OK, here's the news, such as it is. Looks like Tenet's taken the fall for the various intelligence errors (like, say, missing 9/11--I'm not accusing the CIA of evil or corruption, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was a lot of institutional incompetence).

We're having European Union elections soon. Normally I'd be all excited and covering the event. Now I just don't give a shit. The Socialists are running Pepe Borrell and the PP is running Jaime Mayor Oreja at the head of their lists. I much prefer Mayor Oreja (who I'd figured was the PP's man in the País Vasco, but both parties are OK, in the sense that the Socialists aren't any worse than, say, Ted Kennedy, and if your country was governed by a bunch of freely elected Ted Kennedys who more or less were forced by the Supreme Court not to screw with the Constitution too much, that'd still be better than, say, your Hollenzollerns, Hapsburgs, and Romanovs.) The other candidacies trying to make the slightest amount of news are the Commies, who, in the immortal words of Bob Dylan, "ain't goin' nowhere", and three different coalitions of regionalist groups: one is led by CiU, the PNV, and the BNG, and is considered to be the moderate regionalist / autonomous / "nationalist" coalition. There's a more conservative group, led by regionalists sympathetic to the PP (CC, the PA, UV, etc.), and a more radical group, made up of ERC, EA, Labordeta, and that lot.

The Socialists are going to win by five percentage points or so, according to what I've seen. The PP will, of course, be second. The Commies and the CIU/PNV and CC/PA coalitions will win representation. The argument going around the newspapers and radio stations is whether these European Parliament elections are an important sign of anything (e.g. a real growth of Socialist strength, or a sign of regional / autonomous decline) or whether they're a load of wank that means nothing because voter turnout is like 44% and I bet not 2% of the population could name both Borrell and Mayor Oreja as the two leading candidates. That's how lively it is.

There's a really nasty interview on the back page of the Vangua. When I get around to it I'll translate most of the damn thing.

Six and a half inches, by the way, is the length of my cat Chang's tail. We don't know what happened to the rest of it, since he didn't have it when we got him. What were you guys thinking?