A great deal has happened in the past few weeks and I haven’t had time to write much about it. Every year around the first of May I travel with Nancy to the annual Pediatric Academic Society Convention and this year it was in Denver. I’ve gone to enough of these to have become friends with several of her colleagues and I think I look forward to seeing them as much as she does. Denver is a beautiful city but I have to confess it’s not a place I would go to without a reason. Anyway, next year’s meeting is Boston and I’m already looking forward to that.

While we were in Denver we got word that Osama bin Laden was killed in a shootout with a group of Navy Seals. I have to confess that while I normally prefer slow justice over shootouts, I applauded his death that night. The hunt for bin Laden took nearly 10 years and parts of two Presidential administrations (technically it was 13 years and three administrations; President Clinton began the hunt in 1998 after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania). President Obama was rightly concerned that if bin Laden was captured alive he would become a target for Americans being kidnapped and held as hostages. Any trial for bin Laden would have taken years and have given him a platform that the world doesn’t need. As for the Seals who (once again) got the job done: they don’t do press conferences or curtain calls. We likely will never know their names, but I pray they understand the depth of the phrase “a grateful nation.”

It’s also time to update this page. I’ve taken out the casualty counter on the left column. I was hesitant to do that because I didn’t want to give the impression that anyone is forgetting that we still have young men and women fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is that I just can’t find a casualty counter for Afghanistan and that’s where our focus is now. If I can find one, I’ll put it in. In its place I’m putting in the beginnings of stuff for the Presidential race. I recognize that the election isn’t for 17 months, but the race has already begun. For now I’m going to list the candidates; when the major parties start their primary season I hope to keep a delegate count. This was a bit of a nightmare for me in 2008, but I’ll do what I can. My process for listing someone is twofold: I find his/her name using a Google search and the candidate has an active web page. I’m guessing not everyone is happy with this process, but it’s the best I can come up with. If you have a better system, email me.

Of course, according to Family Radio it won’t matter since Judgement Day is a short 3 days away.