Rick Tocchet played for six teams in his 18-year N.H.L. career. A four time All-Star, Tocchet is now an assistant coach under the legendary Wayne Gretzky. Or should I say was. Suspended by the league indefinitely, Tocchet surrendered to authorities investigating a multi-million dollar gambling ring. New Jersey State Trooper James Harney was also taken into custody after officers searched his home and found bundles of cash, Roles watches and nine plasma televisions. Harney was charged with racketeering, money laundering and official misconduct. Meanwhile, the fate of Gretzky’s wife, Janet Jones, remains murky after revelations that she wagered (quite successfully) on Super Bowl XL. Mr. Gretzky had this to say after Mrs. G collected her six-figure payout: “My wife is my best friend, so my love for her is deeper than anything.” The Great One then went on to refute his own culpability: “The reality is, I’m not involved. I wasn’t involved.” Not so for “professional athletes in the National Hockey League and other bettors,” says Police Superintendent Joseph Fuentes. Noting the syndicate took in nearly $2 million over a 40-day span, Fuentes expounded: “We can simply connect them from the Philly mob to this book-making enterprise.”

Fortunately for Gretzky, a wiretapped conversation with Tocchet supports his claim of innocence. So there’s at least one fan of our neo-Orwellian zeitgeist. Nonetheless, odds are Wayne won’t find much rapport amongst rank and file members of the NYPD. During a 2004 collective bargaining dispute with the city, off-duty members of the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association (read: labor union) were videotaped by Internal Affairs officers as they demonstrated. Each protester was zoomed in on and photographed. As a result, the PBA is suing the city, claiming, among other things, an infringement of free speech. The association’s litigator argued, “There was no basis whatsoever for employing the Internal Affairs Division… except as a means of political harassment. There wasn’t suspicion of criminal activity.” So there it is. Not even miles from ground zero, the very people armed with expanded antiterrorism capabilities (and responsibilities) have seen those capabilities sharply turned against them. One can only imagine, then, the violations suffered by average citizens.

Heather Wilson, for one, looks like any other soccer mom driving around Albuquerque, New Mexico. And like a lot of Americans, she has “serious concerns” over the President’s domestic spying program. What distinguishes Wilson is not the fact that she’s a Republican but that she’s a Republican Member of Congress. Try as it might, the White House is having a tough time dismissing her as ignorant or soft on terrorism given her Rhodes scholarship and 11 years in the Air Force. Not to mention her chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence. Although the FBI has characterized this controversial NSA surveillance as “unproductive” and “pointless intrusions on Americans’ privacy,” Dick Cheney continues to grumble that ANY scrutiny of the wiretapping program (including, presumably, the upcoming secret — and limited — Congressional briefings) will be of strategic assistance to the enemy. Shrugging off Yemen’s apparent complicity in the escape of 23 Al Qaeda prisoners, the Vice President eschewed divulging any terrorist threat linked to the CIA’s warrantless seizure of thousands of women’s panties.

The clandestine break-and-enter operation was blown open when Scooter Libby leaked the name of “mid-level” agency operative George C. Dalmas III, who for months unobtrusively plied the leafy suburban streets surrounding our nation’s capital. What does remain a mystery is why Cheney is keeping mum given the President’s recent bout of pedantry. In an attempt to justify the NSA’s Watergate-like activities, the President gave a detailed speech implying that the highly specific and precise information culled by counterintelligence specialists was requisite in foiling a nefarious 2002 plot. Reading from a prepared text, Mr. Bush laboriously recounted Khalid Sheik Mohammad’s diabolical plans: “Rather than use Arab[s]… Mohammad sought out young men from Southeast Asia [to] hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast… the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles.” The fly in the NSA ointment, of course, is that there is no Liberty Tower in L.A., though you can certainly find one in New York, Tokyo, Las Vegas or half a dozen other major cities. What is less certain is whether this narrowly averted disaster was at one time imminent or merely conjured up for dramatic effect.

