So speculates the late-night crowd. If you click on the picture to get an enlargement of this image, you can see a spot above the horizon approximately a third of the way in from the left margin. Probably just something funny with the picture, but it’s enough to get people talking.
More Martian images here.

Well, that didn’t take very long:

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has been cleared of wrongdoing in the use of classified documents as source material for a book that portrayed President Bush in an unflattering light, Treasury Department sources told CNN on Friday.
The investigation by the department’s inspector general found that though O’Neill did receive classified material from the department after his resignation, the lapse was the fault of the department, not O’Neill, the sources said.
In a letter sent to members of Congress on Friday, Treasury Secretary John Snow said the documents “were not properly reviewed before their release” and that “we are taking corrective action concerning those documents,” according to sources.

Interesting how they got to the bottom of this disclosure in less than a month. Still no word on the Plame leak from last summer. . . .
“Why would I be attacked for telling the truth?”

Looks like Al Gore still has a few fences to mend:

“Gore’s support little help in Tenn.”
Endorsement did not increase candidate’s poll numbers here
Howard Dean can claim Al Gore’s endorsement, but the dispiriting reality for the fallen front-runner is that he may match the former vice president’s 2000 showing in Tennessee – a Gore loss in his home state.
The Democratic presidential candidate is polling in single digits in advance of Tennessee’s primary Tuesday and has no plans to visit, choosing to look ahead to must-win Wisconsin and its Feb. 17 primary to salvage his campaign.
. . .
The 2000 Democratic presidential nominee has flown as far away as Iowa and Michigan to campaign for Dean, but has barely lifted a finger in the state that launched his political career, and where he teaches and maintains a home and a farm. He also has not helped Dean raise campaign money here.
. . .
Gore could not be reached for comment, and his aides declined to answer questions about the impact of his Dean endorsement in early December on the campaign.

Ouch. That Dean move isn’t looking so hot any more.

One thing that continues to intrigue me is how the media herd locks in on a single, random story and covers it incessantly, to the exclusion of hundreds of similar tales.
The latest example of this is the car wash kidnapping of Carlie Brucia. As far as I can tell, the reason the media has became fixated with this case because:
(1) a video camera caught the abduction, and
(2) it involves a cute white girl (see JonBenet Ramsey, Elizabeth Smart, et al.).
I can’t do much about my age and gender. But if someone ever commits a crime against me, I hope the TV cameras are rolling.

Eric Boehlert wonders if Bush dropped out of the National Guard to avoid drug testing. He doesn’t have any proof of this, but it is interesting that Bush decided to stop flying about the time the National Guard was rolling out a random drug-testing program.
These kind of questions are going to continue to circulate until Bush releases his military records.