Americans, rally to his side!

Tom Daschle's taxation trouble is threatening his chance to direct the White House Office of Health Reform. He needs us now more than ever.

Remember, this is the man who led his party—the opposition party—in the United States Senate during the instigation of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. For his noble work during that time, we need to forgive and forget his “failure to pay $128,000 in federal taxes.”

Do you remember how nobly he led his party? How he gently laid down his own considerable reputation in order to challenge the Bush administration's plans—not to sabotage them, but to make sure that they were as sound as could be? How he carefully pored over the now-infamous PATRIOT act to make sure that the party in power was not stepping out of its constitutional bounds? In short, how he served as a sterling example of what an opposition leader should be: a man who did not waver in the winds of public opinion?

Let us look upon his time-worn South Dakotan visage with a civilized admixture of pity, love, and honor, as is due to a leading statesman of a great republic, and forgive him his pecuniary indiscretions, secure in the knowledge that Tom Daschle probably just has too much money to keep track of.