Gentlemen, congratulations. You're everything we've come to expect from years of government training.

The fact that we went on high alert and scrambled fighters yesterday over a plane crash in New York does not inspire confidence. In fact - exactly the opposite. It makes it appear we still haven't a clue what the hell is going on in our skies five years after the attacks that took down the Twin Towers.

There's right and there's right and never the t'wain shall meet.

It's a little lie but it's typical of the empty-suit that sits in the oval office. At yesterday's press conference he said of North Korea:

And yet we came into office and discovered that they were developing a program, unbeknownst to the folks with whom they signed the agreement, the United States government. And we confronted them with that evidence, and they admitted it was true, and then left the agreement that they had signed with the U.S. government.

North Korea formally pulled out of the Agreed Framework only after the United States did so. Our government seemed to have far more interest in seeing the agreement collapse than the North Koreans ever have.

I'd give real money if he'd shut up.

As if we needed more proof that Foley is an ass: "Disgraced Congressman Mark Foley tried to save Star Trek: Enterprise."

Shatner was twice the man that Scott Bakula is. In fact - these days he's literally TWICE the man Bakula is. Good thing they have replicators otherwise I don't know how'd they'd get all the material to put a uniform on that man.

Devil's Snare hates sunlight! Lumos Solem!

Crooks and Liars has a great Olbermann bit in which he revists the recent demise of the right of habeas corpus.

And before we reduce the very term "habeas corpus" to something vaguely recalled as sounding kinda like the cornerstone of freedom, or maybe kinda like a character from "Harry Potter," we thought a Countdown Special Investigation was in order.

Mini-me, you complete me.

You may have seen excerpts from this letter from a marine officer in Iraq but the whole thing is pretty amazing. My favorite part-

Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.

Or else we will be very angry with you... and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are.

President Bush says North Korean nuclear test was "unacceptable."

Bush said he's made calls to the leaders of South Korea, China, Russia and Japan. And he said they all reaffirmed a commitment to a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

If he actually used the word "peninsula" during those calls I bet he giggled.

Willkommen. Bienvenue. Welcome. C'mon in.

It's hard to believe but it's been just about fourteen years since William Jefferson Clinton was sworn in as the President of the United States. I keep track by gauging the age of my oldest daughter who just turned thirteen. Mrs. Wormer was pregnant with her when we went to Washington D.C. for the inauguration.

Mrs. Wormer and I had been very politically active - working to defeat a couple of horrendous anti-gay ballot measures - and she had purchased the trip to the inauguration as a surprise. The trip represented the fulfillment of a lifetime dream to see Washington with opportunity to be there live to see the Reagan era unceremoniously booted out the icing on the cake.

It was an incredible, one-in-a-lifetime experience. There were hundreds of thousands of like-minded progressives and Democrats strung throughout hundreds of tents on the mall and attending the various public inauguration ceremonies. Oddly enough the part that really sticks in my mind all these years later isn't the actual swearing in and Clinton's upbeat speech, but a public concert at the Lincoln Memorial a couple of days before.

Performing that night were Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan. But what sticks in my mind aren't those performances so much as an offhand question by emcee Whoopi Goldberg. At some point in the evening she asked the crowd "when's the last time you felt welcome in Washington?" We went nuts. It'd been a long damned time.

If you believe the polls and the chatterboxes on tv there's a pretty good chance we might be welcome in at least some parts of Washington again starting this January. I'm not as optimistic about our chances, having been burned pretty good the last couple of times out, but I really do hope they're right and the Democrats take congress. That feeling that D.C. actually belonged to the "we the people" and that it was okay to hope again was pretty wonderful.

I'd love to feel that again.

Rabbit season. Duck season. Rabbit season. Duck season. Duck season. Duck season. BOOM!

It was not to be for a bunch of reasons but the biggest was that the California Golden Bears showed up to play football and the Ducks didn't.