Before beginning any sightseeing, make your very first destination a walk to the nearest fire exit at your hotel. Know how to get out of your hotel in an emergency. Instead of sightseeing, maybe consider not leaving your hotel at all.

Coming this Fall on Fox News: Epic Journeys To The Back Gate And Back.

Yes, I'm warming up for the first debate on Thursday. Consider yourselves warned…

While I've been away: Donald Rumsfeld gets confused about who the heck Osama bin Laden is:

Saddam Hussein, if he's alive, is spending a whale of a lot of time trying to not get caught. And we've not seen him on a video since 2001.

That he did it twice in the same interview suggests that even the Bush Administration has been affected by its relentless juxtaposition of the two regimes. But lo! Is that another episode in "Mr. Rumsfeld's Neighbourhood"? But of course. This time: faced with the suggestion that it might be a little dangerous for elections to be held in troubled parts of Iraq:

Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
"Well, so be it. Nothing's perfect in life, so you have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet," he said.

On a completely unrelated note — international observers to oversee upcoming US elections.

Moving on to John Ashcroft, a man who has had so much success. After all, he got the PATRIOT Act passed, thus allowing the authorities to ignore many of the safeguards built into surveillance laws, in order to safeguard the nation and lock up all the terrorists. To date, the agencies Mr. Ashcroft oversees have locked up 5,000 people across America. Unfortunately, he's yet to get a conviction to stick; at the start of the month, a judge overturned his only success; a conviction of a group of men on terror charges, on the basis that the prosecution was making it all up. But you have to trust the Administration! Changing in mid-course would be tantamount to treason! Even the recent attempt to go after 1970s singer-songwriters seems to be backfiring on them at the moment.

Go Florida!

Go Ohio!