Karma's a little girl: One person who may receive a measure of comfort from this week's firing of Tucker Carlson by CNN is Valerie Lakey, the sixteen-year old girl mockingly referred to as a "Jacuzzi Case" by the former Crossfire pundit. Of course, he had good reason to do so; she had been represented in her lawsuit by John Edwards, and her case invited ridicule from the smart set inside the Beltway.

When she was five, a suction tube in a child's wading pool malfunctioned, trapping the little girl. By the time she was freed, her intestines had been sucked out of her body, leaving her permanently disabled. While she will spend the rest of her life being intravenously fed and having to use colostomy bags, Mr. Carlson will have the onerous duty of bouncing from gabfest to gabfest, no doubt receiving his talking points from the Federalist Society or the Heritage Foundation, or maybe even a stipend from the taxpayers, a la Armstrong Williams.

An interesting junction between the Tsunami and the War on Terror: one of the few places to receive advance warning was the tiny island of Diego Garcia, which happens to house one of the many concentration camps the U.S. government has set up to imprison, without trial or due process, captured "Islamofascists".

Back from the South Pacific. The last day, spent on the island of Tahiti, was pretty much devoted to waiting to disembark for the airport. It being Sunday, the businesses in and around Papeete were closed, and as I mentioned earlier, a cruise really isn't the optimum way to visit an island destination. Actually, the ship is almost always the best part of the vacation; it serves as a luxury hotel, where you don't have to worry about exchange rates, transportation, or being over-charged on the local wares.

Roger ("I Support Gay Marriage") Simon, who spent the better part of two months last summer hyping the varied accounts of the discredited "Swift Boat Vets", and whose obsession with the "Oil for Food Scandal" has been the source of much laughter and merriment at SoCal blogger meetings, opines:

While I respect George W. Bush's evangelical Christianity, I wonder about his giving CBS a chance to be "born again" in the wake of Rathergate. If I had promulgated forged documents on this little blog and then, to this day (months later), had not fully acknowledged what I had done, I would not deserve the attention of anyone. In fact, I'd probably have been too ashamed to continue blogging. Yet CBS (Channel Two almost anywhere) still holds one of the most coveted positions in American television broadcasting.[emphasis mine]

Well, thank Leinart he didn't take his own advice.