Whew! What a busy day we've had! Your W Team just spent a whole bunch of excruciatingly slow hours voluntarily having our pictures and fingerprints registered at our local Immigration and Naturalization Service. The way things are going, it's only a matter of time before everyone is required to do so, and we wanted to beat the crowds.
 
You know how it is once these things get started: they just take on a life of their own.
 
As you may know, an important part of the new Brezhnev -- sorry, such a natural mistake -- Ashcroft Doctrine requires close monitoring of those with suspected ties to nations with a "history of terrorism." As you might expect, this hasn't been particularly good news for Team members Ahmed and Mohan.
 
O'Brien and Shaughnessy are looking a bit worried, too.
 
But those of us who probably aren't Bomb-Throwing-Americans weren't detained long. As we were leaving we noticed Ahmed and Mohan in what seemed to us a sprightly and deeply meaningful discussion with INS personnel.
 
Oh well, you can't make an omelet without crushing a few eggs.
 
Anyway, upon returning to W Towers, we discovered that the administration had performed a surprising volte-face, and was now 'fessing up that global warming is indeed real and indeed caused by human activity -- adding, possibly as a sop to green voters -- "You betcha!".
 
This is a serious reversal of the earlier Bushite position (and a great deal of Bushite it was, too), which, even after many readings, seemed to pin the blame on malevolent pixies.
 
Still un-warmed are the hearts of environmentalists puzzled by Mr. Bush's evident intent to do absolutely nothing to avert what his own administration admits is a foregone calamity -- perfectly in keeping, we note, with what appears to be the President's signature modus operandi.
 
Environmentalists are nervously chewing holes in their down jackets as they lament the failure to make immediate reductions in greenhouse gases. As one they sound the hue and cry and view with alarm the expected climatic and climactic repercussions certain to significantly alter life in America -- to say nothing of elsewhere, if there is such a place.
 
In an horrific enumeration that seems to draw heavily upon visions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, preservationists forecast decreased snow melts, devastating heat waves, killer-storms, the wholesale eradication of meadows and marshlands, drought, rising sea levels -- and who knows, maybe frog-storms.
 
To all of which the President's insouciant response is "What, me worry?" Mr. Bush is of the opinion that the necessary corrections will emerge naturally from voluntary controls to be instituted by industry and other sectors firmly in the vanguard of environmental activism. The President assures us that corporate citizens will be held to the same high standards of civitas demonstrated by foxes entrusted with the security of the chicken coop.
 
Moreover, says the President, critics have completely overlooked several benefits that may be derived from global warning:
 
The first of these will be increased crop productivity. Continued crop surpluses will be ensured by the expected increases in fatalities due to heat stroke and pollution, meaning there will be far fewer people to consume them!
 
Second is the expected marked increase in forest growth -- neatly sidestepping the problem of scarcity of precious coffin resources.
 
Third, and a benefit apparently recognized by virtually no one, is the pronounced cooling trend expected when, due to our sharply reduced atmospheric shell, the Earth slips into Jupiter's orbit.
 
Armageddon aside, In this week's sagacious saga, "Cornered!" we find the Snipster mixing apples and oranges and somehow producing lemonade.
 
Good news! Mohan just returned! He's in the lunchroom right now, presenting a lively monologue on whatever distinction there may be between the bad people threatening us and the bad people protecting us.
 
Toodles, all,
 
Hank
 
Plug-a-rama! For reasons known only to themselves, Democratic Underground has published my "Love Slaves of the Potomac," which is all about S-E-X and politics -- as if the two were related! Also, the continuing downward spiral of American letters is further confirmed in Sweet Fancy Moses' public airing of my "What it's Like at Home," a chilling argument for avoiding marriage -- or, for that matter, ever going outside again.