It's time for another tools of note segment. This evening, we celebrate the toolness of an ecoterrorism cell. It seems too perfect, but this cell operates in the Seattle area. For some reason, every time Seattle is mentioned in this space, the post is highlighting something stupid, creepy, pointless or all three. I guess I ought not be surprised, just look at the losers who wrote in to whine to Sports Guy that some douche is stealing the Sonics.

This ecoterrorist group, the Earth Liberation Front or ELF, allegedly set fire to a row of unoccupied luxury model homes called the Street of Dreams in a Seattle suburb. These fires caused over $7 million worth of damage to the properties. The apparent motivation for the act was the claim by the developers that these luxurious homes were ecofriendly.

Now, I am always willing to condemn hypocrisy (except, of course, my own). And I imagine I am like most people in that regard. But isn't it just a little bit hypocritical to burn down homes that claim to be ecofriendly? It can't be all that ecofriendly to release whatever chemical byproducts of the arson were into the atmosphere, right?

This is one of the things that bothers me about the environmental movement. No matter what the lunatic fringe does, the rest of us are expected to act as though their excrement didn't have an unpleasant odor. And any invasion of a theoretically pristine area in the name of ecofriendly activity is perfectly acceptable.

I remember watching an Animal Planet documentary about polar bears and penguins, contrasting the two polar extremes as they deal with climate change. In the background of one of the penguin segments, I could see as clear as day some vast tracked monstrosity that the film crew used to cart their equipment around the ice shelf. I couldn't help but wonder what the carbon footprint from that behemoth was. And I couldn't help but think that whatever benefit the documentary might bring to the front lines of the war on climate change might be undone by the impact those vehicles and whatever conveyance conveyed them to the poles unleash on the pristine, vulnerable polar ecosystem.

I also remember ridiculing the tool who swam in the North Pole waters to point out the adverse effect human actions have had on our planet. I mocked him for calling himself an explorer (as though he were out there identifying terra incognita in the age of GPS and satellite mapping) and for using whatever means he used to get to the North Pole to point out that the climate is changing. And a reader pointed out that there are many different ways to grease one's body so that one can endure swimming in extreme cold conditions.

And I remember an old article from Gregg Easterbrook (Tuesday Morning Quarterback) where he mocked an environmental group who bestowed an award on two individuals who took a helicopter to monitor what residents who owned beachfront property in the Pacific Northwest were doing with their land. TMQB pointed out that helicopters are incredibly inefficient fuel guzzling machines, so whatever benefit might have come from the aerial reconnaissance probably vanished from the carbon emissions of the vehicle used.

And then there's old friend Al Gore, winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his global warming bandwagon. Meanwhile, while he jetsets all over the world to remind us that we use to much in the way of fossil fuels, he has three big mansions cranking the climate control apparatus as though it were good for the planet. And his socially maladjusted tool of a son is popping adderol and driving his hybrid as though he were coming down the back stretch on the last lap of the Indy 500.

And after all this, it's people like me who don't own cars, who leave the thermostat at 65 in the winter and keep the AC off in the summer, who recycle what can be recycled and don't throw away any more than they have to who have to change their lifestyles because they are responsible for global warming. What a world.

The sports world just keeps getting more depressing, doesn't it? The Patriots are now 18-0 and only Eli Manning, Tom Coughlin and a very inconsistent Giants team stand in the way of perfection. And so, barring some sort of unforeseen catastrophe, it seems like 19-0 is more real than it was even as recently as the third quarter of the NFC Championship Game this Sunday.

I don't see the Giants being deeper, appreciably healthier or much better than they were in Week 17. Yeah, Sam Madison and Sean O'Hara are back, but Aaron Ross has a bad shoulder and who knows exactly how healthy Rich Seubert will be coming off his knee injury against Green Bay. In Week 17, they may have played the Pats very well for three and a half quarters, but that was in Giants Stadium. In Arizona, weather won't be much of a factor, unless, of course, Al Gore's global warming triggers that ice age between now and the Super Bowl. But if that happens we'll probably have bigger problems than whether or not the Patriots go undefeated.

