As you know, despite the fact that we are in different political parties, I have been a strong and outspoken supporter of your Mideast policies. You have understood three tenets that previous administrations, both Democrat and Republican, have failed to grasp: first, that Yasir Arafat is a barrier to peace because of his duplicitous ways; second, that Israeli settlements, whatever one's view of them, are not the causus belli for the conflict; and third, that an end to Palestinian suicide bombings and violence must be the first step in any peace process....

Recent history clearly disproves the proposition that settlements are the root cause of this conflict. At the 2000 summit in Taba, Egypt, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak courageously agreed to an American plan to give back virtually all of the West Bank to the Palestinians ­ including the settlements ­ in return for peace. This offer was summarily rejected by the Palestinian Authority with the backing of the majority of the Palestinian people....

I believe recent changes in approach taken by your administration threatens all that has been gained over the past two years. Equating, as the Roadmap does, the removal of settlements with ending Palestinian violence accepts a strategy that history has proven a failure....

And on the House side:

Thirty-four Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives, including the two senior Democrats, complained to President Bush on Friday about his criticism of an Israeli assassination attempt....

"We were deeply dismayed to hear your criticism of Israel for fighting acts of terror. The attack on Hamas leader Abdel Rantissi was clearly justified as an application of Israel's right to self-defense," they said in a letter....

"Just as the United States has the right to prosecute the war on terrorism, Israel has the same right to fight terrorism in its own neighborhood and its own capital," they added. [Yahoo News]

As this March CNN/Money report notes, opponents of Iraq's liberation had much higher estimates of the cost of war....This wasn't the only thing war opponents told us during the prewar debate that turned out not to be true. They said the U.S. would suffer thousands of casualties. They said ordinary Iraqis would resent American "invaders" rather than welcome them as liberators. They said the "Arab street" would rise up in outrage. They said Iraq's liberation would set off a new wave of terrorism. They said the war would be a "quagmire"...

Some war foes even said--get this!--that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and would use them on American troops. Well pardon us for asking, but if Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, *where are they?*

It's possible that this was all just a massive failure of intelligence, but we can't help suspecting that war opponents knew better and deliberately misled the public in an effort to establish a pretext for keeping a mass-murdering dictator in power. In either case, they now face a yawning credibility gap. The American people deserve nothing less than a full congressional investigation into the false claims of antiwar politicians, scholars, journalists and activists. If they lied to us about Iraq, how can we ever trust them to talk us out of future wars?

• A group of 1,000 physicians in Dallas-Fort Worth proved no match for FTC lawyers, who forced the doctors to disavow their right to seek greater compensation from health plans.
• Two San Diego physician groups tried to work together in search of fairer compensation from a local hospital. The FTC decided to make a federal case out of this, scuttling the physicians' negotiations and imposing sanctions to ensure they wouldn't try it again.
• The FTC's war on physician rights continues in New Mexico, where a local physician group is facing dissolution for collectively negotiating with health insurance companies.
• Scotch tape giant 3M was sued by a competitor who claimed they couldn't fairly compete with 3M's superior line of office products. A Philadelphia jury decided 3M's market success should be punished to the tune of more than $68 million. Following a defeat in its first appeal, 3M now heads to the Supreme Court.
• Weyerhaeuser beat its competitors in the lumber market. The competitors fought back with an antitrust lawsuit, and won a jury award of more than $78 million. Weyerhaeuser isn't giving up though, and vows to continue fighting for their rights to succeed in the marketplace.
• Seven years ago, the Federal Trade Commission forced Boston Scientific to share its patented catheter technology with a competitor. When that competitor later decided to exit the market, the FTC claimed it was Boston Scientific's fault, and convinced a federal judge to fine the company a record $7,040,000.
• The federal government is looking to undo an already-completed merger in order to protect Kentucky's schoolchildren from the threat of higher school milk prices.