Simple.

We put a $25 million bounty on Musab’s head, he had a cool name, and we caught him nap-ping and blew up his house with two 500-pound bombs right in the middle of the run-up to our mid-term elections. Most of all, he went from dufus to Ghengis because it was good timing and good politics.

The best thing that has come from his killing is that at least now we have the whole al Qaida in Iraq hierarchy thing straightened out.

It goes like this I think. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a fat guy with a beard, who, if not in per-son at least through pen pal status, knew Osama bin Laden, was signified by Colin Powell, in his dog-and-pony show for the benefit of Congress and the American people during the lead up to the Iraq war, as being a key al-Qaida operative.

It didn’t matter then that he was not actually part of al-Qaida and wouldn’t be for years to come. It didn’t matter later that he was in charge of only a very small fraction of the in-surgents in Iraq.

He was signified, and we put a bounty on his head, which made him a big deal.

So Al — I like to call him Al. Actually I like to call them all Al — So Al then went on TV, since our bounty also made him important to Al-Jazeera, and took credit for killings he may or may not have had anything to do with, and we started hear-ing his name more and more often.

Pretty soon, CNN’s talking heads even started outwardly showing a modicum of weird pride in the fact that they could pronounce his name, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It had a rhythm, a meter, it rolled off the tongue — “On the shores of Gitchee-Goomie; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” yes, by all that’s holy, it is iambic penameter. No wonder it caught on.

Then, less than a month ago, we started seeing video clips of Big Al firing a machine gun to prove how in touch he was with the daily operation of the in-surgency.

Then, a few days later, we got the out-takes and he looked less like a fierce foreign fighter and more like Mike Dukakis in a tank, or George Bush in a jet, or even a new addition to Mad Magazine, Abu Musab al-Newman.

As he fumbled and swore at his machine gun until a lesser person, probably Private Al, stepped in and fixed it for him and let the taping go on, we were systematically told through voice-overs how inef-fectual and insignificant the man was.

We all marveled at his stu-pidity and incompetence, and realized it was al-Qaida itself that was our problem, the leader was just a PR front man.

A handful of days later it was announced that we had killed him — “the top man in al-Qaida Iraq.”

We were immediately told that his death would not com-pletely stop the insurgency, but that it was a big deal, a very big deal.

In effect we were told, like in a line from the Three Stooges, “Bottom man has become top man and then has become bot-tom man again.”

We heard about it first on all the early morning talk shows and news digests. Only later did we find out that the White House knew about his death at 3:45 p.m. the day before. So, I guess they just wanted to hold it for the morning news so it would get better play.

So anyway, the al-Qaida hi-erarchy thing: Here is how it stands.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is re-placed by Abu Ayyub al-Masri who is also called Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, but some sources say he might actually by Abdul-lah bin Rashid al-Baghdadi.

Al replaces Al, but might ac-tually be Al.

Who cares?

The real problem is we can’t tell who is more dangerous to the country of Iraq, the insur-gency or the new Iraqi govern-ment.

And I can’t help thinking, Why don’t we have cool names like this for our own dolts?

We could call George Bush Abu Dubyu al-Finito, and Dick Cheney could be Dodo Shoot Shoot Cause a Boo Boo.

Then, anytime we got tired of them we could just replace them with some guy named Al without missing a step.

That is, of course, as long as it’s not al-Gore.

John Hourihan is wire editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or via e-mail at jhourihan@ctpost.com.

It wasn’t because Joe Perry’s mother, Mary, was my gym teacher in high school and Joe was a little kid who hung out at times with my kid brother. It was more because the ageless guitarist is younger than I am, and I have a hard time accept-ing him as someone whose mu-sic is considered oldies.

The past for me is the ’60s and ’70s, and oldies are from the ’50s and have the words “Shing- a-ling” and “Doo-wop-doo-wadda-wadda” in the lyrics.

The past was so much better I thought as I passed through Shelton on Route 8.

Don’t we all notice that when we look back?

It was a simpler time, more easy going. Not as hard.

Remember when a mile-a-minute was fast? Boy, back then we were cooking with gas and everything was just hun-key dorey. Not like today at all.

