Recently, Bill O’Reilly has heaped praise on Pope John Paul II. Here is O’Reilly on the Factor last Thursday:

But I do know that I’ve studied this pope as well as I’ve studied anybody. And I can’t find anything, anything that this guy didn’t walk the walk. You know, right down the line. Nobody’s perfect, but this guy was close in his personal behavior and the way he conducted himself.

O’Reilly was not so kind, however, when the Pope expressed his opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. He launched into this diatribe on the March 12, 2003 edition of the O’Reilly Factor:

But as I’ve said before, I believe also that John Paul is naive and detached from reality. If America does not lead an attack on Iraq, once again, Saddam remains in power and is free to use his anthrax and other terrible weapons as he chooses.

So the pope does not seem to be concerned about that or about Saddam’s behavior in general. Once again, he must know Saddam is a killer. He must know he’s oppressed his own people using murder and torture. He must know that.

[Snip]

Summing up, Jacques Chirac is our enemy, and the pope, well, I don’t know what to think.

Even back in Sugarland, Texas, Tom DeLay’s conduct in the Terri Schiavo case isn’t going over well. The Houston Chronicle reports this morning on a poll the paper conducted in DeLay’s congressional district:

[N]early 69 percent of people in the poll, including substantial majorities of Democrats and Republicans, said they opposed the government’s intervention in the longstanding [Schiavo] family battle. Respondents in the Chronicle survey also were critical of DeLay’s individual role. Nearly 58 percent disapproved of his decision to get Congress involved.

Many of DeLay’s constituents believe his involvement in the case was a political ploy:

Republican Barbara Sanderson, 64, of Pecan Grove, said the affair contributed to her opinion of DeLay sinking from “very, very, very favorable” to something considerably less rosy. “I think that it was a high-profile political ploy used by a lot of people, and I hate to see our president get involved,” she said. “It’s embarrassing.” DeLay argued that his morals guided him in the case of Schiavo, who died Thursday. But nearly half of those polled said he intervened in the case for political gain.