Frequent commenter WK threw a note over the transom to advise me of some slight improvements in the plight of America’s homeless veterans.

BERNARDS -- Frederick Ohweiler said Monday that it took the better part of the past three years to prepare for life "on the outside."

"The outside" for Ohweiler means being drug and alcohol free, a roof over his head and a trade that led to a job with a future. It also means outside the system, clean and sober and on his own.

Ohweiler was for years, he said, one of the state's 8,000 homeless veterans. Nationally, homeless prevention organizations said, on any night, nearly 200,000 veterans are homeless.

In 2004, Ohweiler was enrolled in a new program at the Veterans Administration Hospital at Lyons that offered a place to live, a break from the cycle of addictions and an opportunity to enter a culinary school.

It is a national disgrace that there are 200,000 homeless veterans. Of course, that’s just one disgrace among many in the Age of Bu$h. Not all the homeless vets occurred under Mr Bu$h’s occupation of our White House, but it can be reliably stated that their plight has grown worse because of his neglect.

An administration that allowed uniformed troops to wallow in soiled and stained linen in a rotting hospital wing could be expected to have even more contempt for veterans no longer in the green bag.

On Monday he was on hand at VA Lyons to celebrate the expansion of the Hope For Veterans Transitional Housing Program, operated by Parsippany-based Community Hope.

Officials and guests marked the expansion of the program by 25 beds, increasing to 100 the number of veterans who can be served.

The new beds are in a wing of the previously abandoned building on the Lyons campus that was renovated in 2004 for the transitional housing program.

Community Hope, founded in 1985, is one of the state's largest providers of supportive housing. It operates cottages at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, offering patients there a chance to make the transition from an institution to life on the outside.

At Lyons, Hope for Veterans is a two-year residency program that offers veterans the chance to develop greater independent living skills through addiction recovery programs, job training, community service work, self-help groups, mentoring opportunities, developing savings and eventually moving to permanent housing.

I know you join me in congratulating Fred Ohweiler, and wishing the best for him and all his brothers who are trying to fight their way back to a healthy, successful and productive life after serving their country. Sadly, it’s unlikely the current pack of criminals despoiling our democracy will do anything for the veterans. It will have to wait for patriotic Americans, a Democratic President and strongly Democratic Congress, to start repairing the damage that the Republicans have brought to our nation.

WK advises that he is in one of the photos in the story linked to above, One of the balding heads is his.