In his own cinematic turn, 18-year-old Jacob Robida performed an interpretive rendition of “Brokeback Mountain” by attacking three patrons of Puzzles Bar (gay milieu) with a hatchet and pistol (Cowboys and Indians) before his conflicted, on-again-off-again relationship with girlfriend Jennifer Bailey (labile sexual orientation) ended in a deadly gun battle with police. Rather than focus on the artistic merits of Robida’s odyssey, I wish to applaud Justice for being swift and severe. Unlike in the Enron case, where five years after the malfeasance came to light, we have barely slogged through jury selection. You may recall that Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling manipulated futures contracts while perpetrating fraud, theft and other crimes against (essentially captive) energy consumers. It is with great irony that Dublin’s Intrade established a futures market to trade the number of convictions prosecutors can secure. Skilling’s lawyer reacted sharply: “I think it’s abhorrent, betting on people’s lives,” while Lay’s added, “It should probably be illegal.” It’s unclear if the $500-an-hour attorneys were referring to the unseemly courtside speculation or to their clients’ now-defunct business practices.

After two decades as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan finally donned the cardigan sweater of retirement. Say what you will about the housing bubble, record deficits and the banking system’s time bomb of derivative securities, the man kept a cast iron lid on inflation. Which is important because prices shouldn’t go up simply because you’ve had another birthday. And yet they do. A lousy relief pitcher today pulls down more in a single season than Babe Ruth earned in his entire career. So it’s no surprise that 2005 ushered in the largest corporate profit in American history. Thanks to Dick Cheney’s energy policy, Exxon recorded earnings of $36 billion. Yet it cost ten times that amount to invade Iraq and jack up the price of gasoline. It would have been vastly cheaper for the government to cut a check to the petroleum industry and skip the war altogether. Perhaps then Delta and Northwest Airlines wouldn’t be in bankruptcy and all those Ford and GM workers could keep their jobs.

His weekly allowance from the Carlyle Group notwithstanding, the economic impact of soaring energy prices is not lost on the President. During his State of the Union address, he went so far as to accuse America of being “addicted to oil.” An audacious move given our dealer was sitting right behind him. Nonetheless, Mr. Bush went on to boast that he had “spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, more reliable alternative energy sources.” And though he made no mention of the $8.5 billion misplaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority, he announced “a 22-percent increase in clean-energy research at the Department of Energy.” The President lectured that we must “change how we power our automobiles” and embrace “cutting-edge methods of producing [energy] from wood chips, stalks or switch grass.” W. then asked for legislation to force car manufacturers to adopt this newfangled technology otherwise known as “the steam engine.”

The President also argued that our role as OPEC’s supplicant is “allowing radical Islam to work its will.” His solution is to foment “democratic reform across the broader Middle East.” Free elections, however, cannot guarantee friendly regimes. Witness Iran and Palestine. In fact, Bush’s truculent foreign policy (to “act boldly in freedom’s cause”) is rarely successful; more often than not it backfires. Since 2001, even South America has demonstratively turned away from us, with voters ensconcing socialist regimes in Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Venezuela.

White House speechwriters also ladled in a heavy portion of kids-are-our-future sentimentality. To that effect, Mr. Bush noted that in spite of No Child Left Behind, we rank 19th globally in primary education and are falling precipitously. Given that the rest of the world speaks English better than we do, it is best, he opined, to concentrate on our numbers. As such he wants to “train 70,000 high school teachers, to lead advanced-placement courses in math and science … and bring 30,000 math and science professionals to teach in classrooms.” This from the guy who wants to replace the theory of evolution with Biblical innuendo and who threatened NASA’s chief climate scientist James Hansen with “dire consequences” after Hansen went public with irrefutable evidence of global warming. Other ironies: The President called on Congress to renew the Patriot Act despite his assertion that he is anyways above the law, and suggested granting permanence to deficit-engendering tax cuts will somehow lead us towards solvency. His coup de grâce came when he brazenly chastised the nuclear-enamored leaders of “Iran, a nation now held hostage by [this] small clerical elite that is isolating and repressing its people,” when right here, right here in America… well, you know the rest.

It is said that God has a sense of humor (note to European publishers: send memo to Muslims), yet it is far more poignant than droll that Corretta Scott King died the very moment Samuel Alito was sworn in as a Justice of the Supreme Court. I mean, who wants to sit around and watch four decades of social progress dismantled brick by brick? Certainly not Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Wendy Wasserstein, who succumbed to cancer rather than face the death of American feminism.

