Just caught a couple of minute of Greta Van Susteran's program while awaiting the beginning of the Ducks vs. Stars hockey game, and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson approved of the diplomatic path the Bush administration was now taking. In the past, according to Richardson, the labeling of North Korea part of the Axis of Evil and the president's threats "to remove Kim Jong Il" were not helpful.

Excuse me, but when did the President threaten that? [Not that the removal of Kim Jong Il would be a bad thing.] Google provides no indication that the president ever did that.

North Korea is a complicated situation. The combination of a nut with nukes and a major city within artillery range makes diplomacy a better option, for the time being. However, I'm usure how diplomacy will work. North Korea has demonstrated again and again that you can't trust it to live up to its agreements. It is a prodigious proliferator of missile technology. Its economy is in such shambles, that the sale of weaponry (including nuclear) to less-than-trustworthy regimes, or even directly to terrorist groups, is perhaps its only real business.

I'm loath to find out how this will eventually work itself out. Maybe regime change is the only way. But it's probably not going to be pretty.