The article this is linked to is by David Warren, a columnist with the Ottawa Citizen. One of the newspapers published in the capital of Canada.

After listening to so many commentators in the States talk about Katrina and Rita, and the offers we have received for foreign aid, it is very interesting to hear this Canadian's take on things.

No matter where you sit in the political spectrum, with all the things going on in America (Katrina, Rita, Iraq, the Speaker of the House being indicted, political partisanship seeming to be at it's highest point since shortly before the Civil War, etc.), it is easy to think that America is a mess. Too a certain extent that is true. The Founding Fathers did not design a completed work, or, even, a work that was ever meant to have been completed. It is a flexible design that is meant to be worked out by the people of America in every generation.

However, after reading David Warren's article, you get the impression that maybe things aren't as bad as we thought, comparatively.