As a result of Affirmative Action and Title IX legislation, women are now running Fortune 500 companies; they are judges, Senators, even child molesters.  Do we want to once again gender restrict these domains?  What future awaits the scores of female teachers (e.g. Mary Kay Letourneau, Nicole Long, etc.) arrested for having sex with underage students?  What opportunities will Alito’s world provide for Jennifer San Marcos who, impelled by the new 39¢ stamp, proved men aren’t the only ex-employees who can gun down a bunch of people in a post office?  Why women have made such great strides that Laura Bush predicted a female President is not far in the offing: “I think it will happen, for sure. I think it will happen probably in the next few terms of the presidency in the United States.”  Yes, women have taken the helm in Germany, Chile and Liberia, but we need one here, and soon.  All this war-mongering Testosterone is pushing us to the brink of extinction.

This battle of the sexes is even playing out on TV, where Geena Davis serves as Commander in Chief. Okay, okay; Geena’s chromosomes are, admittedly, questionable, but why split hairs? With the specter of the WB/UPN merger and Amy Fisher/Buttafuoco reunion hanging over the industry, ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff had to get blown up in Iraq to garner solid ratings. Oprah, by way of contrast, merely had to sit on a couch and host a book club. She deftly made a mini-series out of James Frey’s runaway bestseller, “A Million Little Pieces.” Weeks after she initially publicized the memoir, she defended it when its authenticity came under fire (“it still resonates”). When her cadre of mop-squeezers finally turned sour, she devoted an hour long broadcast to publicly scolding its author. Reluctantly, Mr. Frey admitted that that he had NOT, while in rehab, cloned a dog and engineered 11 lines of patient-specific, genetically customized stem cells. If this saga had instead unfolded in the papers, the headline might have read: “Nation Duped by Lying ex-Addict.” Now where have I seen that before?

Although Sen. Joseph Biden’s (D-DE) recent Judiciary bloviating may have circumcised his oft-tumescent presidential aspirations, it’s way too early to handicap the 2008 Democratic race. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, prospective challengers Al Gore and Osama Bin Laden delivered major speeches last week. The pair excoriated George Bush for sacrificing the will of the American people in order to slake his unrelenting thirst for power, and noted that his mismanaged and ill-conceived foray into Iraq has been, at best, counterproductive. In an attempt at one-upmanship, Mr. Bin Laden went so far as to offer up some sort of truce. The White House quickly retorted that it’s best NOT to negotiate with one’s ideological adversaries, (although, to be fair, there are few individuals beyond each other that Messrs. Bush and Bin Laden can thank for their respective standing) but, unfortunately, the press secretary failed to get a copy of the memo over to Steve Jobs whose integration of Intel processors is cobbling Apple computers into a massive Trojan horse. Worse yet, by cleaving Pixar films unto the unholy Disney Empire, Jobs may well sound the death knell of corporate counterculture. When mavericks go mainstream (think: Napster, recast), what else is there to say but, “Starbucks, anyone?”

While Bin Laden was busy cautioning that the “war in Iraq is raging with no let-up” a swarthy tennis player named Baghdadis was deftly bouncing Americans from the Australian Open (including shining exemplar Andy Roddick). Coincidence? Perhaps not. Either way, Osama’s threat that “operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes” failed to induce a hue shift along the terror alert rainbow. This muted reaction in part rises from the extensive lacuna that separates us from the attacks of September 11, and in part springs from the fact that the President himself is doing a yeoman’s job of knocking off a goodly number innocent Americans and scaring the Hell out of the rest of us. Never mind compounding the devastation of Katrina or sending troops into battle with faulty body armor, the administration has cut millions of dollars and 170 employees from the Mine Safety and Health Administration while racking up nearly 300 mine-related deaths since 2001. It should be noted that David Lauriski, the new industry honcho at the MSHA, is doing a “heck of a job.” He’s notched 15 fatalities already this year — and it’s still January!

For his part, former Vice President Al Gore opined that we are mired in a Constitutional crisis (having been neutered by the last one, he should know) as a result of all this illegal wiretapping. Revelations of rampant domestic spying impelled Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to schedule hearings for next month. When the Senator muttered that impeachment was not inconceivable, the Justice Department retorted that the “surveillance activities described… provide valuable tools…to keep America safe and protect civil liberties.” So somehow vitiating our rights helps preserve them? That’s kind of like Bill Ford asserting that 30,000 impending layoffs “will create far more stable and secure jobs.” Mr. Gore continued that the larger threat to the commonweal is not the eavesdropping per se, but the “breathtaking expansion of [presidential] power” which flouts “established law enacted by Congress to prevent such abuses.” Unfortunately, soon-to-be Justice Alito offers the theory of the unitary executive as justification for Mr. Bush’s unfettered reach. The name apparently derives from the fact that first father-son combo to serve as president (John and John Quincy Adams) were Unitarians. Anyways, the erstwhile arcane theory is a lemma of part six of the Fraternity Code of Conduct: Legacies are not bound by House rules.

