On a lonely hill outside the small town of Cobh, Ireland, is a mass grave marked by three somber headstones. As mass graves go, it's a fairly small one; holding not tens of thousands or even thousands, but merely a few hundred bodies. But the relative size of the grave on the scale of human misery is beside the point -- because while few, their deaths had monumental consequences for America. The dead were civilians, not soldiers (more on them in a minute). But their deaths deserve memorializing today just as much as those we remember who wore the uniform of our country. Because this is the final resting place of the people onboard the Lusitania.

Cobh itself is a town steeped in history, mostly because of its geography. It is situated next to what is reputed to be the second-largest natural deepwater harbor in the world (Sydney's, the residents will grudgingly admit, is larger). Meaning it was the last port of call for the great oceangoing ships of a century ago. For instance, Cobh was the last port of call for the Titanic (where Leo DiCaprio boarded, in the film of the same name -- although, due to the English propensity for renaming everything in sight to suit their fancy, it was called "Queenstown" at the time). And, earlier, it was the departure point for millions of Irish emigrants. There is a statue in Cobh depicting the first person processed through America's Ellis Island; a young Irish immigrant girl, with her brothers (a copy of this statue stands on Ellis Island, as well).

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President Obama and the congressional Democrats just had their first spat. While others have more-than-adequately delved into the fracas of Obama's national security speech and Harry Reid stripping out funding to close Guantanamo, what I was struck by this week was how Obama is better defining his character as president. This is going to be important later this year, when energy plans and health care reform legislation become protracted fights in Congress.

And I was beginning to get a little nervous, I have to say. But now, after Obama pushed back on his national security policies, I feel a little bit better for the prospects of both health care reform and a new energy policy. Because while Obama always starts the debate by projecting an image of "can't we all work together" on any difficult subject, it is becoming more and more clear that, when pushed, there is simply a point where Obama draws a line in the sand and decides to push back. And so far, he's done a fairly good job of holding his ground on a few crucial issues.

Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't agree with everything Obama said in his national security speech -- in fact I strongly disagreed with large chunks of it. And the gap between his words and his rhetoric was on full display, in front of the actual Constitution itself in the National Archives. Republicans are already crowing about this, in effect calling Obama "Bush lite," and saying that Obama's policies vindicate the Bush/Cheney policies.

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While President Obama's speech on national security today is getting most of the attention, another important foreign policy issue awaits, which Obama has so far been untested on as president. On the campaign trail, Obama's statements on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) were inconsistent, to say the least. He spoke against it in battleground states like Ohio, but he also reportedly sent an aide to reassure the Canadians that when Obama said he would "renegotiate NAFTA," he really didn't mean it. So it's always been somewhat of an open question what Obama would do on free trade issues as president. We may be about to find out.

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Some writers love words and language more than others. At one end of this continuum are writers who use language much the way a carpenter uses tools, and don't think about the tools much (would a carpenter say he "loves" his hammer or saw?). At the other end of the scale are writers such as Geoffrey Nunberg, whose love of language is a core part of not just their writing, but their whole being. For instance, his impressive "day job" is researching linguistics at Berkeley's School of Information, meaning that even when he isn't writing, he is still thinking about language.

His previous book's full title proves this point, with what has to be an all-time champion subtitle -- Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show. The book lives up to this jaw-breaker of a title, and is one of the best things ever written about the problems liberals have had for years in competing with conservative phrasing and issue-framing.

Now Nunberg is back with a new book, written about the use of language in recent days, both in the political sphere and in everyday life. The book, The Years of Talking Dangerously, is a compilation of recent essays, op-ed columns, and commentary from appearances on NPR's Fresh Air. In his introduction, Nunberg calls them "snapshots of language during the final years of the Bush era."

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When I wrote yesterday's column ("What, Exactly, Was Pelosi Supposed To Do?") I expected a certain amount of debate, but I had no idea what direction it would take (which is the whole fun of the blogosphere). To be perfectly honest, I thought some Pelosi defenders would take me to task for being too hard on her.

