Auditory nerve

"Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7000 in back taxes after finding 'unintentional errors.'" (Erica Werner, Huffington Post)

I know how President Obama plans to make up the enormous deficit he inherited from the Cheney-Bush regime. He will continue to appoint deadbeats to public office, and even if they withdraw their names like Tom Daschle, they will be encouraged to look over their financial records and write hasty checks to the Internal Revenue Service. There is probably an IRS auditor combing the returns for future nominees as I type.

It happens I have some experience of their methods. I owed a lot less than seven grand, and they promised to pursue me to the limits of the solar system. Of course, I've never been a senator or a governor, just a working stiff chosen at random. I paid. It's what we do, even without the promise of a presidential appointment. Avoiding prosecution is usually enough.

At the rate of a few thousand bucks a bureaucrat, of course, this is going to take time. The rest of us may wish to participate in a voluntary program proposed some years ago by Roy Blount, Jr.: Buy stamps and throw them away.

Think about it.

Pretty slick

"Suspending the campaign" because bailing out incompetently run brokerage houses and insurance companies is just too important to be left to people who actually know something about the financial system. And canceling the debate because his handlers met at four in the morning and concluded there's no way John McCain could credibly debate a B-average high school sophomore, much less Barack Obama. After all, some questions can't be answered, "For five years, I didn't even have a black and white television." But weren't two more debates scheduled? The Ministry of Fatherland Security can finesse one of them by declaring a Super Purple Alert, but what about the third? Fire, flood, false alarm about the Rapture? Is this a campaign or a Preston Sturges movie? When does Biden debate Betty Hutton...I mean Sarah Palin?