We could hear the news at 6 and see the “film at 11.” And TV went off the air sometimes, on purpose, like every day.

There were only two kinds of coffee — hot and cold. Immi-grants meant us, and aliens were on Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon and in Terry and the Pirates.

Milk came from contented cows, not mad ones, and Won-der Bread built strong bodies eight ways instead of the puffed up 12 we have now.

The only person we knew from Iraq was Ali Babba and his 40 thieves, and The Sheik was an old silent movie. We liked Ike, not Mike, but we didn’t like his sniveling VP. The big war was over and eve-ryone had a job.

Then my reminiscing burped.

We also had “Machine-Gunner Joe” McCarthy and his communist hunt in the name of national defense, and we all learned how to duck and cover while our parents built fallout shelters that wouldn’t have worked if we needed them.

Black people and women had few rights and fewer job oppor-tunities. And worker strikes were stopped with military force.

There were fewer divorces because even an abusive hus-band with a paycheck was bet-ter for a woman than being os-tracized by her town and having little or no government assistance to turn to.

And, of course, there was Korea, in case you forgot, and tensions in the Middle East.

But how about those ’60s and ’70s I thought.

Now there was a time.

There was free love and Ne-hru jackets, bell-bottoms and mini-skirts. (They invented mini-skirts when I was in Viet-nam, and I thought it was just part of my welcome home. Man, I loved mini-skirts).

We had Phil Ochs and “I Ain’t Marchin’ Any More” and Bob Dylan and “The Times They Are A Changin' ” and Janis and Jimi and the Moody Blues.

There was color TV that you could adjust from across the room, and TV dinners to eat while you watched “Bonanza.”

There were plenty of flower-power rallies to go to and meet women, and psychedelics, and 35-cent-a-gallon gas, and bra-burning, and free love. Did I mention free love. Did I men-tion mini-skirts?

Burp.

Of course there was the war in Vietnam and on TV, and we never had to wait until 11 to see the film, and there were meth monsters and speed freaks, and “OD” and “draft number” be-came household words.

There were missiles in Cuba and Nikita’s shoe tirade at the United Nations.

There were assassinations of a president and his brother and the most important man in our civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr.

And there was Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew making a charade out of the Bill of Rights and government ethics in the name of national defense.

And there was the National Guard at Kent State, and the Chicago Democratic Conven-tion and trouble in the Middle East.

Then I was at work in front of my computer screen check-ing the day’s stories on the wire.

There were drugs, ethics breaches by politicians, aliens and immigrants, missiles in Iran, civil rights abuses in the name of national defense, vio-lence in the Middle East, and. of course, war.

I guess things haven’t changed that much. The “good old days,” always look better in retrospect.

But the sad thing that occurs to me as I pore over the wire is that we continue to make the same mistakes, and continue not to learn a damn thing from them.

John Hourihan is wire edi-tor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or via e-mail at jhouri-han@ctpost.com

I figured he’d be ice skating before I would agree with President Bush, but what the president announced May 8, in the name of the American people for the people of Darfur, I agree with whole-heartedly.

With this, we can become the America we are supposed to be, instead of the America we have seemingly become.

Without the “all-the-options-are-on-the-table” threats, we can again be the ideal that was for so long the essence of the United States and help these people without asking anything in return.

The aid the president says we will send, $224 million, is not enough. I hope we send more.

Because, as I think of all the oppressions in history — the Jews, the Tutsis, the Indians, the slaves brought to America, all the oppressed people throughout all times — the people of Darfur have it worse.

It is worse because their oppression comes not from one source but from every source possible under the unrelenting Sudan sun — including part of it being their own fault.

These black farmers are oppressed because of the color of their skin, their non-Muslim religion, and their own lack of knowledge.

They are oppressed because of geography and nature, and because of timing in the world situation.

Ten years ago in Sudan, of which Darfur is a part, seven out of ten had a job, and six out of the seven worked in agriculture. They raised crops and sheep. Unfortunately they planted the same crops year after year in an effort to survive and make a living, which is detrimental to the land. And because of our own cattle/sheep range wars of a few hundred years ago, we know that when sheep graze they leave nothing.