As is frequently the case, I was wrong about that.

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Listening to the news over the past week, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that Nancy Pelosi was personally responsible for torturing prisoners. Because that's how the storyline seemed, if you had just beamed in from Mars and didn't know anything else about the debate on prisoner interrogation. The problem is, we have not just arrived on this planet, and Nancy Pelosi will ultimately wind up in the history books with a footnote (if that) in the description of what took place under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. But her critics in the past few days have remarkably failed to answer a very basic question (not that the media is really asking, but maybe they'll get around to it) -- what, exactly, was Nancy Pelosi supposed to do?

In other words, set aside for a moment the relative culpability of Pelosi versus others involved. Assume the worst her critics are charging her with in the "what and when did she know?" debate -- that she was told a month or so after waterboarding had happened that it was being used. And then answer the question: "What would you have done in her place?" Any critic of the Speaker of the House today should be able to come up with an answer to that, or else their criticism should be discounted as sheer partisanship and political games.

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I have to start by saying that in all honesty, President Obama and the Democrats didn't have a great week.

Obama started the week out by cracking a few jokes at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, which was actually pretty funny (as even just reading the transcript of his remarks shows). Then, early in the week, Obama held a photo op with the heads of the health care industry, where there were smiles all around as they announced the industry would be voluntarily cutting back their growth (not their absolute size, mind you, just their growth) over the next ten years by one-and-a-half percent. This would lead to a savings of a whopping two trillion dollars.

But by week's end, the industry was walking back this commitment -- which never had any hint of accountability or oversight in the first place. It took them four days to go back on their promise. This doesn't exactly bode well for sweeping health care reform being embraced by the industry.

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President Obama recently reversed his position on an appellate court ruling which orders the release of hundreds of torture photos, and is now saying he will fight the decision. Since the court in this case is already a federal appellate court, this would seem to mean that the Obama administration will file an appeal with the Supreme Court. The practical effect of this filing will be to delay any action until October, when the court's next session begins. And since the court does not rule immediately in most instances, it will likely delay it at least until the end of the year. This leads to the question of whether this delay is precisely the desired outcome for Obama -- six months of breathing room on the matter.

Others have deconstructed Obama's statement on why he was reversing course, including Dan Froomkin of WashingtonPost.com who breaks Obama's words down to six indefensible positions. But I'd like to put aside much of the torture debate itself and concentrate on two facets of Obama's policy. The first is the political and military effects of kicking the can down the road for at least six months. The second is the stark inconsistency in the way Obama is treating two groups of people involved in the scandal -- the CIA and the military.

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America is approaching an important date for our military involvement in Iraq. By the end of next month, American combat forces are supposed to pull out of Iraqi cities. Little attention has been paid to this first withdrawal deadline in the American media, but as the date gets closer hopefully they'll realize what is about to happen. Because the next phase of America's military presence in Iraq could determine how fast President Obama can draw down the total number of American troops in the country.

As always in Iraq, things could go either way at this point. The chaos of sectarian violence could come back, or relative stability could give the central Iraqi government enough support to finally address the contentious issues they have been stalling on for years -- what to do with the oil revenue and the Kurdish situation in the north, among others.

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I realize that this is a bit off the beaten path for me. Of course, I could try to write about the political implications and overtones of the new Star Trek film, but that would be even more boring than the column I'm about to write. So, other than quickly pointing out the remarkable similarity between Barack Obama and the Vulcan character Tuvok (from the Star Trek: Voyager television series), we will move right along.

Almost two years ago I wrote a column titled "A Frivolous Summer Column On Science Fiction" where I listed the four top things most science fiction movies (and television shows) get laughably wrong. I return to the subject today to honor a movie that got at least two of these things right. If the entire subject bores you, then I suggest you check back here tomorrow, where we'll be back to politics, as usual (but definitely not "politics as usual"). I provide this warning in advance so the sheer geekiness of this column will not waste anyone's precious time.

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