Having obviated any prosecutorial threat, Mr. Bush is relying on the blow-job defense to sway the court of public opinion; in other words, Clinton did it, too. The facts, however, show that the 1994 warrantless physical search of FBI-agent-cum traitor Aldrich Ames’ residence was not proscribed at the time. The FISA law was amended a year later and in any event explicitly prohibited Mr. Bush’s offenses at the time they were committed. Regardless, the NSA remains but one thistle in a briar patch of scandals. While DeLay’s money laundering trial, Frist’s insider trading charges, Cunningham’s bribery conviction and Abramoff’s plea bargain continue to blossom, there are new revelations sprouting up. Halliburton has, according to corporate whistleblowers, been knowingly providing contaminated water to a military base in Iraq. Meanwhile, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) alleges that staffers working for Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist and ex-House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay were day trading on privileged information: They “would find out that there would be no asbestos bill … and when the market opened the next day, the cost of asbestos stock[s] had doubled.”

It’s anyone’s guess, which, if any, of the above will prove this generation’s Watergate. But W is wasting no time distancing himself from Mr. Abramamhoff. White House Spokesman Scott McClellan was trotted out to declare, “The President does not know him, nor does the President recall ever meeting him.” Which is hard to fathom given that Black Jack was on Bush’s 2000 transition team and appears in more than a handful of photos with the President (recall: O.J. and Bruno Magli). If, using Mr. Bin Laden’s vernacular, God is willing, and the Democrats regain some kind of majority — and its attendant subpoena power– we will all benefit from the theatrics. If not for the sake of justice, then at least for the opportunity to supplant those maudlin Natalee Holloway updates on Fox News.

Congressman Tom DeLay formally resigned as House Majority Leader, and though he promises to run for reelection in November, his political career, upon closer examination, looks deader than Richard Pryor’s last joke. His problems extend far beyond the zealotry of prosecutor Ronnie Earle; infected by ex-staffer Michael Scanlon, Delay remains a leprous adjunct to the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. Scanlon and Abramoff have already pled guilty to myriad high crimes and have promised, as part of their respective plea bargains, to name names. In the final analysis, DeLay was undone not by hubris or nemesis, but by his former communications staffer, Emily Miller. Miller had been loosely engaged to Scanlon when he dumped her for a local manicurist. Losing both her fiancée and her standing Tuesday nail appointment, Miller exacted her political vagimony by going to the FBI. According to her affidavit, the trail of bribes and kickbacks ran unremittingly up and down the corridors (and catacombs) of the Capitol, as evinced by the $69,000 footprint embossed onto the forehead of Speaker Dennis Hastert. Seeking to thwart the rapidly spreading contagion, the Speaker pledged to re-donate his tainted funds to a legitimate charity, an act with equal effect to strapping on a condom after you’ve already dumped your load.

The news isn’t much better for Vice President Cheney, who by all accounts should have died years ago. I guess multiple aneurysms and heart attacks aren’t pernicious enough when there’s a pacemaker and cardiac stent in the way, but the Veep was nonetheless rushed to George Washington University Hospital in the wee hours with complaints of respiratory distress. Doctors reported that the presenting condition was related to anti-inflammatory medication prescribed for a chronic foot ailment, and dispensed a water pill. Christ, between the spavin and diuretics, you’d think Cheney was running in the third at Pimlico, rather than making hay for the folks down at Halliburton.

Losing the protection of his flanks, the President tried to soft shoe around the increasing carnage in Iraq with “more good news about the American economy.” And while incoming Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has intimated the cessation of incremental rate hikes, the polity is too worried about a cratering real estate market to blow up balloons and shower the streets with ticker tape. Home sales tumbled to the lowest levels in nearly a year despite near-record lows in mortgage rates. And inventory continues to climb. “To keep our economy strong and secure the American dream for future generations,” Mr. Bush opined, “leaders in Washington must make sound decisions.” Yeah, like increasing the statutory debt ceiling beyond the current $8.18 trillion limit. Otherwise, warned Treasury Secretary John Snow, “We will be unable to continue to finance government operations.” Which might not, given recent foibles, prove such a bad state of affairs.

