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Here are some hot links --

I've never quite been able to figure out Capitol Hill Blue -- have you? Check out this reader apology from its editor Doug Thompson:

In recent days, I have penned some angry columns -- over the top even for me. Some of these were written in anger that stemmed not from the subject of the column but with my frustration over the declining health and approaching death of a brain-damaged kitten, Loki that Amy and I had grown to love. We spent the last several months trying to save Loki and watched in despair the last couple of weeks as his already-fragile health deteriorated and we were forced to put him to sleep.

I had not realized the toll the battle had taken on my psyche. My mind was elsewhere and that was not the state of mind that one needs when writing commentary or reporting on current events. Two weeks ago, I asked some friends who are writers, editors and journalism professors to review the archives of Capitol Hill Blue and identify any columns or articles didn't meet what they consider to be acceptable standards of journalism. They gave me their report this weekend and found three columns and a posting on Politics on the Half-Shell that they felt crossed the line. All were written at times when my mind was on a beloved pet, not on my job.

There was a bit of interest in National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg's statement on CNN that he knew the Pentagon had war plans for attacking Canada. The context in which he said it was to make the point that the US writes up war plans for just about every country in the world -- just standard operating procedure (not that this SOP isn't itself vile). But out of curiousity I went through a bunch of U.S. govt. sponsored strategy journals to find out what the "academic footprint" is on our neighbors up north, and I found some pretty haughty stuff in Parameters, Autumn 2004 by Joeseph R. Nunez (Parameters is put out by the Carlisle, Pa. US War College):

Canada is not an independent actor in the international state system. Thus, any strategy must acknowledge that Ottawa does not control its own destiny, whether it is the defense of the country or the deployment of force to promote its human security agenda. Defense of the Canadian homeland is dependent upon major US assistance. Canadian heralding of multilateralism is more than high-minded liberal internationalism; it is also a practical means of executing thrifty globalism.

Gotta love that. Canada, land of thrifty globalists.

Then there's what historians will call the National Archives all-regression pact with the CIA:

The National Archives signed a secret agreement in 2001 with the Central Intelligence Agency permitting the spy agency to withdraw from public access records it considered to have been improperly declassified, the head of the archives, Allen Weinstein, disclosed on Monday. Mr. Weinstein, who began work as archivist of the United States last year, said he learned of the agreement with the C.I.A. on Thursday and was putting a stop to such secret reclassification arrangements, which he described as incompatible with the mission of the archives.

Lastly did you know that Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi has a column going in the Boston Phoenix on sports crime? Check out his latest, "Pre-NFL Draft arrest watch":

Get ready, Phoenix readers, for the dad-gum funnest week of the sports-crime year! I’m talking about the week before the NFL draft (April 29 in New York City). Traditionally, this is the time of the most inexcusable, most stone-headed, most consequential sports arrests of the year -- known as “Justin Miller arrests” in the business, so named after the highly touted Clemson cornerback who got tagged with disorderly conduct and “noise violation” arrests just prior to last year’s draft. (Miller, considered a sure first rounder, plummeted to 57th in the draft -- a fall that cost him millions of dollars).