Tuesday digest

- As Colin Powell's hatchet man, confirmed leaker Richard Armitage, sits idly by, Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby faces up to 25 years in the slammer in charges related to a breach of national security that never was, as far as the Vice-President's office was concerned.

I have three questions:

1. Who among us remembers the intricate details of conversations we had this morning, much less from months ago?

2. Why didn't Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald add the words "unless you're a Democratic President" when he stated today that "lying under oath must never be tolerated"?

3. Does anyone outside of the Beltway besides geeks like me care about this?

The entire affair is a farcical and petty sideshow.

- Bounce Vladimir Putin from the G-8. Now.

- February was the coldest month in Toronto since disco, and data captured from Mars between 2002-2005 shows that icecaps have been melting rapidly at the planet's South Pole. Could it be that Mother Nature is still boss?

- Memo to American readers: this is what government-run, socialist health care looks like.

- A finer example of academic naiveté you will not find: this commentator suggests that the US should offer to leave Iraq in exchange for a Sunni/Shi'ite buddy hug. It's the same line of thinking which foolishly contends that only if there was only a nicer guy in the White House, terrorists would lay down their weapons.

- More on last week's odious Democratic legislation to ban secret ballots when unionizing, here.