Springtime for Osama. Frustrated by all the talk of Iraq's non-existent WMDs (and rejecting calls for any outside investigation into its lies), the Bush administration is reversing its earlier bait-and-switch, trotting out a "spring offensive" to capture Osama bin Forgotten. US Army Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty: "[W]e believe we will catch [him] in the next year." Assuming the former CIA freedom fighter is not already on ice, I'd say putting his head on a stick, oh, about one week before the election would be ideal. ... Nearly 2 million people are expected to exhaust their unemployment benefits in the next few months, without access to more government aid. Will Bush boast of having cut the unemployment rolls by 2 million "lucky duckies"? ... Xymphora on Lord Hutton's Inquiry: "We all knew it was going to be a lying cover-up job ... but no one could possibly have foreseen that it would be this bad. Hutton has firmly placed himself as one of the most mendacious cover-up artistes in British history. ... It was so utterly outrageous that the journalists hearing it live couldn't control their laughter. ... The report Hutton gave is such an obvious, total and complete crock of shit that no one will be fooled into believing any of it."