People who love America are stepping out with an extra snap in their gait this week. The people who hate our country, and the terrorists they support, are down on their heels. Here's a review of the past week, along with a listing of who's up and who's down.

MILITARY MOMS: Military moms have been flexing their muscles lately, and they're starting to rack up some impressive gains. Two military moms, Gold Star Mom Debbie Lee (whose son was the first Navy Seal killed in Iraq) and Blue Star Mom Deborah Johns (whose son has served three tours of duty in Iraq and volunteered to go back for a fourth tour), scored a triumphant victory over Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in the battle over whether to support our troops currently fighting in the war on terror.

Meanwhile, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that military moms also have a good political sense. The poll finds that "more women in military families had already rejected [Hillary] Clinton outright (48 percent) than had women in nonmilitary households (34 percent)."

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD: The leading sponsor of Islamic terrorism came to the United States for his summer vacation, but he wasn't accorded a military marching band welcome from the Highty-Tighties of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets like he might have been expecting.

First, Columbia President Lee Bollinger was forced to bad-mouth Ahmadinejad to quell a growing rebellion among Columbia's alumni. The alumni were furious with Bollinger for coddling a terrorist when at the same time Columbia bans the ROTC from campus and ridicules the U.S. military.

Second, Ahmadinejad faced tens of thousands of protesters in New York. He even encountered brief resistance from those listening to his speech in the Columbia lecture hall where their behavior otherwise suggested that they had just started a chapter of the Iranian Terrorist Fan Club.

(Column continues below)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (whom my journalist friend Catherine Moy calls "Mamma I Need a Job") is acutely aware that on liberal college campuses in America you can get away with trashing the United States, attacking our commander in chief, denigrating women and denying the Holocaust took place. However, as Ann Coulter points out: "Only when Ahmadinejad failed to endorse sodomy did he receive the single incident of booing throughout his speech."

The students who cheer on an Islamic terrorist are the same ones who march in International A.N.S.W.E.R.'s anti-war/anti-military rallies, and who swear they really do support U.S. troops. Um-hmm.

RON PAUL: Poor Ron Paul – it's tough to be the candidate of the conspiracy crowd and maintain any shred of credibility. This week, Paul had to denounce his own supporters who mobbed Rudy Giuliani on a Michigan ferry and threatened to throw the former mayor overboard. Paul's grass-roots activists claim that Giuliani stole $200 million worth of gold from the World Trade Center as part of the supposed 9/11 conspiracy that Paul's supporters have cooked up like Jiffy Pop, in their tin-foil covered heads.

Paul was also forced to distance himself from the 9/11 "truthers" – here in California we know them as "nut jobs" – when confronted by the press about the 9/11 conspiracies floated by his supporters.

To date, Ron Paul has danced a fine line by allowing the 9/11 nut jobs to think he was one of them, without committing himself to their lunacy in public appearances and interviews. Now he's come out against their unsubstantiated allegations, and abandoned some of his base to the political wilderness where the mentally unbalanced trade in rumors and unsubstantiated fantasies.

Besides having to put the best face on his stalled presidential campaign (his supporters are reduced to bragging that he's moved from 1 percent to 2 percent in some new polls), Paul now also risks losing his congressional seat. He's picked up a congressional challenge from Eric Dondero, a former top-level staffer and confidante, who is incensed by Paul's irresponsible rhetoric and actions regarding the missions of our troops.

This could be a fun race to watch.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS UNION: The city of San Francisco has dissed the U.S. military once again. The city denied the U.S. Marines the right to film a recruiting video tied to the 9/11 anniversary, saying that they "would only allow the Marine's production crew to film on California Street if there were no Marines in the picture."

As ABC-7 News points out, this is the "latest insult along with the city blocking the USS Iowa from docking here, banning the junior ROTC from high schools and trying to ban the yearly Blue Angels air show."

Thankfully, the American Civil Rights Union, is speaking out against the city leaders in San Francisco.

Could the American Civil Rights Union, backed by their legal counsel John Armor, be emerging as the pro-American alternative to the ACLU? Let's certainly hope so.

MOVEON.ORG: Oh how the mighty have fallen! In a 2003 New York Times Magazine article, Times contributor George Packer boasted that MoveOn.org had become "the mainstream of the growing (anti-war) movement." Packer claimed that MoveOn.org had become so powerful that its influence "began to be felt in Congress."

Fast-forward to this week when the U.S. Senate voted 72-25 to condemn MoveOn.org for its shameless ad attacking the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the four-star general who has led the hugely successful "surge" of U.S. forces in Iraq.

This week, MoveOn.org was forced to admit in a message posted to its membership on the MoveOn website that "Congress Just Told You to Sit Down and Be Quiet."

Yes, they did, and that's icing on the cake for what was a great week for patriots and a pretty lousy week for those who want to weaken, harm or undermine the United States of America.