Rock Bottom I glanced at my watch, wondering what vagary of Washington rush hour had delayed my appointment. Traffic was brisk at the bar, commuters ducking in before jumping on the subway home. I enjoyed the first beer. It was a Virginia pale ale, a little bitter and quite tasty. I don’t drink much beer […]

The rains are coming, which is preferable to snow. They washed out Game Four of the World Series last night, and it was a comfort to not have to stay up to watch. I battened down the windows against the chilly wind and went to bed early, taking a television rain-check on the affair. It […]

The last two weeks of politics are a breathless time. The levers of power are at stake, and hyperbole is the coin of the realm. I make of point of doing my breathing exercises quietly at my desk when some bit of news flies by that upsets me. Puff-puff, exhale. Repeat. It keeps me from […]

The perma-frost is melting up in Alaska . That is the condition in which the soil all the way to the surface never thaws. The ice layer is getting deeper and deeper in the ground, and sooner or later it will go away. The warming conditions are real there, measurable, and I am hoping the […]

The Gee-Wot What follows is the draft script for a BBC domestic broadcast they want to air before the election to help the locals understand what the Cousins are up to. We’ll see how they like it. I don’t know what to call this war anymore. At it’s beginning, I was still a Spook in […]

The Missing Man The President is staying the course on the wars overseas, but something changed this week. A reporter asked if there were any similarities between the Tet Offsensive in Vietnam and what is happening this bloody month in Iraq. The President conceeded that there might be. I don’t know what Mr. Bush is […]

There is not much of it left, and I suppose it is more curious that there is anything left at all. The Downtown is being reconstructed, block-by-block, and when anything is saved it is only a brick or interesting stone facade. Quotations, nothing at all of substance. The vast network of defenses around the city […]

Rockets and Dirt Poor Dear Leader! He has invested all this time and energy into becoming a nuclear power, and he is being dissed by those he sought to impress! The embargo could interrupt his supply of premium cognac. Thousands of bottles of Paradis are shipped to North Korea each year. The brand is produced […]

The Home Stretch It is time to start thinking about what is going to happen in three weeks. I have been preoccupied with other issues, and I know the way you roll your eyes when I start yammering about the Federal Budget, or the Planning and Programming process in the Department of Defense. I sympathize, […]

I ask you forgiveness in advance. There is no reference to baseball or that idiotic football team that plays in Washignton today. Someone has asked me to think about the Global War on Terror in the context of the coming election, in a limited number of words. As you know, I think about it a […]