A confession

I hate people who ring doorbells in the middle of the night. Mine is pretty obnoxious. It's left over from the early 40s. A brass bell with a metal strike. It is hooked to a tightly wound mess of copper wires which run to the button at the front door. When the button is pressed the bell in my kitchen makes this heavy metallic BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZKlank that startles me and the animals.

At 4:30 in the morning I had NO idea who would be ringing my doorbell. I looked twice at the clock before I staggered into the front room. A trail of curious animals followed me. They didn't seem terribly perturbed--that should have been my first clue. I peered through a crack in the roman shades to see who might be there. It could be Raheem telling me the place is burning down, who knows. Nope, no one. The courtyard and my stoop was as empty as a politician's soul. I looked at the animals. The animals looked at me and then wandered back to bed without me.

It was then I realized the BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZKlank I'd heard was not the doorbell it was me. With my head and throat full of cold, I'd woken myself up snoring!

Sheesh

It remains to be seen

What this will create or whether it will stick:

(04-06) 09:11 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --

Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The authorization came as the Bush administration faced mounting criticism about its failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the main reason the president and his aides had given for justifying the invasion of Iraq.

Libby's participation in a critical conversation with Miller on July 8, 2003 "occurred only after the vice president advised defendant that the president specifically had authorized defendant to disclose certain information in the National Intelligence Estimate," the papers by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald stated. The filing did not specify the "certain information."

"Defendant testified that the circumstances of his conversation with reporter Miller — getting approval from the president through the vice president to discuss material that would be classified but for that approval — were unique in his recollection," the papers added.