Overcultivation and overgrazing helped the surrounding desert creep across the land squeezing the farmers into a smaller space every year.

And when the annual rainy season arrived, from April to October, it didn’t come as nourishing rain but as a tsunami from the sky, eroding more of the land and allowing the desert to take a bigger bite.

Then the rainfall began to decline and the 110-degree temperatures baked the rest of the life out of the earth.

To add to their bad luck, their natural resources are iron ore, copper, chromium, zinc, tungsten, mica, silver, gold and (you guessed it) petroleum.

In 1999, the government of Sudan made its top priority the development of its oil fields, some of which were populated by farm villages.

With the desert coming from one direction and the government projects from the other, the people of Darfur crowded into their villages, tended their animals, and planted their meager crops.

They hunted for food, and now, overhunting killed off the wildlife.

They were weak and out of hope, but because they still had water, they became a target.

They were also targeted for their color, their religion, and everyone wanted their land for one reason or another.

In attempts to drive them out, rebels calling themselves the Janjaweed, attacked.

Villages were burned and the people were raped, mutilated, branded, murdered, their water was poisoned and crops wasted.

And all their oppressors wanted was for them to be gone or dead.

The government assisted the rebels, possibly in the hopes that the land would be freed up for oil projects.

About 200,000 of the people of Darfur have been killed, slaughtered for trying to defend their villages. Wasted for trying to stay alive. And 2 million to 4 million have been forced from their homes into camps.

And they aren’t even safe in the camps where nightly raids kill handfuls and the roads outside are gauntlets of death.

They are hungry, thirsty, scared, beaten and trapped.

And the one superpower who usually helps in such situations is tied up in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and fighting terrorism across the world.

What the president did on May 8, I am happy he did in my name.

Now, wouldn’t it be perfect if we could go in, not as just another marauding army, but out of love for fellow human beings?

I know pragmatic people say we should send troops to make sure the aid gets to those who need it, but wouldn’t it cost about the same to just send so much food and water that there is too much for everyone?

Wouldn’t we have less of a problem recruiting other countries to share the cost of sending carrots rather than sticks; butter rather than guns?

And wouldn’t it be perfect if we did it without coveting their undeveloped oil fields?

John Hourihan is wire editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or via e-mail at jhourihan@ctpost.com.

And I remember the guys who would stand on the edge of the brawl, hiding in their anonymity, and when no one was looking they would step in, throw a sucker punch, and back off into the crowd to hide again among the girls.

Osama bin Laden reminds me of those little weasels.

The main difference is we didn’t pay much attention to them later when, over a few Pabst Blue Ribbons on the dirt road behind Duffy’s hamburg joint in the dark, they would re-tell their tales of bravado — how they broke some guy’s nose because he didn’t see them coming and couldn’t find them later because they ran and hid.

When they spoke, we didn’t listen. They were the spineless dregs who were usually only kept around for gas money.

Now bin Laden, for reasons beyond my understanding, is a different story.

Every time he crawls out of his cave and burps on tape we highlight it on news radio and news TV, his skinny, bearded face, in pictures taken years ago when he could actually show his face outside the sand storms of Pakistan, is emblazoned on the TV screen and on the front page of newspapers.

As if he matters.

We make him bigger than he is, more important. The only thing important about bin Laden is his eventual capture and punishment. God willing.

It will happen, because some day the guy in the middle of the circle, who has the courage to stand up in plain sight, will see him coming to throw his sucker punch, and that will be the end.

If anyone, especially anyone who is a Muslim, really looks behind what he says, to what he does, they would feel the same about him as we did about our own lightweight sucker-punching vermin who stood outside the circle and only got involved when no one was looking.

He would be an embarrassment.

If you think about it, this 7-foot little man has killed as many good Muslims as he has good Christians or Jews.

His al-Qaida gang has taken responsibility for nearly all the insurgent attacks in Iraq as well as many around the world, including here in the United States. His criminals have killed Muslims in police stations, check points, recruiting offices; at funerals of Iraqi people; at Iraqi restaurants, at Iraqi schools and mosques and playgrounds; and then he calls for a holy war pitting Islam against its enemies.

