I'm still proud of being an American and of the American people (mostly). But the actions and ridiculously poor decisions of those occupying the Judicial (Eldred, Florida Election decision), Legislative (Freedom Fries, lack of pressure to find out dollar cost of Iraqi war), and Executive (god, where do we start?) branches of the American government embarass me. We really need to clean house, folks.