Mark Drolette

The Constitution Was Getting Pretty Ratty Anyway

By Mark Drolette

Coming attractions:

The scene: Late one night at a listening post, deep in the bowels of the Department of Homeland Security. Two agents, a veteran and a rookie, huddle over a wiretap monitor.

Veteran agent: Thank God the Democrats rolled over on that new wiretapping bill and gave the president what he wanted, eh, kid?

Rookie agent: Sir?

Insults at Twenty Paces

And may neither man miss

By Mark Drolette

So this is what it’s come to, eh? The world’s number two terrorist, Osama bin Laden, getting verbally bitch-slapped by the world’s number one terrorist.

All together now: Ooooohhhhhh!

No, the rhetorical dueling glove (the labeling of bin Laden as “virtually impotent”) wasn’t manfully snapped by George W. Bush himself (who, in a weird coincidence, considers himself virtually important). Instead, it was done for him on Fox News and CNN by yet another in an endless slimy line of administration toadies, this one Bush’s “homeland security adviser,” some woman by the name of Frances Frog-o’s, check it, Fragos, Townsend.

The baby blue house with the quite coral columns

By Mark Drolette

“Ooh -- muy bonita!” cooed the young saleswoman in San Ramón, Costa Rica.

She was examining the paint she’d just mixed, obviously impressed with the results of her labor. Me, I wasn’t so sure. How would the bright reddish-brown hue (“Quite Coral”) look on the support columns of my new hillside casa whose exterior was a vivid baby blue?

Quite coral, as it turned out. And quite good, too, I mused. As for what my gringo neighbors thought: Who knew? Then again -- who cared? My house is in the tropics, hence its tropical colors. Besides, a primary reason for my impending move to Costa Rica is to experience anew something decidedly deceased in America:

Can only a Dolt love America?

By Mark Drolette

“Is this a great country or what?”

“I’m sorry?”

My rabid right-wing brother-in-law Dolton had caught me off-guard, fantasizing as I’d been about George W. Bush invoking at his war crimes trial a variation of the “Larry Craig defense”: “I am not smart. I never have been smart.”

“That show we just watched,” Dolton continued, commenting on a just-concluded program on the Propaganda, er, History Channel extolling the glories of the Mexican-American War, harkening back to the days when the U.S. stole only half a country at a time, “reminds me of how lucky we are to live in a land with so much freedom and opportunity, thanks to all the sacrifices so many Americans have made.”