It was a busy week, as you are well aware. The war started Saturday afternoon here. The fireworks have continued through this morning, and Legal told us to stay away from the shakeup at DHS and who is going where and when. There are several rumors on which we have no comment, and we hope the new leadership is ready for threats that might come from the millions of partially vetted immigrants—legal and illegal—who arrived between recent Presidential terms.

That leaves some of the local stuff. The interns have been happily running down local matters since they are between the crash-pad at Big Pink, classes at George Mason, and the fancy new HQ in Fairfax.

The one that got their attention was word that the Virginia Department of Health had lifted restrictions on activity around the Potomac River downstream from Chain Bridge.

Don’t worry—drinking water is north of there, we think. Millions of gallons of raw sewage had flowed from a burst on the Potomac Interceptor, the 54-mile-long 72-inch pipeline that flushes the Capitol.

That good news arrived about the same time as the shake-up at DHS, which our Socotra House Legal Section has advised us to avoid commenting on. So the interns stuck to safer territory—sewage, murder, and Manhattan.

The Boomers were doing their media Battle Damage Assessment by the north end of the conference table near the big flatscreen. The kids had a great slide that Holly claimed summed everything up.

She startled the group of Old Salts when she clicked her remote and displayed this thing:

She slid the device down the table and gestured at the colors on the wall.

“We are not going to try to figure out the conflict overseas or the horde of stories flying around. We included a B-52 for you old guys since we saw them loading bombs in the snow at Minot before they flew 6,000 miles to dump high explosives on Iran.”

Splash traced the silhouette of a bomber appearing to fly into Penn Station in Manhattan with a lazy arc of his hand.

“One of my favorite reporters is Mira Wassef, she of the raven hair and insightful reporting. I like her and recommended our interns take a page from her career. She’s a Seton Hall grad with a Master’s in Journalism from Emerson College in Boston, where I used to go sailing with Vic and the Callahans.”

Rocket is from the Oranges and says Emerson is a neat private school smack in the middle of things, adjacent to Chinatown and the LD, the picturesque Leather District.

“Mira had a local piece on Yahoo yesterday from Manhattan that echoed the recent bus-stop murder here of a 41-year-old Fairfax mother. She was attacked without warning by a knife-wielding illegal man who has more than thirty prior arrests.”

“Mira said her guy had eighty-eight priors.”

Holly looked over at Keith and nodded in agreement.

“There is a furor here about our Prosecutor, Mr. Steve Descano. He campaigned on a Sanctuary platform for Fairfax, funded by the Soros organizations. He let our killer go from his last charge, despite a strong note from the police. They said he was likely to get out and hurt somebody.”

“He walked and then murdered an innocent Mom.”

“Steve has had two recall attempts and survived them both,” said Splash with a frown.

Several hands went up in agreement as Miles attempted to settle the Production Meeting back to actually producing something.

“OK gang, we have done national and local. Now I propose we do something about the plans to update some of our National Monuments.”

That line brought a few chuckles and a glance back at the slide Holly had put up on the wall.

Dee waved a platter of sausage rolls, bagels, and croissants out of her Galley toward the middle of the long table between Booms and Zooms.

“Chow’s on!” she yelled, then turned back to start thinking about a low-impact lunch for the group.

They were likely to be hungry later.

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Vic Socotra – Purveyor of glib words to the world