I have been asked to make myself available to comment on Bush's health care proposals that he will discuss in the State of the Union Tuesday. This might include my reactions directly after the speech Tuesday or even during the speech. Presumably he will push health savings accounts and the plan to pool small businesses as buyers of health care that has been kicked around for some years now. See the link in today's NYT analyzing these:

http://www.nytimes.com/...

As with many news events, the London bombings got me to thinking about some personal experiences and how I could use them to make sense out of all of it.

The first thing that came to my mind is what my son said to me last week, after returning from the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia. He said "anyone could have walked into the crowd, at least in the back, with a cooler chest containing a bomb." According to him, there were few police in sight and no security checks. I'm not blaming the Philly police; that's clearly a job too big for them alone. Wouldn't public safety at such an extraordinary event would come under the purview of our vaunted Department of Homeland Security?