Oh gosh, the lust for access twists a person. I cringe when I think of how Mr. Woodward is pretzaling himself to keep favor for his next faux-Insider book. BobBoy, come back to us. I am not asking that you learn to speak more trippingly of tongue. I don't hold that against you. But I do hear all the muffly sounds of sycophantry. Et tu, BobBoy?

I'm sure you feel like you at least get some glimmer into this bleak-&-black hole of the Kremlin, whoops, I mean the House of the Citizen Servants, whoops, I mean the White Nest of the 12ftTall Lizards Disguised as Human Beings Who Purport to Lead Us.

You're paying too faustian a price, man -- like your journalist's soul. It's an eroding process. You probably haven't even noticed it (tho we your readers have). One teensy-weensy compromise to gain trust. The next compromise gets just a tad easier. And the next. And soon enough, you're their favorite St. Bernard with long strings of drool hanging off your jowls.

Ye owls, I hate to think what horrible roots-entwining-equivalent you might be up to in there. In the Inner Sanctum, where the loudest sound is slithery.

ps. This canard that Mr. Wilson said that Veep the Creep asked him to go to Africa was never true. In fact instead, in his NYT op-ed of 07.06.05, he said: "In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. ... The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office ."

Could this redherring about Mr. Wilson lying about the Veep just be laid to rest forbloodyever?