W.E.B. Griffin

Someone once called him the poet laureate of the American armed forces. I won't argue.

But, Mr. Griffin, I'm afraid you've so far earned an "incomplete" In "The Corps 501."

We need a final volume, Sir, set in Vietnam. Ken McCoy would be a colonel, commanding the 9th of the Third. Fleming Pickering is secretary of defense, and his son, Malcom, has at last learned to keep his pants zipped during office hours.  Ellen Feller, finally released from St.Elizabeth's, operates a high-end brothel in Saigon.

Would it help if we said "Please?"

Now, that's a bang

What happens when you combine a 10-year-old lad with a can of ether, two pounds of Pyrodex, and a new bow with flaming arrows?

Jinglebob tells all in my nomination for the  best read of the morning.

A little gun grab in Iowa

A citizen of Storm Lake suggests that cops get a clue about the laws they're paid to enforce. 

An agitated deputy sheriff is bad enough. It's worse when he's ignorant of the perfect legality of an empty and cased shotgun in a vehicle.

It's a fairly small deal by the usual standards of police misbehavior, but it makes a guy wonder how this deputy would handle a more complex situation.

At least someone in the department had the grace to apologize.

His Obamaness Speaks.

I thought the speech was cute; "cute" in the '50s sense of a well-crafted scam to con  a naif into giving you money.

Yes, restoring U.S. solvency -- if possible at all -- will require new net revenue. It is the the adjective "net" which queers the Obama deal. Is there a soul alive who doesn't understand that the sworn duty of politicians is to keep sucking so they can spend whatever it takes to buy your vote?

It is as though the lawmakers and all their pals view our intelligence as a silly virgin with a self-regenerating hymen.

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(A Chuck Grassley release after the speech plausibly claims that, over the past few decades, each one dollar of new federal revenue, has been seen as a license for $1.17 in spending. Compound that a few times, Bunkie.)