A few quick hits before I'm out the door

Seems I'm about an hour behind this morning, and it's too nice not to play outside...

Maureen Dowd's got her indignant on, and as usual it looks sexy on her:

This is the fourth exhaustive investigation that has not answered the basic question: How did the White House and Pentagon spin the information and why has no one gotten in trouble for it? If your kid lied and hid stuff from you to do something he thought would be great, then wouldn't admit it and blamed someone else, he'd be punished - even if his adventure worked out all right for him.

When the "values" president and his aides do it, they're rewarded. Condoleezza Rice was promoted to secretary of state. Stephen Hadley, Condi's old deputy, was promoted to national security adviser. Bob Joseph, a national security aide who helped shovel the uranium hooey into the State of the Union address, is becoming an undersecretary of state. Paul Wolfowitz, who painted the takeover of Iraq as such a cakewalk that our troops went in without the proper armor or backup, will run the World Bank. George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. when al-Qaeda attacked and when Saddam's mushroom cloud gained credibility, got the Medal of Freedom.

And another Republican blogger says it's time for Tom DeLay to go, and lays out the compelling case (yes, most of us know this already, but those with their heads in the sand will find it shocking news). Don't miss the comments, either. And John Zogby via the Houston Chronic gives La Cucaracha Grande the bad polling news.

A post about rotisserie baseball

...so if you're looking for something on Tom DeLay, scroll down (or wait a few minutes, because it shouldn't be long before he's in the news again for threatening federal judges or something).

I'm in seven different leagues again this year, and this website has consistently proven to be the most helpful in terms of who's healthy, who's not, who's winning a position coming out of spring training, who's going to close for the Dodgers now that Eric Gagne has gone on the DL, and so on. Unlike most sites of its type, it's also free. But it's the high level of sarcasm that I really enjoy the most. Look at this post about Danny Graves, the Reds closer:

Danny Graves has been wearing vision-enhancing contact lenses.''They help you pick up the ball more easily,'' Graves said. ''Nike makes them. You can see every blade of grass. It's like a picture.''

The benefits of this are obvious for a hitter, but what exactly does it do for a soft-tossing closer, let him see the gopher balls he serves up more clearly?

You gotta love that (even if you own Graves).

Update: From another good site for this sort of thing, Fanball:

Padres pitcher Jake Peavy completed four innings of work against Single-A Lake Elsinore on Saturday. He allowed six hits and three runs and struck out four. Peavy is scheduled to start in the Padres' home opener on Thursday.

No word on if Doug and Bob McKenzie were playing for Lake Elsinore, but that's not really important, eh.