On last Sunday's game with the Chargers, I have to commend the San Diego secondary for playing much better than I thought they could. Fat lot of good it did them, however, when the offense stalled out inside the ten three times and had to settle for field goals. With LaDanian Tomlinson unable to play, I thought the Chargers could have done a little more damage to the Patriots running the ball, so I suppose I owe some sort of apology to the Geritol set currently playing linebacker in New England.

That said, I noticed a disturbing trend in Sunday's game. Whenever I saw Mike Vrabel taking a shot at Philip Rivers, he never seemed to be hitting him above the waist. I had never really thought of him as a particularly dirty player, but I guess I just never noticed what with Harrison playing in the vicinity and outshining all other cheap shot artists.

Over the last two days, I have spent a few minutes here and there trying to imagine scenarios in which the Giants could pull off the unthinkable. It's very tempting, given how close they were in Week 17 and how well they've played in the playoffs, beating Dallas and Green Bay on the road, both of whom had defeated the Giants soundly in the regular season. However, sooner or later, all good things come to an end. And this time, it's almost assuredly the Giants impressive run to end the season and make it to Phoenix.

Having to root for the Giants is going to be a bit problematic for me. It's not quite so difficult to root for the Yankees, since they are the direct rival of the Red Sox and with the historic tradition of excellence and class, they stand head and shoulders over the Sox. There is no link like that between the Giants and the Patriots. Just because Giants fans are a small margin above Jets and Patriots fans with respect to comporting themselves like reasonable facsimiles of human beings, doesn't mean the Giants are worthy of much respect.

I suppose it comes down to one thing which will make it easier for me to root for the Giants. Every minute of this playoff run must be a mortal agony for Tiki Barber. Funny how we haven't heard much from him lately (although maybe we have, I don't watch the Today Show because it's too early and a waste of air time) since Eli Manning and Tom Coughlin are apparently proving themselves under pressure for the first time.

Interesting, isn't it? That Tiki Barber retires prematurely (in what seemed like his one shot at the Hall of Fame, retiring with some sort of mystique to offset his perceived fumbling problem), bashes Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning in his silly little memoir and on the air, and after an up and down season the Giants pull it all together and beat three teams on the road (two of whom were more talented than the G-men on paper). Would that I were the sort of person to believe in a coincidence. It's also kind of funny that the Giants knocked Tiki's twin out of the playoffs in the process. Don't look know, but it's a good thing someone woke Bill Simmons up to get him to milk the Ewing Theory for one more column.

Before I wrap this post up, I have a couple of things that I want to have out there if the Giants pull off the second biggest upset in Super Bowl history. The 1983 Washington Redskins broke the single season team scoring mark (granted, they didn't have the individual records Brady and Moss set this season). They smashed their way through the NFC playoffs en route to a rematch with the LA Raiders, whom they beat in Week 5, on the road by two points. The Raiders won that Super Bowl in a rout.

And way back in 2001, an unheralded team with a quarterback who hadn't proved himself yet (remember Bledsoe led the Pats on as many TD drives as Brady did in that playoff run) came into the Super Bowl as a massive underdog to a team that had beaten them in the regular season. The 2001 Rams not only beat the Pats in the regular season, but they had beaten them in Foxboro. So they had all the more confidence going into the Superdome for that memorable clash. Coincidentally, that was probably the last really memorable upset in the NFL playoffs, except maybe Tampa beating Philly in the NFC championship game the next year.

In case you're wondering, here's what I watched to cheer up after this disastrous football weekend. I watched Grizzly Man on Animal Planet. It's just as funny as it's always been, but here's a youtube clip of Timothy Treadwell whining and swearing at a fox who stole his hat. Good times. By the way, it's probably not safe for work, so earmuffs.

I know I really ought to post more frequently, but I'm feeling very depressed. The damn Patriots keep winning. I was eliminated from the loser's bracket in my FFL playoffs by a cat who looks like the stunt double for BlackAdder. Plus, I really hate the holidays.

So many things about Christmas really bother me. First, there's the dreadful weather that we've been having lately. One day, I might understand why 88% of New Englanders can't drive in the snow. For the love of God, we live in a region that's almost assured of two to three storms of over ten inches in the course of a given winter, even in spite of Al Gore and his global warming.

