It looks like President Bush's former top economic advisor Glenn Hubbard yesterday trashed the costly Medicare prescription drug entitlement that the White House and Congressional leaders broke arms to ram through Congress a couple of years ago: "...the Medicare expansion without substantial reform of the system was unwise fiscal policy. The current Social Security and Medicare systems are on an unsustainable path. In both cases, sound fiscal reform should involve slower benefit growth for high-income households. "

Great news from Washington this morning: WASHINGTON -- The economy grew at a lively 4.3 percent pace in the third quarter, the best showing in more than a year. The performance offered fresh testimony that the country's overall economic health managed to improve despite the destructive force of Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Remember all the screeching rhetoric from Nancy Pelosi and Congressional Democrats about the supposedly "immoral" Republican budget "cuts" to Medicaid, when all that was proposed was a very modest slowdown in the explosive growth of the program?  Well, it turns out that if the Republicans were immoral, so were some of the most popular Democratic governors.  From this morning's

Now that Congress has left town for its two-week Thanksgiving recess (talk about something to be thankful for!), your nation's capital is all abuzz about the new baby panda at the National Zoo, Tai Shan (also affectionately known as "Butterstick," since he was the size of a stick of butter when he was born a few months ago.)