We interrupt your regularly scheduled longwinded blog to bring you this bit of silliness

Everybody remember U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Michael Brown? The guy who was chastised by...oh, just about everyone...for his handling of Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005? Well, according to Senate testimony that he gave earlier this year, the reason for his gross incompetence turns out to be that he was, erm, otherwise occupied during the crisis. With his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Admiral Allen was then given the wherewithal to leave, to go do things, to go -- if he needed to be in New Orleans, to go to New Orleans, to be able to go to Jackson, Mississippi, to be able to go wherever he needed to go. I was literally constrained by Secretary Chertoff and told to stay in Baton Rouge after my first trip to Jackson, Mississippi. My hands were tied by him.

A few days later, he also elaborated on these twisted and prurient sources of his negligence in a CNN interview (you might want to cover the kids' eyes for this one):

It was balls to the wall. I was literally constrained by Secretary Chertoff. And I was certainly screaming and cussing at people.

While I does occur to me to wonder why the man would voluntarily make such *cough* private matters so very public, I nevertheless commend him for finally explaining the reasons behind his tragic mishandling of the situation.

(Ahem. All of which is to say that IP is--for the next two weeks or so, at least--on holiday. Every junkie needs to detox occasionally, and that goes for us political ones, too. See you in January.)