Then there's shopping. I hate going to stores. I hate picking things out for people, especially when I'm not entirely sure what they like. I mean, it can't be my fault that I am self-involved and cheap, right? Above all, though, I hate shopping because it always involves two of my least favorite things - waiting in line and dealing with people.

But what really bothers me most at this time of year might seem like a small thing. I have no truck with atheists who celebrate Christmas. That drives me right up the wall. What kind of person celebrates the birth of somebody else's Messiah? It's bad enough that Christians participate in the materialistic sham that really hasn't honored Christ the way He ought to be honored since Charles Dickens was roaming the Earth writing on repentant misanthropic misers. But to have people who don't believe in Jesus celebrating His birthday (even though we don't really know exactly what date he was born) is just one more of the things that make this time of year fall short of expectations.

But this isn't a blog about general societal decay. Or at least it's not supposed to be. Another reason for my extended silence (this time) is that I've been terrified into silence by a group of Seattle Seahawks fans who stumbled across my evaluation of Matt Hasselbeck and didn't find it to their taste. I must admit that I didn't harbor great expectations with regard to the intelligence of Seahawks fandom. But somehow they managed to fall short of those low standards.

I particularly enjoyed the comments accusing me of being just another Patriots fan. Even leaving aside for a moment my long track record of anti-Pats posts, the particular item in question that stirred up this tempest in a tea cup started off with words to the effect that sometimes I wished I were ignorant enough to be a Pats fan. Then again, if Seattle folk were bright enough to pick up on irony and sarcasm, then they probably wouldn't live in Seattle and rip off traditions from middle of the road colleges like Texas A&M.

I guess this means that the city of Seattle and perhaps even the state of Washington are now closed to me. So you have to forgive me for grieving in silence for so long. My sources inform me that the state of Washington is full of a horrid mixture of hippie tools in Birkenstock and backwoods survivalist libertarians. With a grouping like that, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that I'd need a passport to get there from Logan. At least they can get angry with me to distract them after the Hawks exit the playoffs in the wildcard round.

I thought that the Pats were very lucky that Cleo Lemon apparently gets a bonus for each sack he takes. He must, what with the way he refused to consider throwing the ball away at any point in the course of the game. With the defense forcing four Patriot turnovers, there were plays that a remotely competent QB could have made. It might not have been anywhere near enough to win the game, but perhaps Miami could have challenged the Pats a bit more than they did.

I thought the game of the week was the Minnesota-Washington matchup tonight. For the last few weeks, I've been force fed a line of nonsense about the Vikings being a scary team come playoff time. Perhaps if they had fared better against Green Bay and Dallas earlier this year I might have been more likely to swallow it. There's no way I'm buying that after the Redskins dismantled them.

With Adrian Peterson, the Vikings do have the makings of an explosive running game. I know that seems a strange way of expressing that idea, what with the fact that he's only a rookie and he broke the single game rushing yardage record against a Bears defense that hasn't completely eroded yet. But he wasn't terribly effective before he was hurt against the Packers a few weeks ago, and the Redskins did a decent job against him tonight.

And it's true that Minnesota can stop the run, at least according to the stats. Only three teams have rushed for over 100 yards in a game against Minnesota this season - Green Bay, Dallas and now Washington. Unfortunately for the Vikings, that list consists of at least 1/3 of playoff bound teams in their conference and maybe 1/2 of them (if Washington can beat Dallas next week).

This loss is particularly bad for the Vikings because unlike Dallas or Green Bay, Washington isn't particularly good. While Romo and Favre are without question light years ahead of their "peers" in the conference, the Redskins started a guy who is 36 years old and ten years removed from his last NFL start. The Redskins can do a lot of things on the football field, unfortunately they don't really do any one thing tremendously well.

So now Minnesota is fading away in the playoff race. They aren't out of it, but they do need Dallas to beat Washington on the road. And unless Wade Phillips is dumber than a bag of hammers, Romo won't play a lot (if he plays at all) and Owens should be out. That leaves the immortal Brad Johnson starting in his old stomping grounds. Seems like a safe bet that Washington will be the final playoff team this season, doesn't it?

