Texas two-step

Cartoonists had a 1,600-acre field day as President Bush vacationed last week at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Cindy Sheehan, the grieving mother of a fallen soldier, kept up her vigil outside the ranch, trying to persuade Bush to see her while he spoke about his need to “keep a balanced life.”

Cartoons showed W in his “spied her” hole and planting, rather than clearing, brush so as to better obscure his view.

Some of his neighbors also had seen enough, including one who plowed his pickup over a row of white wooden crosses that protesters had erected near the ranch to commemorate the war dead.

All the while, Iraq awaits a constitution — one that presumably will protect a citizen’s right to protest, a leader’s right to remain silent and a cartoonist’s right to ridicule either one of them.

-- Joel Pett