Our own quagmire in Iraq closely parallels Israel’s deaccession of Gaza. The initial military objective was a cinch; it is the aftermath that has proved far more costly and, increasingly, more difficult to justify. For Israelis, trading land for peace now looks like a one-sided deal. Since the pullout, the Palestinians have ramped up their usual barrage of suicide bombs and rocket attacks, and, according to one government spokesman, “The [latest] missiles were launched from territory that Israel has already evacuated.” The fallout left Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Labor leader Shimon Peres in untenable circumstances and the duo were forced to form a new political party ahead of upcoming March elections. Meanwhile, with Palestinians scheduled to go to the polls later this month, President Mahmoud Abbas is looking for any excuse (e.g. disenfranchisement of Jerusalem residents) to forestall the vote. Recent polls give the militant group Hamas an insurmountable lead over the ruling Fatah party — a statistic that worries Mr. Abbas and Mr. Sharon alike. In fact, Mr. Sharon’s brain was so pressured by the mounting angst that it gave way to a massive stroke. Profuse cranial hemorrhaging complicated any attempts at damage assessment, and it wasn’t long before the initial prediction proffered by West Virginia neuro-extractive experts — that Sharon would be back desecrating the Dome of the Rock by the weekend — was rendered hopelessly inaccurate. Fortunately for the Prime Minister, this early exposure of American ineptitude tarnished the attractiveness of importing U.S. brain surgeons to perform the requisite operations.

I say fortunately because dozens of American neurosurgical patients have already been exposed to Creutzfeld-Jacob (the human variant of Mad Cow) disease by contaminated surgical implements. Sure, the hospitals in question attempted to clean their fetid instruments before putting them back in the operating room, but unfortunately the prions (abnormal proteins) responsible for CJD are not susceptible to known sterilization techniques. Sadly (and predictably), it comes down to a matter of money. Dr. Richard G. Ellenbogen of the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle summed it up as follows; “There’s a cost benefit ratio.” $800 for a pair of reusable biopsy forceps is “a lot of money” to throw away. God forbid Dr. E misses a payment on his new BMW M5 just so some lowly patient can avoid a fatal and incurable disease.

Pat Robertson, for one, interpreted Sharon’s misfortune (and, for that matter, Yitzak Rabin’s 1995 assassination) as divine retribution for “dividing God’s land,” and warned any potential successor, “God considers this land to be his. I would say woe to any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course.” Of course Robertson has no compunction in carving out 125 acres of the Promised Land for his own evangelical Christian theme park. Though Galilee World Heritage Park (aka Six Flags Over Jesus) is expected to attract one million visitors annually, it remains unendorsed (think: Euro Disney) by most locals. Knesset member Yossi Sarid notes that Born Agains believe that the Messiah will return only when the Jews control all of Israel and subsequently convert to Christianity or (in a bit of administrative housekeeping) are put to death. “I have no desire to be cannon fodder for the evangelists. As they believe I have to vanish before Jesus can make his second appearance, I find this a provocation. There is something sinister about their embrace.” Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschorn sees it differently: “I’m not a theologian, I’m not interested in the politics… As long as they come here as tourists… they’re friends of Israel.” Only time will tell.

Nashville hardly noticed when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced plans for “blocking indecent and Western music from the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Patrons of the Grand Ole Opry kept right on with their business of drinking beer, chewing tobacco and lamenting the sight of another man’s pickup in their cousin’s driveway. But they — like so many Fox News anchors — were ineluctably haunted by the prospect of an increasingly secularized (and homogenized) shopping season. In a scene played out in Mangers all across our fair land, Nashville’s Metro Council fervently overturned Mayor Bill Purcell’s politically correct arboreal designation, HOLIDAY DISPLAY, and officially tagged the city’s illuminated evergreen a CHRISTMAS TREE. Local pastor Steve Flanagin expounded: “I think it’s crazy how Christmas has come under such assault — why be afraid to say Merry Christmas?”

