In the fall 2005 issue of Ms. magazine, Phyllis Rosser wrote that rather than being "celebrated for [our] landmark achievements, [women] have engendered fear," and offers up this fact, conspicuously absent from most media coverage of the gender gap: "There has been no decline in bachelor's degrees awarded to men," she writes. "The numbers awarded to women have simply increased." Put simply, in the words of Jacqueline King, director of the Center of Policy Analysis at the American Council of Education, who is quoted in Rosser's piece, "The [real news] story is not one of male failure, or even lack of opportunity -- but rather one of increased academic success among females and minorities."

Uh huh.

Does anybody besides me suspect that the problem isn't that boys have disadvantages but that they no longer have all the advantages they used to? That the real aim is to make sure men retain their social and economic supremacy?

Salon, which is still featuring the "pink ghetto" Broadsheet, publishes an article deploring the dumbing-down of the news media. And the article is written by Farhad Manjoo, whose approach to serious issues like election theft is "can't be bothered to be bothered by it".

Irony is not dead. It is, however, willfully ignored by the staff of Salon.

Take a statement from the Secret Service agents who were with Cheney? What's the point? They're not likely to give any information that varies by so much as a syllable from the official version of events. These would be the Secret Service agents that, far from doing their duty to uphold the law, obstructed local law-enforcement officers by barring them from Katharine Armstrong's ranch when they arrived to investigate the report of a shooting.

It's disturbing that nobody seems upset about this obvious subversion of a law-enforcement agency into the Bush regime's goon squad.

Thomas Jefferson didn't have military experience.

Abraham Lincoln didn't have military experience.

Franklin Roosevelt didn't have military experience.

Bill Clinton didn't have military experience.

On the other hand:

Ulysses Grant certainly did have military experience, and he was one of the worst presidents in our history.

George W. Bush also had military experience (though it pains me to admit it, given the evidence of his having gone AWOL).

Military experience is not necessary to be a good president, even in wartime. Neither is it a guarantee of being a good president.

When they transferred the money to that lab to rehire the laid-off workers, where'd they transfer it from ? How many workers lost their jobs elsewhere so Bush wouldn't be confronted with reality?

According to Howard "Weathervane" Kurtz in today's Post ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/23/AR2006032301991.html ), "Domenech said he needed to research the examples [of plagiarism] but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles." See? It's never a rightwinger's fault, it's always what somebody else did to him.

I'm not buying that excuse, and I hope nobody else does.

"Washington Post on Domenech: 'We did plenty of background checks'." I'm sure they vetted Mr. Domenech as thoroughly as the White House vetted Bernard Kerik and and Harriet Miers for their respective nominations.

Is it cynical of me to suspect that the "background" the Post checked was Ben's daddy's political connections?

Card's considering running for governor of Massachusetts?

Dang. I'd hoped the reason he'd resigned was because there's one or more indictments in his near future.

Please tell me this is Salon's April Fool's Day hoax.

The question "What good are U.S. threats against Iran when the whole world has lost its trust in our government?" presupposes that Bush will even go through the motions this time of getting a UN resolution or a "coalition of the billing" before attacking Iran. Once he's decided to do it, he'll do it. Whether the world supports it or the U.S. has the resources to succeed is irrelevant. Bush will do it because it's what he wants, period.

Stephen Colbert's brilliant jeremiad at the White House Correspondents Dinner was as much an indictment of the "insider" Democrats as of the Busheviks and the press corpse. In spite of all of Bush's lawbreaking, his contempt not just for his political opponents but for the political process, his obvious intention to rule as a dictator, the Congressional Democrats keep giving him the benefit of the doubt and "respect for the office". And they keep ending up face-down in the muck.

The purpose of the White House Correspondents Dinner is to set aside the traditional adversarial relationship between the White House and the press corps, and make nice. Stephen Colbert expressed what the Congressional Democrats have resolutely refused to recognize: You cannot make nice with people who have not one atom of niceness in them.

Colbert showed Bush and the press corpse all the respect they deserve. I applaud him for it. I hope the Democrats got the message.

"Katherine Harris is the horse we're going to ride to the finish line, and it's time for us to saddle up."

Everybody who immediately thought of the saying "Rode hard and put away wet," raise your hands.