Thirty-three is mature for any Olympic athlete. Sports are generally the purview of the young and unbroken.

Hmmm.

I saw a grey-haired guy on the rings tonight, he was 35 or so. Other competitors, like that Spanish guy, are in their late 20s.

There was that 38 year-old woman who won the marathon, her runner-up was 36.

The US sailing team has some over 40s and a guy who lists his age as 58.

The Canadian showjumping team took home the silver today. Average age = 51. Oldest 61, youngest 40. (Say what you want about equestrian pursuits as sports but I promise you no one stays 'unbroken' riding large animals over huge fences and I assure you it requires a lifetime's worth of both strength and skill.)

My point is, the age thing is changing in all sports, especially where the athlete has the opportunity to make a career of the sport. The women's gymnastics system -- unlike the men's -- is set up to train girls, not adults, with burn-out as the expectation rather than the exception. If athletes can find a reason to stay in the sport, I suspect we'll see some changes in the system.

That is not to say that those athletes, the Chinese gymnasts, were or are anything less than world class in competition or sportsmanship.

Well, no.

If a gymnast is underage, she knows she's underage. And if she knows she's underage, she knows she's contravening the rules. Which makes her considerably less than world class in sportsmanship.

An athlete is not absolved of responsibility because his/her federation has decided to contravene the rules on his/her behalf. If your federation gives you drugs or lets you compete knowing you've tested positive or are taking drugs, that does not mean it's ok to take drugs. That positive test at the Olympics is still your fault, even if you claimed not to know what you were taking.

And just like those Bulgarian weightlifters know what they're taking and why, these underage gymnasts know how old they are.

There is considerable official documentation on He Kexin's age that make the case that she's underage. There is one document -- a recently-issued passport -- that has her 'Olympic' age on it. The IOC has passed the verification off to the federation, the federation says it's just checking passports. We have a word for this: corruption.

What it really mocks is athletes who followed the rules. In this case, it would be young gymnasts who were too young in 2004, did not allow their ages to be fudged and trained hard until this Olympics. Which, in this case, would be Nastia Liukin.

The local law enforcement in this story confounds me. What interest do they really have in carrying out these ill-advised raids? You'd think on a local level, a commander or incident commander would simply say "I'm not risking my men for this nonsense." You're trained to think about these things first so that you don't take your group out unnecessarily. Anytime a SWAT team goes out with live automatic weapons, your team members are in a risky situation, even if it's only with regard to an accidental shooting among the group. Which is why you don't deploy over nothing. Which is what they did, knowingly.

Great reporting on an important story. Thanks.

Add to that the fact that many good establishment liberals are embarrassed by leftist protesters of this sort and wish that they would remain invisible, and there arises a widespread consensus that these Government attacks are perfectly tolerable if not desirable.

Mainstream politics of both persuasions no longer embraces any form of protest other than bland, toothless lip service. It is truly a shame but it's this sort of don't-make-me-uncomfortable complacency that's brought us to this point.

This is a big story. Thanks for staying on it.

And this is the real trouble with Sarah, as the McCain camp is discovering.

They vetted her by talking to her and her attorneys, getting her version of things, a heart-warming story they bought wholesale and repeated to the press. If the McCains had checked her out, they would have known she was casual with the facts on the Bridge to Nowhere, Ted Stevens, Troopergate, the huge debt she ran up as a small-town mayor, her relationships with lobbyists, her fondness for earmarks, and even her family life.

What the McCains have on their hands is a woman who makes it up as she goes along, recasting history as necessary with little regard for the truth. And it works -- the McCain campaign believed every word of it, which says a lot about them.

I hope the rest of us aren't so gullible.

I really thought the Hewitt interview was a spoof and had to go back and check a few times to see that it wasn't. The questions and answers were equally ridiculous, starting with Palin's repeated references to 'Joe Six-pack'. A candidate for VP talking about how she's up there for 'Joe Six-pack', like that's a positive thing, and all the while espousing policies that will only make life harder for Joe Six-pack -- please tell me it's a joke.

$5000? $10000? Ok, I could stomach those numbers.

But $150K is just too much. There's no value to used clothing. The donation guide at Goodwill Industries puts a value of $5-30 on women's suits so I guess the RNC will be looking to do an eBay charity auction with accompanying publicity. And this only proves that Palin's candidacy was just what the TV industry calls 'stunt-casting'. It's Lindsay Lohan on Ugly Betty. It's the WWF wresting champ president in Idiocracy.

It's another reminder that she's not a real candidate and another reminder that when given the opportunity to spend other people's money on herself -- like decorating her office in Wasilla, taking per diem for working at home while governor, and flying her family with her even when they're not invited -- Palin doesn't hold back.

She's an entitlement queen at heart.