My question for him is, “Which side would you be on?”

We sure don’t want you on our side, and you are killing off so many of your side that Muslims all over the world, including in the Middle East, have turned on you.

Is this why he is saying let’s go to Sudan?

Is it because the people there haven’t seen him lately for whom he is?

This newest move is tell-tale.

In Sudan, 180,000 people have been killed in a government-backed ethnic cleansing (read that, genocide). These people have been starved to death, made to live in disease and hunger, and when that wasn’t enough to kill them, they were slaughtered by marauding bands of machete-wielding criminals backed by government air power. And all because they are a different religion.

Which side do you think the United Nations is on; which side do you think Butch bin Laden is on?

That’s right, he has stepped into the fight by sending in a few taunts from Pakistan or Afghanistan or wherever he is hiding in his cave eating microwave Pop Tarts and slurping it down with warm yogurt. And then he sits back.

He tells others to go to Iraq, Afghanistan or Sudan, but then stays safely outside the circle, hidden in a hole in the ground, surrounded by his select group of home-boys because he can’t trust anyone else anymore. They have all seen him for what he is, a waste of water.

I think it is time for the American media to see him as he is, too.

For me, I don’t want to hear about this gutless miscreant any more until he is captured, imprisoned or dead.

Until then, do we really have to publicize every self-deluding regurgitation he manages to get onto a videocam like some tourist in the mountains surrounded by his boys who tell him later over a nice goat-meat sandwich on month-old bread, “Boy, you told ‘em, Boss.”

The only thing keeping him alive is the media. He wants us to accommodate him by making his ranting seem important.

If he were worth talking about in public, he would have the guts to come out in public.

But he doesn’t. What’s the matter doesn’t anyone like him anymore?

John Hourihan is wire editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or via
e-mail at jhourihan@ctpost.com.

For instance, Nick was a 15-year-old Korean-American and proud of both.

He and his older brother Alex had been adopted by a reputable Irish family in our small town and both boys quickly became known for their impeccable character.

I was coaching a high school JV soccer team, and in order for Nick to get to practice on time for the five-mile run, he would get out of school, sprint his three-mile paper route and arrive at practice smiling.

About half-way though our season, we came up against Sutton, a perennial soccer power in our area, a team we usually lost to by at least a bunch, maybe even a passel, of goals.

I called the team together on the sidelines prior to the game and started to read off the starters.

“Start me!” Nick said emphatically. It was uncharacteristic and it stunned me.

“I have to start.” He stared directly at me through glazed eyes and stood up from the bench running in place.

“OK,” I said.

He was a great student, and a great kid. I would give him this much, but I would watch him.

Two minutes into the game Nick slid Sutton’s big half-back from behind. He got the ball but he got the kid’s leg too, and was awarded a yellow card, his first ever.

He didn’t wait for me or the ref, he just sprinted off the field and sat at the mid-field line hugging his knees and waiting to go back in at the first break.

I subbed him in a few minutes later and he sprinted to his position.

The other 19 field players slowed down, dreamlike, as Nick became the action.

He seemed to have the endurance of an ant colony and the lung capacity of a dirigible. He never slowed.

The athletic director sidled up to me near the bench and asked, “What’s wrong with Nick?”

“I don’t know,” I said, but I was worried and watching him closely.

“Do you think it’s drugs? I’ve never seen him like this.”

I didn’t think so, but had to admit he was acting as if it might be possible.

He slid, tackled, popped to his feet, sprinted the field with the ball, passed to no one, and no matter how many times he was stopped, he attacked the ball again and again.

I subbed for him, and he shouted at the player coming in, “No!” and sent him back to me.

I thought “maybe he hates someone on the other team,” but his friends said he didn’t even know anyone on the other team.

I scanned the sidelines for a girl he might be showing off for, but that wasn’t it.

“I called the captain to my side, “Did Nick have a fight in school today?”

“No.”

On the field, Nick seemed to beam himself from one point to the next, playing no particular position, just the ball.

Then it happened.

He broke away on the right side, blew past a half-back, passed to himself through the defense, beat them to the ball, and buried a shot in the goal.

