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Are you in Nebraska? I was there when Ben was Governor. Of the two, Ben might be the better.

Yeah, Nebraska. Well, Hagel generally scores about as conservative as anyone by ACU ratings, about twice as high as Nelson. Simply because Nelson is the next closest thing to Zell Miller left in the Dim party, he's often thought of well here at FR. That's a little deceptive if you know Nelson.

Generally the two of them work together. Neither one actually gives a flying crap about either of their parties. Really. What did the party ever do for them? And what can the parties do to hurt them (except if Hagel wants to run in '08)?

Anyway, you probably know Nebraska has that hopelessly bipartisan thing that is engendered by the nonpartisan Unicameral. It does eliminate some pointless grandstanding but it's also hard to be politically ideological in a very strong way. Flaming political moderation is Nebraska's vice.

They'll both be raising a lot of questions about NG deployed in Iraq. Safe enough to do. I don't know anyone who likes using NG as regular Army troops. They each have their place. And the place for the National Guards is in their home states. Personally, I don't like nationalizing the Guard any more than nationalizing education. I think that we're going to see a move toward bringing the Guard home and limiting their deployments overseas after this.