THEY'RE ALL FUN GUYS (MAKE THAT FUNGI)

I've been fuming ever since I heard heard that Bush was awarding the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Young King George's fiddlers three: Tenet, Bremer and Kerik. Three long, intense, exhausting days in post-production have discouraged me from posting about it, but it's OK -- Bob Herbert is on the job:

This administration has many things on its mind besides the welfare of overstretched, ill-equipped G.I.'s dodging bombers and snipers in Iraq. In addition to the inauguration, which will cost tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Bush is busy with his obsessive campaign against "junk and frivolous lawsuits," his effort to further lighten the tax load on the nation's wealthiest individuals and corporations, and his campaign to cut the legs from under the proudest achievement of the New Deal, Social Security.

So much for America's wartime priorities.

Even domestic security gets short shrift. During the Republican convention, Mr. Bush said, "I wake up every morning thinking about how to better protect our country." Try squaring that with the Bernard Kerik fiasco, in which the administration's background check of its candidate for the nation's ultimate domestic security post was handled with the same calamitous incompetence as the intelligence effort that led to the war in Iraq.