But instead of celebrating, he sprinted to the goal grabbed the ball, ran it to mid-field and set it up for Sut-ton’s kickoff.

“Could he just be trying to get more playing time,” I thought.

Then it dawned on me. It must be jealousy. Alex was a varsity player, Nick must be jealous of his older brother, just a little sibling rivalry.

At the end of the game Nick sat down on the field.

We had lost 2-1. Nick’s had been the only goal. He had played an incredible game. He was bleeding from both knees, was covered with dirt and scrapes. His shirt was torn, his left cheek was bruised, and he was crying.

“You OK, Nick?” I asked sitting down beside him on the field.

“No.” he sobbed. “We just found out today that Alex has a bone disease. He could die. I thought if I could just win this game….”

It’s a shame, but whenever we adults try to figure out what is inside a young person’s head we attribute to them drugs, hatred, pride, greed, anger, lust, poor sportsmanship and jealousy.

Everything Nick had done on that field, which we adults had attributed to nearly all the cardinal sins, had been done out of an incredible love for his brother — out of a love that made him believe if he won the game his brother would live.

We lost.

Alex lived. Probably because of the love, not the score.

Now, whenever I find myself stereotyping young people I think about Nick and Alex and just how wrong we adults can be about kids.

John Hourihan is wire editor of the Connecticut Post. You can reach him at 203-330-6207 or by
e-mail at jhourihan@ctpost.com

We are in the process of doing two things, the sum of which surely sticks to the shoe.

One, we are patting the media on the back for not publishing cartoons that offend Muslims; and, two, we are taking the high-tech companies to task for helping block pornography and criticism of the government from the Internet in China.

OK, I believe American companies should not be involved, as some are accused of, in assisting countries to garner evidence against political dissidents thereby getting them put in jail. (Of course, we have made similar lists of political dissidents in this country before haven't we?)

But wait just a hypocritical minute.

What is this? The part that stood out to me as a father is that the Chinese are effectively blocking pornography from the Internet. And we want them to stop? Is that the case?

So we could also block pornography if we wanted to? Is that right?

Well then, since the majority of religious people in the world find pornography offensive, why is it again that we can't block it and be patted on the back for our professional restraint?

Oh, that's right, freedom of expression. And because it makes a lot of money for someone, and, as Mark Twain said, “Virtue never has been as acceptable as money.”

But freedom of expression can't really be the reason any more. We have just recently been reminded that freedom of expression should have restraints such as, “Although we have a right to disseminate it, sometimes we shouldn't if it is offensive to a large group of people.” My Mississippi-born father-in-law Kenemore would say that the problem we just opened up is “as crooked as a bucket o' snakes.”

We must maintain the freedom guaranteed to us mainly by the ancestors of our British-American citizens who handed these rights down, and among them is this freedom to express one's self.

Therefore, to block pornography is to be downright un-American, we are told by the American Civil Liberties Union, so we back off. Obviously it isn't unChinese.

But haven't we just been told that the media's self-censoring of Muslim cartoons was the right thing to do? So then, why isn't it a good thing to self-censor pornography?

Then there is e-mail in general.

I meticulously avoid anything that I don't

know for sure what it is, and I still get a handful of e-mails a day selling me offensive stuff I don't need, want or want anyone in my family to have to read about.
And then there is Ikeeweebie Iknamuko, barrister of Africa, who keeps trying to “sincerely contact me for a true response,” and I can't stop him because we have to keep the Internet free and clear of censorship. And he says I have been chosen to help him “and the banished prince” get millions of dollars in diamond money out of Africa, and all I have to do is send my bank numbers to him. And even though it is offensive that a lot of elder Americans believe this nonsense and send off their bank numbers to “that nice African man,” who then cleans out their bank accounts, we can't weed him out and make him stop.

It would be unconstitutional.

I really wonder if the framers of the Constitution could possibly have envisioned these problems in the 18th century where the pinnacle of high-tech was the water wheel and the potato peeler.

If they had seen it, in some twist of back-to-the-future happenstance, wouldn't they have tucked in a P.S. somewhere in the freedom of expression part that said, “Oh yeah, but if someone starts sending pictures of their genitalia into your home to your teenage daughter on some type of worldwide electrical tube, you can make them stop and it won't be considered a break with freedom of expression.” So, Ollie, look what we have done.

