I scanned headlines as I schlepped past newspaper vending machines in the airport this morning, and saw Bush's pursed lips and grave warnings that "we are a nation in danger," and saw the post-mortems about Kerry's missing post-convention bounce (which somehow seems to have stunned the press, even though many pundits said not to expect one, since so many voters are already decided. They must have really fallen for Matthew Dowd's clever nonsense predicting a virtually impossible bounce for Kerry -- clever because it meant that anything less than his prediction would look bad for Kerry). And I sat on my little pile of backpacks and reflected on the stupifying mystery of an American public that seems to be falling for yet another politically-timed Terror Alert -- the Republican grand finale for the Democratic Convention -- based on intelligence that officials now acknowledge was several years old. Why do they keep doing this? Because they can.

Oh, between terror alerts, expect many more arrests of "top al Qaeda officials" between now and November.

The Findlay Courier's editorial page editor, Cynthia Moorhead, wrote to me to say they won't publish my letter: "Sorry, but the letters column is limited to local residents – people who live within our circulation area – unless they are writing about a local issue." Yeah, right.

I missed almost every bit of the convention coverage while I was out of town. And much of the news. Now I'm getting caught up, and wondering why the exoneration of Sandy Berger (thanks, CW) wasn't on the front page of anything? I wouldn't expect the Courier to admit it, but the Times? The Post? I've searched their sites and googled and find nothing referring to the item buried in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) on Friday:

Officials looking into the removal of classified documents from the National Archives by former Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel Berger say no original materials are missing and nothing Mr. Berger reviewed was withheld from the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

On another note, I sure didn't need to know about this.

Here are some terrific bumperstickers.