Friday Morning Must-Reads

Sacre Bleu! C'est une media bombshell!

Senator John Kerry says losing last year's election hasn't soured him on wanting to be president. Asked if he wanted to run again in 2008, Kerry says it's too early to say. But he added: (quote) "Would I like to be president? Yes, obviously."

The windsurfing Senator from Massachusetts also announced that if he had it to do over again, he would vote differently on the authorization to use force in Iraq. We officially pronounce ourselves shocked at this totally unforseen turn of events. If stalwart men like Senator Kerry go wobbly in the GWOT, then all is lost.

UPDATE! Zut alors! The Junior Senator was misunderstood! We knew it!

Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry said on Monday he would have voted for the congressional resolution authorizing force against Iraq even if he had known then no weapons of mass destruction would be found.

Taking up a challenge from President Bush, whom he will face in the Nov. 2 election, the Massachusetts senator said: "I'll answer it directly. Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it is the right authority for a president to have but I would have used that authority effectively."

So, mes amis, those mean-spirited, partisan poopy-heads can just eat crow until the cows come home! How dare they question Senator Kerry's patriotisme? He, too, would have sent our brave troops into harm's way without any funding:

...in 2003 he voted against the $87 billion Bush requested for continued funding of the Iraq operation, one of only 12 senators to vote “no.”

He just would have done it effectively, without the aid of Germany and France.

We're so glad this little misunderstanding has been cleared up. We shall speak no more of this matter.

Absolutely the best send-up of the Wilson-Plame brouhaha yet:

If all this strikes the average American who actually has a life as a lot of stuff about not very much, he's excused. That's what Mortuary Bob thought, too, and that's what his newspaper and other organs of the bag-Bush-at-any-cost movement are unlikely to forgive. Mortuary Bob apologized to The Post for not coming forward with his admission until now. The editors put the apology on Page One, taking up space usually reserved for sad stories about helpless gay, black, female victims of our dirty, rotten, no-account society where the sun never shines, children never smile, lovers never woo and the river never runs smooth to the sea.

Mortuary Bob repented, The Post reported, "even as an investigation of who disclosed [Valerie Plame's] identity mushroomed into a national scandal." Of course it's a national scandal. Doesn't everybody from Pottstown to Yuma get up every morning eager to know what's going on at The Washington Post?

The irony is that this investigation into the fluff from an airhead's navel came about because first the New York Times and then The Post demanded it, nurtured it and gave the story mouth-to-mouth resuscitation every time it began to fade into the mist along the Potomac. And to think that only yesterday Scooter was on his way to prison, Karl Rove was about to be flung into hell, and George W. Bush was looking for impeachment lawyers. Now all we've got are a gang of media stars with hot notebooks.

Go. Now.

Lest you feel the inexplicable urge to read Babs Boxer's new novel... let me suggest you let discretion be the better part of valor. There is a time to read and A Time To Run. Fortunately, NRO's John Miller has bravely thrown himself on that grenade (via James Taranto). My fave:

A ton of finely tuned muscle, hide glistening, the crest of his mane risen in full sexual display, and his neck curved in an exaggerated arch that reminded Greg of a horse he'd seen in an old tapestry in some castle in Europe Jane had dragged him to. The stallion approached, nostrils flared, hooves lifting with delicate precision, the wranglers hanging on grimly. ... The stallion rubbed his nose against the mare's neck and nuzzled her withers. She promptly bit him on the shoulder and, when he attempted to mount, instantly became a plunging devil of teeth and hooves. ... Greg clutched the rails with white knuckles, wondering, as these two fierce animals were coerced into the majestic coupling by at least six people, how foals ever got born in the wild.

Sadly, unless Babs manages a Congressional boondoggle to Chincoteague Island, we may never know.