Since the title of this blog would indicate that it should be baseball themed, I have a baseball story to pass on to you. I imagine you must have seen it by now, but I feel I ought to complain anyway. Sam Zell, billionaire and the second biggest moron to own a professional team (behind the Benefactor), intends to divest himself of the Tribune Company's crown jewel (the Cubs). Along the way, Mr. Zell is considering selling the naming rights to Wrigley Field.

Can you believe that? Wrigley Field ought to be sacrosanct, but not in any kind of blasphemous sense. I am always running down the current owners of the Boston Red Sox for finding new ways to exploit the ignorance and gullibility of their fan base as they extort Red Sox Nation. But to their credit (even though I feel bile rising into my mouth as I write this), at least they haven't pimped out the naming rights to Fenway Park. What a world.

For those of you who braved my insulting rhetoric about atheists (and agnostics, I suppose) and the Seattle Seahawks, I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas, even though I probably won't have one myself. I may post tomorrow, if anything grabs my attention. But if I don't, you have my holiday wishes. And a warning. Don't be stupid, don't drink and drive. And I'd like to wish all of the American military personnel and our nation's veterans a Merry Christmas, and God willing a safe one too.

I know I promised my take on the Joe Torre situation with the Yankees, but a few things have come up to interfere with my blogging. Not the least of which is that I recently checked Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut out of the local library. I realize I just 86ed my street cred, since no one who is any one between the ages of 18 and 65 checks books out of the library. And if they do, it's certainly not to read them for edification. That said, if you get a chance and you are in the habit of reading, I highly recommend this book. It's short, it's funny and it offers some chilling insights into the way people act.

But Joe Torre will have to wait, because this afternoon, a more pressing concern is on my mind. This Sunday, two undefeated teams square off on the field beneath the half-assed open roof at Texas Stadium. They are the loathsome New England Patriots and the Dallas Cowboys. And, as you might expect, only one of these teams can emerge with a victory.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the Patriots will win the game. Rodney Harrison is back from his little slap on the wrist for taking illicit performance enhancing substances. Tom Brady is something like 29-2 on artificial playing surfaces in his illustrious career. The Patriots have steamrolled over every opponent they have encountered this season, and the pasting the Chargers put on the Broncos suddenly makes it look as though the Pats have faced a half-decent team. And on top of that, the Patriots have the second best player to wear number 81 on the field at Texas Stadium in recent memory on their side. No one can stand in the way of this juggernaut, and only a fool would believe that any team has a chance against them.

Call me a fool, but I think Dallas will win this game. Any reasonably competent high school algebra student can tell you that in accordance with the transitive property, since New England destroyed the Bills and Dallas barely escaped Buffalo with an improbable win, New England will beat Dallas handily. Alas, the transitive property works much better in a math book than it does in the real, honest to goodness, no fooling three dimensional world of pro football.

I am fond of quoting the Michael Douglas character from the Ghost and the Darkness who said that in prize fighting, everybody has a plan until they get hit. Dallas has been hit, and hit hard. They have shown that they can overcome adversity, silly mistakes and a hostile crowd in a strange environment and survive. New England has shown that they can get a lead and front-run with the best of them. No one has hit the Pats yet. And that is in large part due to the fact that the Pats have been great so far, but what will this version of the Pats do should the breaks start beating the boys?

Recently, a good friend sent me a cold analysis of the Notre Dame game vs. UCLA which pointed out that when the UCLA starting QB went down, they were forced to play a walk on with no game experience. Although the author's intent was to caution fans like me from getting to happy about ND's first win, it had the unintended effect of reminding me that New England knocked JP Losman out of their game against Buffalo and got to face the untested rookie Trent Edwards. Edwards had a few games to adjust before he faced the Cowboys. And yet Buffalo managed to score precisely zero offensive TDs against the Cowboys.

