SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

HEALTH CARE – Chin up, conservatives.  The GOP didn't quite make it in trying to replace Obamacare with something that works, and the mainstream media is gloating as never before.  Their overall theme:  Trump, the so-called great negotiator, couldn't make the deal.  The Dems, who've lost a thousand legislative seats in the last eight years, were positively ecstatic.  One Dem columnist even cited a poll showing the growing popularity of Bernie Sanders.  Of course, Sanders isn't governing, so popularity is easy to come by.  Let them all gloat, just as they gloated when Donald Trump won the Republican nomination.  The Dems then marched, in high Dewey, right into an unexpected defeat.  The doom and gloom we feel right now will dissipate, and we will move on to tax reform in Congress, although it's possible that new ideas for health-care reform will also surface.  And don't let the polls get you glum.  Obama ranked low in the polls during most of his presidency.  It's common.

GOOD SPIRIT – FROM FOX:   They’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.  So they’re marching.  On Saturday, backers of President Trump are planning marches across the country in a show of unity and support for his agenda. In several places, anti-Trump groups are vowing to try to undermine the rallies.  Pro-Trump groups say they are tired of all the attacks on a president who has been in office barely three months.  "Why are we here is because we have a president that has been in office, by the time of the march, what ... 65 days?” asked former Rep. Doreen Costa, a Rhode Island Republican, in a rhetorical question to the Providence Journal.  “All this resistance: 'He's not my president,'" she continued. "News flash: He is. He is everybody's president. I did not vote for Barack Obama, but he was still my president. And you can only resist so much and it's not going to change the outcome of the election.”  The marches, dubbed “Make America Great Again,” or "MAGA,” have met with opposition in some areas, with anti-Trump groups planning to counter-demonstrate.  I'm glad to see the pro-Trump people taking action.  I was not a Trump supporter, but the attacks on this president have been unprecedented, and grossly unfair. 

THE OTHER SIDE – FROM CNN:  A federal judge in Virginia ruled in favor of the Trump administration Friday, declining to join other federal courts that halted the President's revised travel ban last week.  Two federal judges -- one in Maryland and one in Hawaii -- have blocked implementation of the core provisions of the travel ban, and it remains on hold nationwide. Drawing on a litany of then-candidate Donald Trump's statements about Muslims during the presidential campaign, both of the judges concluded that the new executive order likely violates the establishment clause of the Constitution by disfavoring Muslims.  But Virginia-based US District Judge Anthony Trenga was not persuaded that Trump's past statements automatically mean the revised executive order is unlawful, especially given the changes it made from the first version.  How much publicity do you think this decision will get?  Check page 94 of your daily liberal paper.

March 24, 2017