Week in review (with presidential squirrels)

Damn, I go away for a week to bask in the corruption and deceit permeating our nation's capital and my soon-to-be residence and what happens, I return to find Time magazine declaring "the end of cowboy diplomacy" while the administration flip-flops and tries to claim the penned-in evildoers at Gitmo have basic human rights under the Geneva Conventions that have been honored all along (by appropriately narrow definitions it's now trying to delineate, of course) and turns all namby-pamby, sharing-is-caring on us by claiming it will allow "limited judicial review" of its eavesdropping programs. Weak.

Also in recent days came the shocking revelations that boys are dumb and Homeland Security is a bad, bad joke. Plus, in the spy scandal that just won't die, the merry band of leakers comprised of Dick, Karl and Scooter is now getting sued by outed CIA-operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

And President Bush, ever the poised ambassador to foreign lands, seemingly neglected to pack his Ritalin and got far, far too excited over devouring a roasted pig carcass on a diplomatic visit to Germany.

In other livestock news, the biggest story on the local front seems to have been a few heinous acts of cow-tipping targeting the tacky yet happily temporary "cow parade" sculpture installation grazing about downtown.

And on the unnecessary neuphemism front, I've discovered much to my chagrin that I'm not merely a "singleton," but I'm also "pre-pregnant." Lovely.

Now that we're all caught up on the news, don your unimaginative neckties and star-spangled visors, fellow patriots, because it's time for a frivolous Washington DC mini photo safari!

After walking past the Justice Department daydreaming that maybe, just maybe Ashcroft had once done likewise, scaling the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in stilettos and dropping by the well-manicured abode of my bestest pal in the whole wide world, I spotted some fluffy little squirrelly squirrel squirrels scampering about the White House lawn out front, quite plainly plotting a spot of markedly unpatriotic villainy:

A pretentious, artsy shot of a bloom on one of the city's many magnolia trees, this one near the Eisenhower office building:

The sun sets on the grand symbol of oversized phallic power that is the Washington Monument (Later, a full moon rose dramatically adjacent to it, and Dick Cheney turned into a bat and circled its peak gorging on nocturnal insects and hissing at onlookers.):

And unfortunately I couldn't get a picture without causing a fiery pile-up, but I laughed harder than I've had reason to in months when I saw a road sign for the CIA headquarters, symbolically named the "George Bush Center for Intelligence," in honor of H.W. but no less amusing.