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Here's the issue here: Should a republican, conservative first lady whose husband was elected by "the values vote" be telling strip-joint jokes and legitimizing trash TV? Can that position seriously be defended? Go ahead and try.

It wasn't just the values vote that elected him. In my case, I voted for Bush, because I trusted him to do his best to defend the country.

Now one of the main reasons the terrorists have targeted us is that they see our society as decadent. One thing that they as decadent is our protection of free speech, including racy humor, under the aegis of the First Amendment.

In that light, Laura Bush's off-color jokes, in a forum intended for adults, were giving a metaphorical finger to the terrorists. She was, indeed, standing up for one of the main reasons that I voted for President Bush.

Now one of the main reasons the terrorists have targeted us is that they see our society as decadent. One thing that they as decadent is our protection of free speech, including racy humor, under the aegis of the First Amendment.

In that light, Laura Bush's off-color jokes, in a forum intended for adults, were giving a metaphorical finger to the terrorists. She was, indeed, standing up for one of the main reasons that I voted for President Bush.

Kathleen Parker made the same point in her latest column:

"I was right there with them, grateful for the humor and appreciative as ever for Mrs. Bush's humanizing effect on the presidency and our nation. But beyond the jokes, my personal mirth was closely tied to another punch line — the one nobody said but that I kept thinking as she delivered one-liners: Good thing she ain't in Saudi Arabia.

Or the Taliban's Afghanistan. Or prewar Iraq. Or northern Nigeria today. Or any number of Islamic theocracies where women who disobey their husbands — or walk down the street uncovered or unaccompanied by a male family member — are flogged, beheaded or stoned to death, depending on the whims of the ruling fathers."

In that light, Laura Bush's off-color jokes, in a forum intended for adults, were giving a metaphorical finger to the terrorists. She was, indeed, standing up for one of the main reasons that I voted for President Bush

That, at least, is an argument. Here's why I don't buy it: Libertarians, for the reasons you cite, are split between hemp-bag Democrats and anti-regulation Republicans. I don't think they elected George Bush. It was a Pew study, I believe, that indicated people of serious faith are going Republican in big numbers, because they're sick of the stained-dress "faith" of people like Bill Clinton. I do believe "values voters" re-elected George Bush on the second go around, if not the first. On the first amendment issues, the framers were part of a generation that ripped down houses of ill fame, and saw that as no violation of the people's right to engage in political speech. Concentration camps are not opened up and liberated because there's lots of low priced street pornography on the corner. In fact, you could make the opposite argument. Berlin was one of the most decadent cities in Europe before its fall to fascists. When the first family sees the nation as the sort of trailer trash cattle that have normalized Chippendales, we are in deep trouble.