I Choose the Good News

These days, in order to maintain my well-known sunny disposition, I have to take my good news where I can get it. I can't be very particular. So, I will choose to regard this as good news:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Tuesday that the FBI and the Justice Department "took the wrong path" when they searched a Democratic congressman's office this weekend as part of an anti-corruption probe.

"We understand that they want to support and pursue the process that the Justice Department is trying to pursue," Hastert, a Republican from Illinois, said. "But there's ways to do it, and my opinion is that they took the wrong path."

The FBI searched the Washington home and office of Rep. William Jefferson, D-Louisiana, and found $90,000 of allegedly ill-gotten funds in the freezer of his home, according to an affidavit.

Jefferson's office is in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill.

Leaders from both both parties and both houses of Congress have expressed concern about the search.

So, why is this good news? Well, it depends on how you look at it. My Inner Pollyanna says that the executive-branch security goons and the lawfakers are going after each other, which subtracts at least a little from the time, attention, and energy with which they can go after us, and after the world in general, and that's good. With some luck, maybe they'll hurt each other, at least a little. It's all good.

Then there's my Inner Scrooge, who assures me that the legislative tyrants and the executive tyrants will quickly enough reach a friendly little agreement -- perhaps with the help of the judicial tyrants -- and that agreement will not hamper any branch's ability to tyrannize you and me. Indeed, they'll probably contrive to enhance that ability somehow.

But the sun is shining, Pollyanna's got game, and that glass is half full, doggone it! So it's good news ... it is, it is, it is. Tomorrow: back to our regularly-scheduled gloom.