What worries me about the Cowboys is how their pass protection will hold up against the Patriots, or any team for that matter. I am not overly concerned with their ability to run the ball. The Patriots have a big defensive line and they have been able to push around lighter offensive lines to this point. However, Vince Wilfork will encounter a creature nearly as rare as the Loch Ness Monster in the form of Dallas guard Leonard Davis - a man actually bigger than Vince Wilfork and not on one of those TLC shows about an enormously fat shut-in who is moved from point to point by a piece of construction machinery. Dallas is much bigger on the offensive line than any team NE will face this season, and I'm not sure the Pats can handle it.

I think barring holding penalties or some sort of deal with the devil, Matt Light will be made to look ridiculous (at least in a professional capacity, he does his own work making himself look ridiculous off the field) by DeMarcus Ware and Anthony Spencer. No matter what Shawne Merriman and the pharmaceutical industry tell you, Ware is the best OLB in the game right now. And the Pats o-line just isn't ready for him.

And make no mistake about it, take any combination of three Patriots you want, and you'll still be a man and a half short of covering Terrell Owens. And for all the highlight reel TDs Randy Moss has caught this season, show me one play where he threw one block 1/3 as good as any TO threw to spring Creighton for the long TD in St. Louis. That's why TO is that much better than Moss, he's not as fast, but he's tougher, smarter and braver about going over the middle. He may drop a pass here and there on account of a lack of concentration, but I'd much rather have him than Moss any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

Dallas is a better team than New England. And unless Belichick has some sort of trick up his sleeve involving compromising photos of Tony Romo or illicitly obtained video of the Dallas coaching staff's signals, I'm confident that for once, right will prevail.

In other news, the Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians face one another for the right to represent the AL in the World Series. I really tried the last day or so to generate any interest, any hope of rooting for the Indians, and I can't. My hatred for the Red Sox is in no way diminished, and I still want them to lose every game by 100 runs, but I never wanted Cleveland to be the team facing them. As Victor Frankenstein said, it wasn't supposed to be this way. It wasn't supposed to be this way at all. It was supposed to be a thing of beauty.

And I run a risk doing this, as I try to avoid political matters in this space, but I have to rip some one for this. Al Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize? How is that possible? Maybe he has done some nice work on global warming whoring himself out to the Day after Tomorrow's promotional campaign and appearing in an Inconvenient Truth. But has that made the world a more peaceful place in any way, shape or form?

For instance, when Teddy Roosevelt won it, he got it for brokering the treaty that stopped the Russo-Japanese War. That is making the world more peaceful for his efforts. Al Gore and his UN group have gotten emerging economic powers like China and India to reduce what percentage of their greenhouse emissions? They've increased liberal guilt in the G8, but that's not Nobel worthy. Even if it were, how is it worth a peace prize? It might be worth an eighth grade environmental science bee prize, but not the Nobel Peace Prize.

So, everybody and his brother feels compelled to talk about the Michael Vick plea today. For something that any reasonably intelligent person could foresee, it has garnered a surprising amount of coverage. Of course he was going to plead guilty. Once the other co defendants agreed to testify against him in return for a reduced sentence, what the hell kind of case did he have? Vick had to plead guilty, otherwise he was going to end up in jail for a very long time.

But there was at least one entertaining and interesting development to come out in this sordid mess today. A shady, corrupt organization has placed an ad in the New York Times questioning whether PETA kills more animals than Michael Vick. Once you get over the shock of any group, however misguided and corrupt, daring to question the practices of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, it's pretty damn funny.

This is funny because this type of in your face, guerrilla marketing is what brought PETA to the attention of the general public in the first place. And anything that's bad for PETA is good for society as a whole. I do not like PETA. I am not a big fan of people who wear fur, but I don't really see it as murder. I do think that if you want to rock a leopard coat, you ought to have the good manners to take the big cat down yourself. But if you want to wear a mink or something like that, I just don't have the time or the energy to care about it.

My real problem with PETA comes from the fact that I believe it is one's moral obligation to eat meat. Think about. Over the last ten thousand or so years, we have domesticated a group of species and eliminated a number of predators in the interest of spreading what passes for civilization. If we suddenly stop eating meat, what becomes of the cattle and the pigs and the chickens and the turkeys? Are we going to allow the bears and wolves and wild cats to come back into our neighborhoods? Something tells me that that won't end well.

