Believe it or not, the editorial about Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) in today's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Nobody Home," has nothing whatsoever to do with his intelligence.

At least not directly.

[See also, fittingly, "Small Brain, Small House: Picking Up the Santorums' Tab," The Rittenhouse Review, November 13, 2004. 2004!]

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Mildred wears a bonnet on Easter Sunday, albeit unhappily.

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A nice surprise at Slate today: a paean to James M. Cain's novel noir, Mildred Pierce, in the form of "My Love Affair with Mildred Pierce," by novelist Laura Lippman.

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Young Clarissa Tanner of Albany, Calif., joins the ranks of the multitudes of New York Times readers offended by the jottings of Nick Kristof. She writes, in a letter published in today's paper and in response to "Killer Girl Scouts":

I am a 9-year-old girl who goes to Girl Scouts, and I was insulted by Nicholas D. Kristof's May 21 column. [. . .]

Girl Scouts is mostly about learning and making friends and having fun. Why not focus on McDonald's? They sell way more fat than we do.

Kristof, though, would be the first to tell Miss Tanner that penning a twice-weekly column is also about "learning and making friends and having fun." And giving away free trips and way more neat stuff like that.

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The top story in today's New York Times Metro section is "Lieberman's Support for War Leaves Him Embattled on Left," by William Yardley, is woefully misguided from start to finish.

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman has problems on the left? Sure, but only on the left?

It would seem, to judge from latest polls, to say nothing of common sense, that Sen. Lieberman, like other war hawks, is embattled on the left, right, and center, and deservedly so.

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The headline speaks for itself: "Bush Signs $70B Tax-Cut Package."

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Mike O'Brien won the Democratic Party primary for Pennsylvania State Representative in the 175th District, which includes my Philadelphia neighborhood among others, defeating both Anne Dicker and Terry Graboyes.

One of the defeated candidates, Dicker, was gracious in defeat. The other, Graboyes, well, not so much.

Dicker, the anti-establishment underdog who came in second, told the Philadelphia Daily News ("O'Brien Wins Nod in 175th," by Catherine Lucey, Chris Brennan, and Dave Davies), "I feel so great. We were outspent 20-to-1 and in a business where money and friends are everything, we almost won."

Meanwhile, Graboyes, who, according to Inquirer ("You Can't Write Off the Party Machine," by Thomas Fitzgerald), "spent hundreds of thousands on television ads and was backed by State Sen. Vincent Fumo . . . Gov. [Ed] Rendell, many members of City Council, and the painters' and carpenters' unions," said after finishing third and last in the race:

If you look at who voted, nobody voted. Nobody voted in the river wards. Nobody voted at all. . . . If Anne Dicker hadn't been there, I would have trampled, [a]nd I will still never understand [why she ran]. Obviously it was more important to make her point than elect a progressive woman to the House.

Funny, I assumed Ms. Dicker ran because she thought she could, and because she wanted to, win.

Like I said, gracious? Not so much.

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Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) put out an interesting release today, "Tom Friedman's Flexible Deadlines," about New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman's penchant for looking out just, and almost always just, six months when it comes to his predictions of a quick resolution of the internecine warfare in, and the political and economic shambles that is, Iraq.

FAIR catches Friedman playing this futile cat-and-mouse game more than a dozen times since November 2003 ("The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time.") and last week ("Well, I think that we're going to find out . . .in the next year to six months -- probably sooner -- whether a decent outcome is possible there, and I think we're going to have to just let this play out.")

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Ken Silverstein, Washington editor at Harper's, asks, in "Richard Cohen: a Scientific Inquiry," "Is he funny? Is he courageous?"

One would think to ask such questions is to answer them, but Silverstein's piece is still worth the read.

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The New Republic, for all its faults, and they are legion (Martin Peretz, Andrew Sullivan, and the magazine's institutional crush on Sen. Joseph Lieberman, to name just three), still can come through in the clutch, to wit: "Are Too: George Allen's Flag Fetish" (May 4, 2006), by Ryan Lizza, and "Pin Prick: George Allen's Race Problem," also by Lizza (April 27, 2006).

Of exactly which states, one might ask, and of which century, does Sen. Allen (R-Va.) wish to become president?

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It's no wonder I cannot relax, and that I have difficulty sleeping, when I'm confronted, while innocently riding the El, with posters for Heineken Premium Light that read, in relevant part:

If Only Every Ride Was This Smooth.

The advertisement's erroneous, or at least misguided, capitalization notwithstanding, may I just ask, in one word, "Was?"

Again: If only every ride "was"?

Let me introduce Heineken's agency copywriters to an apparently unfamiliar concept, that known to a dwindling few of us as the subjunctive.

As in:

If only every ride were this smooth.

Emphasis added.

And obviously necessary.

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From fans of the Philadelphia Phillies, in reference to Barry Bonds, as cited in today's New York Times ("Brotherly Love for Bonds? Yeah, Right," by Jack Curry):

Ruth did it on hot dogs & beer[!]

We're nothing if not blunt here.

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