Thank You, our God, for the gift of life in this majestic world of Your creation. And thank You for Love, which You also created, and which makes life magical Ñ that is when we don't follow all the bogus users manuals. And thank You for our families without which You couldn't have created little old us.

Thank You for America which You have blessed, protected and entrusted with the responsibility of instituting freedom in an environment hostile to freedom. Thank you for those forefathers and patriots who died that this dream might live and become a beacon of light and hope throughout the world.

Thank you for the Internet which allows those renegades in white hats like Matt Drudge and the editors of WorldTribune.com to publish news of the world beyond these shores despite the fact that the editors of most American newspapers had decided Ñ before September 11 Ñ that such news was not news. And thank you for the readers who have made these end-run news sites major voices in the land.

Thank you especially for those readers whose loyalty preceded September 11 after which even network news anchorpeople dusted off their Rand McNallies to confirm that Afghans were more than elite dogs but were actually Ñ or at least allegedly Ñ real people from a nation that was the Soviet Union's Vietnam.