Of course, there are other, perhaps more practical alternatives to allowing the natural world to reestablish something approximating population equilibrium the old fashioned way. For instance, food animals could be sterilized and euthanized. What you do with the bodies at that point is beyond me, I realize there are alternatives but I'm not interested enough to research them.

I might be old fashioned, but I don't see how chemically castrating livestock and euthanizing them is particularly more humane than allowing people like me to eat them. I do think that food animals should be treated better than they are at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy or empathy for them. I just believe that if you raise healthier animals, I eat better meat.

I wonder, now, since I have Al Gore's assurance that catastrophic climate change could precipitate another ice age, how am I going to survive if I go vegetarian. I'm not a biologist, but I have noticed some things from casual observation of the world around me. One of the things I've come to realize is that plants have a tough time growing in winter conditions. The winter wheat might have been the greenest stuff Pop Fischer ever saw, but I don't think you're going to see much of it when the glaciers come rolling through the Boston Common.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe prehistoric man weathered past ice ages on a hearty diet of lentil soup and tofu. I have heard that a three bean salad prepared properly has as much protein as a nice, thick porterhouse. But I've come a long way to say that the worst thing to come from this Michael Vick mess has been to elevate the profile of PETA, and the best thing to come from it to this point is this ad ripping PETA.

In other news, rumor has it that Mark Cuban will be this season's token stretch on ABC's inexplicably successful Dancing' With the Stars. I say stretch because Mark Cuban isn't a star. He's a waste of space who creates controversy. One silver lining in this dark cloud (more media attention is not what Cuban needs), is that this little farce might distract him long enough to derail his bid to acquire the Chicago Cubs.

As I watched PTI and Around the Horn this afternoon, I learned two things that some think might make this appearance something less than an abject humiliation (like being denied entry to a Manhattan night club after trying to bribe the bouncer). First, Cuban is a pretty good natural athlete. But more importantly, Cuban helped pay his college tuition by teaching dancing. So he's going to strut his stuff, right?

I have the Benefactor's athletic prowess on good authority. No less a luminary than Michael Wilbon has tested Cuban's skills in pickup basketball games. Hell, if you take one good look at Wilbon, you know he is a tremendous basketball player. Look at his svelte, muscular build. You know Wilbon has game. So if he says Cuban can ball, then the Benefactor us almost certainly a tremendous natural talent.

And then there's his past as a dance instructor. Before we get all kinds of crazy, let's not forget that Cuban taught disco dancing, and he did it while at Indiana University. I don't really want to insult the great Midwest, and Bloomington, Indiana in particular, but it's not like he was tripping a light fandango at Studio 54. I don't know what the last days of disco were like for the Benefactor, but I doubt he was brought in as a consultant on the set of Saturday Night Fever.

I expect Cuban will find a way to come out of this appearance on Dancing With The Stars looking ridiculous. Even if he dances brilliantly, there is no doubt in my mind the Benefactor will find a way to turn a bravura dance performance into a public humiliation. But if he comes out for one show sporting the lily white suit of armor that Commodus rocked in the final battle in Gladiator, I will gain respect for him. I'd go so far as to recant almost 83% of the unpleasant things I've said about him in this space.

Finally, since the game is still going on, and I'm on record as saying I wouldn't post at length on preseason football, I just have a few things to say about the NFL. First, I have to congratulate my old friend DeAngelo Hall. He shaved a message to Chad Johnson into the back of his own head, and then proceeded to be beaten in ugly fashion by that same player.

Then there is the trainwreck that is the ESPN Monday Night Football crew. Tony Kornheiser called Chad Johnson "the irrepressible Chad Johnson" and his mike wasn't cut off instantly. I hate to say this, because I like him as an analyst breaking down film, but Jaws isn't doing anything for me. He does great work on NFL Live and the Matchup show. But he doesn't seem to bring the same insight to the table in real time. Maybe it's just Kornehiser taking the air out of the booth, and that could happen to anyone.

Finally, Asante Samuel is back, baby. And with any luck, he has stayed out long enough so that he'll be out of sync with his teammates. What a shame it would be if the Patriots were to stumble out of the gate this season. I just don't think I could bear up under that type of emotional strain.

