Sigh...

I am just glad I didn't turn up in this movie.

I worked for five years at The Washington Times. I must say, they treated me well, gave me lots of interesting opportunities and generally tolerated the fact that I was neither particularly politically conservative nor particularly fond of Rev. Moon. The editors rarely (with a few spectacular exceptions) attempted to meddle in what and how I reported on anything. I found that most reporters there by the time I got there, particularly on the smaller desks, like Metro and Business, were there because they wanted good jobs in Washington, not because of any ideology or affinity for Moon's church. And yet, unfortunately, much of what John Gorenfeld reports here is true. I suppose I'll wind up having to read his book.




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Why Cheney didn't run

Geode asks a perfectly resonable question that I actually, surprisingly, know the answer to. This is in part because I was covering the Bush campaign at the time and had occasion to cover Cheney a bit as well. It wasn't an awful lot of fun, largely because Cheney and his people hate the press and make no effort whatsoever to do interesting things or be nice.

Geode asks, in a comment on my Cheney-as-the-Penguin post:

How come Cheney's not running, Sean? I was trying to ask myself that the other day. I thought the veep of a 2-termer ALWAYS gave it a go.

Cheney actually said he wouldn't run back in 2000 - that was part of his agreement with Bush to start. The idea was that Bush could count on a loyal lieutenant who wasn't hamstrung by his personal agenda and by calculations about his political future. That seemed to appeal to Bush at the time. I think Cheney recognized that his medical history made him unlikely to win the White House. And really, I am not sure he wanted to be president, or at least to go through all the campaign crap that would be necessary. He's not a very enthusiastic campaigner. I even wrote a story about it.

I so stole this picture

This guy is my new hero

In the never ending quest to evade paying work, this guy is some kind of visionary. From the AP this morning:

PASCO, Wash. (AP) - What happened to faking a cough? Sheriff's detectives in Franklin County said a man had his friend shoot him in the shoulder so he wouldn't have to go to work.

When he first spoke with deputies, Daniel Kuch, of Pasco, told them he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was out jogging Thursday. But detectives told KONA radio that Kuch later acknowledged that he asked his friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid an upcoming drug test.

The friend, Kurtis Johnson, of Burbank, has been arrested for investigation of reckless endangerment. Kuch was booked into the county jail and is expected to be charged with false reporting.

Detectives declined to say where Kuch works, or whether he still has a job. It wasn't known if he had obtained a lawyer.

Why didn't I think of it first?