ROME, ITALY -- A slightly unreal moment this afternoon. Here in the land of Dante, as the taxi from the airport sped by the ruins of the Roman Forum and glimpses of the Coliseum up the side streets, the car radio began playing the seventies hit "Disco Inferno." As Dorothy Parker would have said, what fresh Hell is this?

It has been that kind of year, one of incongruities and contrasts in which just about everything seemed a little off-kilter or more. It was the year of the real life-and-death Terri Schiavo story and fictional "Desperate Housewives;" the death of John Paul II and Rosa Parks; the re-election of Tony Blair and the indictment of Tom DeLay (who told one, presumably stunned audience, "Humility is something I work on every day.").

It was the year of Katrina and Rita, peace mom Cindy Sheehan and hawk turned dovish owl Jack Murtha, London underground bombings and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, intelligent design and runaway brides. President Bush announced his complete confidence in both Karl Rove and Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, who told Congress in March he had never used steroids, then six months later tested positive.

Larry Beinhart, author of "Wag the Dog" and "The Librarian," has done us a remarkable service with the publication of a new small nonfiction book titled "Fog Facts."  He has given language to a new and critically important concept, that of the fact that is neither secret nor known.  By "fog facts," Beinhart means to indicate pieces of information that have been published on back pages of business sections of newspapers or picked up by a columnist or two, information that has perhaps been circulated on the internet by those with a passionate interest in the issue and enough free time, information that is accepted as known and established by reporters, editors, producers, and pundits, but which the vast majority of the public has never heard about and would find incredibly important and shocking. 

I wish for you all as the New Year encroaches,
Bold and creative strategic approaches
To defeating the lies by election officials,
Whose major concern is filling their satchels
With bundles of goodies like payoffs and bribes,
And friendships with vendors who do not subscribe
To audits or paper or trivial matters
Like accurate results and similar blather,

But push for solutions to fill up their coffers
Like touchscreens and printers and other such offers
Of machines that lose votes and breakdown and fail;
Who sell us elections without paper trails.
And no one would listen for years upon years
To the small group of people expressing real fears
Of votes lost and stolen, of breakdowns and freezes,
of vulnerable systems with holes like Swiss cheeses.
But then in a twinkle in 2005
When scarcely a soul thought freedom alive,
Santa came through -- A surprise in his sack!
He brought in a Finn to conduct a bold hack.
He brought in his elves in the form of investors
To sue for their rights ‘gainst crooked divestors. 

Sometime around 1850 my great-grandmother’s second cousin, James Lord Pierpont, wrote a song that for more than a century has been sung the most often in celebration of Christmas, especially by children. The song is “Jingle Bells.” A quick glance at its lyrics, however, reveals that Pierpont never once mentioned Christmas. “Jingle Bells” merely describes a winter scene and people frolicking in the snow, possibly on Washington’s Birthday (no, make that Presidents Day).

The illegal wiretaps authorized by the Bush Administration unnecessarily undermined American security by not following the legal requirements of court approval. The special law regulating national security wiretaps of potential foreign intelligence agents (and other potential enemies) permits wiretaps authorized by a special, highly secret court even after the wiretaps are in place.

The law gives the Executive Branch amazingly extensive powers and flexibility concerning national security wiretaps. There was simply no reasonable excuse for the Bush Administration for not following the lax guidelines established by this law. Not following the legal guidelines severely undermined the entire wiretapping operation by the National Security Agency. The Bush Administration demonstrated severe incompetence in the national security field with their obvious contempt for American law.