By linking the words “unless it is objectionable or offensive to a large group of people” to “freedom of expression,” we have put a new light on our constitutional freedoms.

So, I agree, let's not print religious cartoons anymore. It's offensive. A woe as crooked as a bucket o' snakes'

That was the rule passed down through generations of piece-workers to their sons. And these men were all commendable because they never joined their connected friends, but they grew up with them, knew them and respected their rules. It was explained to me as, "Rats may be doing the right thing, but it's not for the right reasons. They may tell you they found God, or decided to come clean, but the fact is rats turn in other people to save their own sorry skins or for revenge or for both."

And aren't we seeing it now on a grand scale?

Jack Abramoff and his "associates" were having a field day ripping off Indian tribes, taking money supposedly to do work on their behalf. Then instead of working, they paid people off to take care of stuff for them.

It was sort of a sophisticated protection racket.

They essentially told one Louisiana tribe, "You don't want any competing casinos across the border in Texas, you give my friend here $30.5 million. He'll take care of it."

Then they skim a cool $11.5 million off the top and put it in their pockets.

And, in Texas, they convince the other tribe to hire them for $4.2 million to help reopen their casino by changing federal laws.

Cute, huh?

And the tribes kept kicking in because these guys made stuff happen.

According to Abramoff's and his buddy Michael Scanlon's guilty pleas they dumped a lot of money on politicians, and badda-bing badda-bang, stuff happened.

It was pretty slick though. If there were out-and-out bribes we haven't put a finger on it — yet. Instead, the money was donated as campaign contributions. But the rats are still squealing.

According to reports, among many others, Abramoff and his guys drop $100,000 on President George Bush; 70 grand on the House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, and they dump $32,000 more on Rep. Bob Ney, chairman of the House Administration Committee, and another $70,000 on House Speaker Dennis Hastert. They plunk down a cool $250,000 on the guy who deals with appropriations for Indian affairs, Conrad Burns, and just so the Republicans won't feel alone they cough up $128,000 to Democrat Patrick Kennedy of Rhose Island while he was in charge of soliciting money for Democratic congressional candidates. And another $62,000 for Byron Drogan, another Democrat, the vice-chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and Harry Reid gets a paltry $40,000. He is the Democratic senator from the great state of Nevada.

How'd they get caught?

It seems Abramoff and an "associate", Adam Kidan, bought a fleet of gambling boats by faking out some heavy-weight lenders with a bogus wire transfer that makes it look as if they are kicking some of their own into the deal. Then they buy the fleet with the money the lenders put up. No skin off their own noses.

They get indicted on charges of wire fraud and Abramoff pleads innocent, but all of a sudden he is being asked questions he isn't supposed to be asked.

The Senate Indian Affairs Committee starts digging into the tribe rip-off stuff and Abramoff stonewalls them. Refuses to answer questions.

Then his buddy gets bagged. And, quick as a numbers runner, Abramoff's associate Scanlon, a former aide to DeLay, a Texas Republican, pleads guilty to conspiring to bribe public officials. This is called rolling over.

Then Kidan reaches a plea bargain with federal prosecutors on the wire fraud charges. It seems to me this guy rolled over too.

Then all the protection Abramof must have thought he had for himself jumps ship as all the politicians start returning or giving away all the campaign donations he gave them.

Wooops.

So now, Abramoff pleads guilty and hopes he can find "forgiveness from the Almighty."

The way I see it, having been brought up watching scam artists of all shapes and sizes, Abramoff was supposed to be taken care of, and he wasn't, and now he is going to rat out some people.

The U.S. Justice Department says it will follow the investigation "wherever it goes," and Asst. Attorney General Alice Fisher tells reporters, "Government officials and government actions are not for sale."

That may be true, But there's a list of names in this rat's head bigger than the madam's black book, and since politics has turned into the biggest confidence game of them all, this is going to get very interesting. It will be fun to see just who tries to get the pigeon off the stool before all the names come out.

