Blogging Editorial Decisions

There are mornings when it's hard to figure out what the right line is as a political blogger. One doesn't want to be perceived as a bitter old coot, nor a mere polemicist. And while I am anti-Bush, I don't want to appear as only anti-Bush.

It leads to quandaries like the one I face this morning. If I'm nice and don't make too much of a fuss about Felipe Calderon, the President of Mexico, cutting short his attendance at a regional summit to fly back and personally oversee his nation's response to a Category 5 hurricane, can I get away with writing that President Bush wants to make it harder for poor sick children to receive medical treatment?

The Bush administration, engaged in a battle with Congress over whether a popular children's health insurance program should be expanded, has announced new policies that will make it harder for states to insure all but the lowest-income children.

New administrative hurdles, which state health officials were told about late last week, are aimed at preventing parents with private insurance for their children from availing of the government-subsidized State Children's Health Insurance Program. But Democrats and children's advocates said that the announcement will jeopardize coverage for children whose parents work at jobs that do not provide employer-paid insurance.

Perhaps.

But I should probably resist repeating the wry comment of one of my houseguests this morning over breakfast. "Maybe he has to go back because Mexico doesn't have an excellent FEMA like we do." That would probably be seen as 'piling on.'