Briefly...

Pres. Bush's nominee for the Director of DHS, Bernard Kerik, has withdrawn his name for personal reasons. On paper, I don't think that I had a tremendous problem with him. He was a former New York City Police Commisioner and he had financial interests in Taser International who had done $6.2 million in business with DHS and was looking to do more. He had said that he would avoid conflicts of interest (unlike other members the executive branch). My thought is that he realized that it may not be possiblr to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest and also he wanted to be his own man and didn't think that that was going to be possible with the present administration.

On a completely different note, a Somerset woman who was using an old stone sculpture that her husband had found in a quarry as a gravestone for her cat, Winkle, has found that it was a Saxon sculpture dating from the 10th century and recently sold it for 200,000 British Pounds ($383,200). A local potter and historian, Chris Brewchome, noticed it and guessed it was valuable because the image of St. Peter that was on the sculpture was tonsured. The potter has stated that he will make a new stone for Winkle.

In Iraq today, 6 people were killed, which brought the total for December to 25 and the total for the war to 1282. Combat deaths passed 1000 this week and are now stands at 1002.