Note this Several people told me I should check out ABCnews.com’s The Note. For a while I didn’t, since I’m resistant to sites that require registration—and, worse, won’t accept the old “login: cypherpunk, password: cypherpunk” wheeze. I should have listened. It’s a breezy, bloglike roundup of political gossip and breaking stories, delivered with great self-assurance:

True or false, Note readers: Ari Fleischer began his morning press gaggle on Thursday by calling on David Gregory with a simple “Monsieur?”

Once, in fact, the Note went to Fleischer’s gaggle and learned, through the course of several answers, that he won’t answer questions about the past (“we are beyond that”), the present (“let’s wait and see what happens with that”), or future (“too speculative” and “hypothetical”), which even the Gene Roddenberry in us says doesn’t leave too much to ask about in any time/space continuum.

[09:47 AM]