He should say something like, "It was a nucular Thursday and everyone, you know, was badgering me about my next nomination for the Supreme Court. Even Laura put her two cents in. And then the girls.

Everyone wanted a woman.

"I thought, Oh Yeah? And just then the White House counsel walked by the oval office and I thought, 'Boy that would serve them right.' So I did it.

"I stood up and said my choice to become the next Supreme Court Justice is the woman who spent about 30 years with a Texas law firm and managed to get out of trying any cases except 12, which rivals my National Guard attendance record.

"My choice is the woman who it was said of in her yearbook, 'Very good at sports, or so we hear.'

My choice is a woman who headed up the lottery in my home state has known my family for years and knows stuff about me you wouldn't believe.

"My choice is Harriet Miers."

"I never intended for it to go any farther than that. I mean, ya know, it was a joke. No one told me the cameras were on and then there she was, beaming like one of those flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz. I had done what everyone wanted. I nominated a woman.

You're a woman right Harriet?"

"No kidding, I knew all along they wouldn't let her in. I mean my own political power base said the equivalent of 'George don't be an idiot. Have you slipped off the wagon? This is no time for one of your pin-head jokes.'

"But I fooled 'em all. I nominatd a woman and they turned her down.

"Now I can get on with the Hispanic thing.

"So that's when I got up and said, "My nomination for the next justice of the Supreme Court is Cheech Marin."

"Put that in your pipe and smoke it."

President Bush just did that a few weeks ago.

In hopes of conserving gasoline he told the American public to drive
less.

Then he jumped into his airplane and flew back and forth across the
country logging about 15 hours in 7 days at a cost of about $40,000
an hour, most of it in fuel consumption. And I thought, man, for
$600,000 I could buy 218,181 gallons of gas at $2.75 a gallon, and,
at 35 miles-per-gallon I could cruise about 7,636,335 miles, which
would be difficult to do in 7 days in a Toyota. But, hey, I'm willing
to give it a shot if it is good for the country.

But that wasn't even the real giveaway.

He also told his White House office staff they could save money by
scaling back on nonessential travel, turning down air conditioners,
turning off office equipment when everyone has gone home for the
night, and by using public transportation.

OK, I have to ask, if the travel is non-essential, then why just
scale back? Why not stop taking unnecessary trips entirely, and why
are they taking trips they don't need to take anyway? How long has
that been going on?

And as to turning off office equipment when no one is there to use it
as a means to save money, I wonder why they have been leaving it on
up until now. They are on our dime, and they don't even have the
decency to turn off the equipment when they go home?

Which makes me think that if he really wants them to use public
transportation, maybe he should draw them a picture of a bus - just
so they know what one looks like. Otherwise they might make a mistake
and jump on his 747 at 40 grand an hour.

It all reminded me of a press conference several years ago where,
none other than, Ted Kennedy came to our newspaper in Massachusetts
and, among other things, talked about the need for energy
conservation. And for the hour he spent with us inside, his limo
driver kept the car running outside so the air conditioner could stay
on and the car would be comfortable when the Senator returned.

The more politicians open their mouths, the more I realize they have
no idea what is going on outside their little, tiny, catered-to,
insulated-from-real-life worlds.

I pulled in to a drive-up ATM, turned in my seat so as to miss the steering wheel and shoved my card toward the slot. Then I looked at the instruction panel, and I realized the directions were in braille.

I am thinking there are only a few possible reasons why this would be so.

1. Our politically correct rush to universal tolerance has run amok.
2. It is more cost-effective for the machine makers to make only one kind of ATM, and that kind has the instructions in braille.
3. Blind people are driving cars.

I'm hoping it is the second.

Otherwise I am real frightened.

That being, for Americans, is there ever a time for war anymore?

It seems our country is caught between knowing all wars are abominations, and knowing there are situations where we believe we will lose our free and open way of life if we don't fight.

We have a split personality. Intellectually we know wars have very seldom settled anything, but sometimes our human animal instincts say, "This is not a time for flight."

To find the elusive answer, we have to ask why is it we won World War II, but faltered in Korea, Vietnam, and in the first Iraq war?

First, in WWII we were attacked by a major power, and something we tend to forget is that we could have lost that war.