Puppies in the Sun

Enough serious stuff. It's a gorgeous sunny day, endless blue overhead, and inside, puppies are busy with their morning naps, each in the usual places. Terra, the princess, is curled up on our bed, a black, furry island in a billowing sea of white pillows and comforters. Charter is stretched out full-length on the floor beside me, framed in sunny squares slanting in from the windows. He is dreaming, feet twitching, eyelids and lips quivering, pink tongue barely peeking out of his mouth. Every now and then one or the other rouses for a moment and looks up at me, hoping I'm ready to go downstairs. As soon as I move, both dogs will jump up to join me, anticipating breakfast or a walk, the mere promise of any sort of adventure. But for now they are content to sleep here with me while I work. My peaceful companions. How I love them.

Thanks, But No Thanks

Well, now it's Australia digging out from a monster storm. The AP reports this morning that Cyclone Larry was the most powerful cyclone to hit northeastern Australia in decades. Larry destroyed thousands of homes and flattened hundreds of square miles of sugar cane and banana crops. As one resident put it, "The whole bloody place is blown apart."

The Aussies, of course, are rising to the challenge with characteristic elan. The town of Innisfail cleared a spot among the ruins and enjoyed a huge "barbie," with local butchers and restaurateurs donating their inventory rather than let it rot in their freezers until power lines are repaired.

And there was this nicety mentioned in the AP report. "President Bush called Australian Prime Minister John Howard early Tuesday to offer American help if needed." Hmmm. The same President Bush whose appointees failed so utterly when our own Gulf Coast was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina just seven months ago? The same President Bush who's already put that epic tragedy and its still-suffering survivors behind him in his psychotic zeal to end terrorist plots, real or imagined? I'm thinking I could live a long time without that kind of help.

To his everlasting credit, PM Howard responded with admirable courtesy and restraint. "Of course we are able ourselves to look after this," Howard told the AP. "But it was a very generous, thoughtful gesture on his part, and I thank him for it."

Competence and class, too. How refreshing. How about next time a natural disaster strikes the U.S., we corral Bush and his fellow cowboys for the duration and ask Australia to come help us with the clean-up?

Adult Supervision Required

National Journal reporter Shane Harris provides further proof of the complete and utter leadership vacuum in Washington in an article introducing Douglas L. Hoelscher, the new executive director of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Advisory Committees.

Hoelscher will serve in a key policy-making position as DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff's "primary representative" to more than 20 advisory boards populated by corporate, government and academic heavyweights; he will also provide "strategic counsel" to Chertoff on such vital issues as terrorist threats to infrastructure and potential attacks employing weapons of mass destruction.

It's quite a career coup for a 28-year-old former Bush campaigner with no management experience whose first government job just 5 years ago was a $30,000 low-level White House staff assignment arranging presidential travel. So maybe it was Hoelscher's personal strengths that catapulted him to power. In his Friendster.com profile, he disclosed: "I'm usually fairly quiet in a group setting. I am not a talker but a pretty good listener."

Whatever. DHS certainly seems confident in its newest top executive. "The administration has named a qualified and talented professional to cultivate these partnerships," commented Stewart A. Baker, assistant secretary for policy at the department.

Then again, that's probably what he said about past DHS appointees, including former FEMA director Michael "You're Doing a Heckuva Job Brownie" Brown, a longtime friend of Bush's 2000 campaign director, Joe Allbaugh; Julie Myers, wife of Chertoff's chief of staff, who without benefit of law enforcement experience heads the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Bureau; and Eduardo Aguirre Jr., a Texas banker with Bush family ties who served as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

O.K. so not such a great track record. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Hoelscher's youth and inexperience aren't necessarily liabilities. Harris reports one DHS staffer assured him: "There's plenty of adult supervision" at the department.