How Stupid . . .

. . . is the Washington, DC press corps? White House press secretary Tony Snow clearly thinks the answer is "incredibly stupid", as shown by his comments at today's press briefing where he tried to explain away the internal Department of Justice documents that described most U.S. Attorneys as "loyal Bushies":

I've already told you what the definition of loyalty is in this White House, which is to do your job -- to understand that it is an honor to be in the White House, and an honor to serve the American people, and you treat that as a trust. Loyalty to the President means doing your job and faithfully carrying out the priorities of the administration.

-- Tony Snow, White House press briefing, March 16, 2006 (as quoted at TPMm)

Since even a first-grader could tell that Tony Snow is very clearly lying about "what the definition of loyalty is in this White House", he very clearly thinks that the White House press corps is collectively as dumb as the proverbial bag of hammers. Tomorrow's headlines will tell whether he's right; based on past experience I'd expect that he probably is.

Life Imitates Ghostbusters

Attorney General Gonzalez:

I acknowledge that mistakes were made here. I accept that responsibility and my pledge to the American people is to find out what went wrong here, to assess accountability, and to make improvements so that the mistakes in this instance do not occur again in the future.

Ghostbusters:

Stantz: Gozer the Gozerian? Good evening. As a duly designated representative of the City, County and State of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.

Venkman: Right, that oughta do it. Thanks very much, Ray.

International Poet of Mystery?

Having referenced W.H. Auden in my first post on this humble blog, I was a bit surprised to see him turn up in the news today. Granted, it's his centennial, so you expect the occasional commemoration or monument, but I wasn't remotely expecting anything like what actually showed up.

It seems that MI5 suspected Auden of helping arrange the escape of two of the "Cambridge spies" who defected to the Soviet Union in 1951. Nothing was proved, and the investigation was closed.

Clearly, poets lead far more interesting lives than I ever would have guessed.