I highly recommend that you watch the movie Norbit. I was afraid going in that it would follow a predictable pattern wherein all of the funny scenes would have been featured in the various trailers, hence defeating the purpose of actually watching the film. I was wrong, as I so often am. It certainly took the sting out of the unpleasantness that unfolded this evening, even though I extend my congratulations to the Red Sox equipment staff for corking as many bats as they did prior to the inexplicable 11 run explosion this evening and getting away with it.

I also wish I cared about the latest Pacman Jones incident. I can't shake the feeling that as a sports fan and a citizen, I ought to have some sort of opinion on it, one way or the other. But I just don't give a damn. Let him play, don't let him play. Have him shot, don't have him shot. I really don't care. I just want him to go away.

I also watched the movie Breach tonight. I recommend that you avoid it, if at all possible. I found it boring, preachy and slightly anti-Catholic. Of course, I cannot be expected to be objective on that last point, as I might be the last practicing Catholic under 30 in the state of Massachusetts thanks to the criminal negligence and general incompetence of the Archdiocese. But that is neither here nor there.

The scene in the film that offended me most was a sequence where the portraits of the President and the Attorney General in the hallway of the FBI corridor were changed. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno went down and up went Bush and Ashcroft. I felt that was excessive; I felt the scene intended to shift the responsibility for this episode onto the current President. I understand that he is massively unpopular, but he doesn't deserve this.

In the interest of intellectual honesty, George W Bush was President when Robert Hanssen (the FBI agent in question, as this was based on a true story) was captured. He had been President of the United States for all of somewhere on the order of 25 days. Hanssen was captured on the 18th of February 2001. Taking that into consideration, I don't see what the scene where the portraits were changed brought anything to the table. Hell, a subtitle in the opening scene telling us that he was arrested on 2/18/2001 would have given a better a gauge of time frame as that scene did.

I don't mean to imply that any other presidential administration was responsible for this (Hanssen sold secrets over a 15 year period, so there were a few guys in the Oval Office) travesty. I also have no intention of endorsing a party, politician or candidate in this space. I just wish people would leave the current President alone. A 30 minute animated series on Cartoon Network isn't going to end his tenure in office any quicker. Subliminally including him in a boring spy movie isn't going to jar those who voted for him into consciousness.

What I resent above all is intellectual dishonesty. I believe that the current President has a legitimate right to his office. I don't believe Gore won in 2000 because I don't believe Gore believed he won. If Gore felt that he had a legitimate right to the office, he would have fought harder, or one of the 9 US Supreme Court justices would have dissented.

I also believe the lies that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth told in 2004. If they weren't true, a Yale educated graduate of BC Law, a former Federal prosecutor and sitting United States Senator would have found a legal recourse to fight back. And I believe that the President, the Vice President and the Cabinet believed the lies they told us all about WMDs when they told those lies to get us into the war in Iraq. I really do. I think they all thought that Saddam had more that the ten or twelve shells with Sarin that the military found over there.

No matter how you feel about the current administration, it should not impede your aesthetic judgements. A movie or show doesn't become better than it is empirically because it lampoons (no matter how slightly) an unpopular politician. If the two-thirds majority could have been inspired to impeach Bush, it probably would have happened by now. Or maybe he wouldn't have been reelected.

People on the political left need to recognize that while the conservatives, Republicans, Christians and what have you roaming the Earth and voting for people like George W. Bush are still out there, it might not help them to dismiss their opponents as morons. A comment on the current administration need not be included in every film, show and book. And maybe, just maybe, if they were to appeal to those individuals as though they were rational human beings and forsake the "I am supraman, I have the answers" approach, politics might be less contentious.

On a totally unrelated note, I had to be physically restrained by friends, family and well-wishers from burning all my ties. Apparently, arbiters of the way man should live like George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and John Mayer have been seen without the necktie. If only I'd known sooner. I try to pattern my life on what John Mayer does. I bought a guitar and I tried like hell to get some recording exec to pay me millions to suck, but I just couldn't carry it off. If only I hadn't been wearing a tie... Oh what could have been.