King Arthur Might Need Those Knights

The United Kingdom is under siege. The terror alert is at its highest level. The knights such as Lancelot and Elton John may be dispatched if anybody else so much as moves. Since the car bomb/flaming SUV attack, another car has been blown up in a controlled explosion as a security measure in Glasgow. The United States offered support by saying to the British: We told you so. This confirms the hypothesis that hindsight is always 20/20, but doesn't help to explain why our all-knowing intelligence didn't make a bigger deal out of the plot.

One of the top stories in the Washington Post explains the tension in the relationship between George Bush and Vladimir Putin. One of the major problems between the two men stems from the fact that Putin believes that his dog trumps Bush's lapdog Barney. The relations might warm if Bush adopted a few of Mike Vick's pit bulls and went to Moscow to kick Vlad Putin and his labrador's ass.

Mother Russia unleashed a torrent of unemployed scientists after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The U.S. is harnessing that potential by using a former Soviet germ warfare expert to shape bioterrorism policy. I get a warm feeling inside when I realize that my tax money is paying a guy who used to have the job of figuring out how to modify smallpox genetically in order to achieve the maximum killing potential.

America is trying to control another kind of questionable import--Chinese goods. Tainted goods from China illustrate how interconnected China is with the rest of the world, from the pet food deaths of a few months ago to more than 100 deaths due to counterfeit Chinese glycerine in Panama. I control this another way--I make sure all of the soy sauce and Chinese style mustard I buy is made in Cincinnati.

Glenn Greenwald blogs about the disturbing media trend of taking military reports at face value. The example he gives was picked up worldwide. The military killed 17 civilians and buried the story by identifying the slain as Al-Qaeda operatives when they were in fact 17 citizens caught in the crossfire. Apparently the only battle that the military is coming out on top of is the public relations war with the (alleged watchdog) media.

The L.A. Times previews the new sports black market must-have item: Cuban baseball players. A sports agent was busted for this activity recently, but if he can send a Cuban starting pitcher and outfielder to the Cubs, I think he should be released on time served.

Wimbledon is half over, and Sports Illustrated is issuing grades. Anybody who isn't betting Roger Federer gets an F in my book.

The Associated Press covers the disturbing trend of professional wrestlers dying young. It seems unbelievable that people would die young in an activity where they take steroids, break people's necks, slam people through tables, cut each other with barbed wire and thumb tacks, and hit each other over the head with steel chairs. But if the Associated Press says it's so, it must be so.