Well, Steve, let me tell you. Continental Airlines passengers heading to Vail, Colorado for their WINTER VACATION had to sit on the tarmac for over an hour while authorities removed pastor Joel Osteen’s wife after a scuffle with a flight attendant. Osteen heads the nation’s largest church (Houston’s Lakewood) and is counting his blessings that he is not living 200 miles to the northwest, ensconced as the youth minister at the Victory Baptist Church in Burnet. That’s where preacher’s spouse Amanda White was arrested for soliciting a minor by sending bras, condoms and lubricant to a 15-year-old boy. Gifts notwithstanding, this time of year is particularly painful for the inhabitants of St. Michael, Alaska who were, to a man, molested by “Deacon Joe” Lundowski as boys. One victim recalled how he was asked to stay after catechism class to wash some dishes: “He sneaked up on me. He pulled my pants down and penetrated me… I never finished the dishes.” What with predatory clergy, the desire to curtail rights of women and same-sex partners, and the effort to inarch group prayer and Intelligent Design onto public school curricula, it is the perhaps polity that is being assaulted by Christmas. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, for one, concurs. While ruling against the “breathtaking inanity” of the Dover, PA school board, Jones — an avowed Republican churchgoer — cited “overwhelming evidence” that ID “is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of Creationism, and not a scientific theory.”

Was it a case of Divine Intervention or merely incredibly bad timing? Either way President Bush failed to secure permanent status for the expiring Patriot Act as Senators on both sides of the aisle were peppered with revelations that the NSA, FBI and Department of Defense were illegally spying on American citizens. When confronted by reporters, Mr. Bush indignantly griped, “It was a shameful act to disclose this important program in a time of war.” Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff was more succinct. Stroking his hoary mustache, he grinned, “Warrants; we don’t need no stinkin’ warrants.”

Two massive communications mergers (AT&T / SBC and Verizon / MCI) lent a creepy Big Brotherliness to the President’s untimely admission that he personally authorized the NSA to monitor all telephone and Internet traffic coursing through U.S. routers and switching stations — a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) howled, “Where does he find in the Constitution the authority to tap the wires and phones of American citizens without court oversight?” U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Magistrates, offered no rejoinder; he simply resigned in protest.

Student protesters staging a sit-in at the University of California, Santa Cruz were spied on (as were hundreds of others, including the Quakers) by military operatives because they were deemed a national security “threat.” Congressman Sam Farr (D-CA) was “shocked” and “appalled” at the discovery and called the of Pentagon’s domestic spy ring “a waste of taxpayer money.” Even so, it’s certainly nothing new. During Vietnam, more than 100 military agents testified that they were ordered to spy on anti-war demonstrators and civil rights leaders. Reflexively, Congress passed a law to limit such activity, but Christopher Pyle (no relation), a central figure in the 1970’s proceedings, now warns, “Military intelligence is back conducting investigations… on civilian political activity.”

The FBI’s counterterrorism unit has been busy, too. They have tirelessly protected our tranquility by staking out a Vegan Community Project, a Catholic Workers group, and a PETA rally denouncing the use of llama fur. To be fair, the feds were also monitoring radiation levels around 120 mosques and halal grocery stores. At least they were doing something useful. Taken as a whole, the administration’s mélange of lies, cover-ups and abuses of power is positively Nixonian. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) railed, “[George] is the president, not a king.” Unencumbered by such vitriol, Mr. Bush shrugged his shoulders, raised a hirsute eyebrow and blithely characterized his nefarious activities as “part of my job to protect” America. Yet if he is so consumed with our wellbeing, why did he release Saddam’s leading biological warfare experts Rihab Taha and Huda Ammash, otherwise known as Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax? Why did he relax commercial airline restrictions on scissors and hand tools? Why did he jerk off all over semi-nude pictures of Osama Bin Laden’s niece published in GQ Magazine?

It’s hard to believe newspaper editors have been summoned to the Oval Office and pressured to quash stories. No, we must be experiencing a collective early seventies flashback; how else can you explain the flair-bottomed jeans? Thirty years later we are still mired in an “unwinnable” war, routinely lied to by a despotic president, and crippled by high oil prices. California is governed by a washed up actor, the Rolling Stones are touring, and Kojak is on the tube. And for two and a half months a professional football team threatened to replicate the 1972 Miami Dolphins’ perfect season. But then the 13-0 Indianapolis (nee Baltimore) Colts fell to the talented if ineptly coached San Diego Chargers. 18-year old James Dungy, son of Indy head coach Tony Dungy, was so broken up over the outcome that he committed suicide in his Florida apartment. During the funeral, Tony’s four surviving offspring vowed not to watch any of the team’s remaining games.