"Heckuva job" Harriet's papers are released...and they're totally "cool!"

Out of all the disturbing "Plenty Bright" Harriet Miers pieces as of late, the NYTimes nails down her sycophantic creepiness best in today's story itemizing personal notes sent to Dubya over the years. She uses inarticulate compliments almost as much as she abuses the exclamation point. Her childish writing could only be less professional if she also began abusing emoticons ==];-()>{ As if what we need on the Supreme Court is an evangelical ass-kisser. All the churchy stories bother me, like when she went to two mega-church services in Dallas over the weekend with her old sinning partner and personal pimp, Nathan Hecht. But the lovey-dovey connection with Dubya worries me much more.

For those of you with a horse still in the race to the World Series, I hope all's looking bright and shiny today. Seeing the Yankees lose last night was a personal highlight for me - there's no team in any sport that I root against as consistently. I still can't get excited about the Chicago White Sox possibly exorcising their 1919 demons at long last, the Cards leave me cold, and the Astros and Angels might make a good story if either team had anything like a new rally monkey to spur me on. Over the weekend even the Packers notched up a lopsided victory against the woeful 'Aints. The NHL is back which means Canada's ripe for the picking over the next handful of months if the Bushies want another victory in the Global Struggle Against Extremism. Sports stories everywhere. It's almost enough to make a guy forget about raising his child.

Speaking of which, we've decided to begin experimenting with sign language to communicate with Maya. We see it as a much better experiment than the early toilet-training movement (rimshot!) that I saw described in an article on Monday. Maya's also settled in well at playing for short periods on her own in her playpen that we've playfully dubbed "Guantanamo". Much catchier than Abu Gharib. Her top tooth still hasn't fully breached the surface and Maya makes pretty obvious sucking sounds on that gum accompanied by a pretty ridiculous face. And she took to swimming lessons like a well-balanced chimp to a properly sized bicycle. All in all, she's still hilarious and getting more adventurous all the time. Rock on.