Nearly five years into the "war on terror," it's still at the core of American media and politics.

Yeah, I've seen the recent polls showing a drop in public support for President Bush's "war on terror" claims. And I've read a spate of commentaries in recent months celebrating Bush's current lack of political traction on the terrorism issue, like the New York Times piece by Frank Rich triumphantly proclaiming that "the era of Americans' fearing fear itself is over."

That's a comforting thought, hovering somewhere between complacent and delusional.

How strong is the case against Louisiana's Representative William Jefferson? According to numerous press accounts, after videotaping Jefferson receiving a $100,000 bribe from an FBI informant, the government executed a search warrant of his home and found $90,000 of that money hidden in his freezer. In another case, a Kentucky businessman pleaded guilty to paying Jefferson $400,000 in bribes for official favors; and one of the congressman's key staff members has already entered a guilty plea to aiding and abetting the bribery of a public official.

On March 28, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia took his seat at the nation’s highest court to hear Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. His task, along with the other justices, was to determine whether Salim Hamdan, a captured enemy combatant, should be afforded a fair and basic trial. The court would hear, for the first time, arguments from both sides over whether Hamdan should be afforded basic due process rights as a war-time detainee – an outcome that would establish a dramatic precedent in American law governing times of war.

The lawyers for Hamdan knew they were facing an uphill battle. But the problem wasn’t in their argument. It was in persuading a justice who had already made up his mind about the issue.