News in Briefs

Judith Miller retired from the NY Times yesterday in the wake of massive backlash from the paper for writing bum stories about Iraq's WMDs fed to her by Scooter Libby and other Administration officials. I have decided to offer her a full-time position here at Pick's Post, since I have no journalistic integrity and I am in fact a proponent of yellow journalism.

House Republicans finally agreed to scrap ANWR drilling from the budget proposal. Powerful Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is reportedly furious about the removal of the drilling provision and asked members of the Senate why they cared about a state whose citizens eat seal fat and ruined the concept of the continental United States (really, Hawaii and Alaska ruined it all).

Bush gave Ali, Greenspan, Franklin, and Burnett, the Medal of Freedom yesterday. "Bush, who appeared almost playful, fastened the heavy medal around Muhammad Ali's neck and whispered something in the heavyweight champion's ear. Then, as if to say "bring it on," the president put up his dukes in a mock challenge. Ali, 63, who has Parkinson's disease and moves slowly, looked the president in the eye -- and, finger to head, did the "crazy" twirl for a couple of seconds." Did anyone else become extremely uncomfortable reading about this exchange? And I don't think calling a seizure the "crazy twirl" is in very good taste.

In Michigan, 18 year old Michael Sessions won a mayoral race. According to USA Today, Sessions plans to devote after-school hours to the job and use his bedroom as his office. I am pretty impressed...when I was 18, the only thing I did in my bedroom was freestyle rap about quadratic equations. For some reason Suge Knight never got back to me after I sent him my DJ Geometry demo tape...