Crazy week. We were totally incommunicado yesterday thanks to a drunk driver on Jericho Turnpike. He knocked out cable service to the whole town. A nuisance, but also kind of nice. We get phone, TV and internet all from Cablevision, so we had none of them from early moring to late night. I read a book. I had a conversation with my wife. I did garden work. I wrote a review of the book. I dozed. When the kids came home, we all did homework. I had a pi-memorizing contest with my son. Lovely.

Got up this morning to the news about Zarqawi. Great stuff–though of course Andy is right. We are idiots to give all that information away. It would be more impressive–certainly to our enemies–if we just said nothing… though I think I’d allow our military spokesman to just crack a brief, faint smile if asked about it at the next press conference, before saying: “No comment.”

And on Brooks/Ignatius: Sure, it wasn’t the best time to come out with those columns (and there but for the grace of God…), but the Zarqawi killing doesn’t INVALIDATE anything they said. It’ll perk us up for a while, as the capture of Saddam & the killing of his sons did, but the systemic problems remain. See? Every silver cloud has a dark lining. This is Derb here.