This week was spent shuttling from the country into New York and from
New York to DC; from DC out to Los Angeles. All this shuttling provided
me with time to read lots of magazines and newspapers.

It has been a dramatic week news wise. There has been an indictment in
D.C. "Scooter" Libby, the Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney, has
been indicted for perjury. The special prosecutor who brought the
indictment has been hailed far and wide as the new century's answer to
Jimmy Stewart in MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON, except that Mr.
Fitzgerald is very real and not a cinematic creation.

An economic summit is being held in the beauty of the Argentine
spring; outside the summit there are riots protesting U.S. policies
with discontent spearheaded Hugo Chavez, the verbose President of
Venezuela who has made his political career by tweaking the nose of the
U.S. He is there in Argentina doing just that, tweaking the nose of
Bush, who has promised that he will behave should they encounter each
other - after all, we, the American people, expect our President to be
polite. [Darn! I was hoping for a duel.]

The conservatives pushed Harriet Meiers out of contention for the
Supreme Court for not being conservative enough; followed quickly by
the nomination of Alioto - a nomination that could be as contentious as
that of Bork's or Clarence Thomas's. The Republican Right is happy;
everyone else is holding their breath. Will this break ranks in the
Gang of Fourteen?

The 2000th American soldier has died in Iraq; the insurgency continues
unabated and, if anything, they grow more devious by the day. There is
a new level of sophistication to IED's, [improvised explosive devices]
and there is now technical support with video training manuals for them.

"W" looks more wan and haggard with every photo op and Washington,
D.C. has the atmosphere of a city under siege; in the midst of
normality, conventions, meetings, restaurant eating, catching cabs and
all the other ordinary things of life in the nation's capital -- over
all of this hangs a palpable air of tension, emanating out from 1600
Pennsylvania.

The blogosphere is bubbling with any site with liberal leanings
digitally clapping hands in joy over the dark days for Bush while
rightist sites are defiant in defense of "Scooter", Dick Cheney, "W"
and, of course, Karl Rove.

The very idea of Bush not traveling with Karl Rove at his side is like
the idea of my traveling without my laptop. However, though Rove has
dodged to date the bullet of an indictment, the world waits to see if
Fitzgerald will follow-up with one later. He has declared his continued
interest in Mr. Rove. So Karl is laying low.

All of this has resulted in my in-box being inundated with e-mails
from Democrats, gleeful, and defensive Republican friends. Right now
the Democratic e-mails are far more amusing than the Republican ones,
which are, I think, a shade on the strident side.

A friend was interviewed by Good Morning America in a man on the
street sort of thing when he and his wife were in D.C. sightseeing this
week. He spoke his Democratic mind, paralleling this administration
with that of Nixon's. It made air and his sleep was shattered at 7:10
in the morning by friends speed-dialing his cell phone to tell him to
turn on the television.

By the way, Mr. Bush's poll figures are near the same level as Nixon's
not too long before his resignation. One particular die - hard
Democratic friend said something to me like: if there was any justice
in this country the man would be impeached.

I doubt that will happen. We will have to wait out Mr. Bush's term of
office. However, all of this was put in perspective by a cabby from
Cameroon. "We elected a President in 1982 for a five year term. He's
still there. You KNOW Mr. Bush is going to be gone in 2008. That's the
way America works."

And it's true.thanks for the reminder, Mr. Taxi Man.