Given that this is still, as of 4:30 p.m. EDT, the top story on ABC’s “The Blotter,” it looks like the answer to the question posed in the headline is a resounding “yes.” But only for ABC’s Investigative Team, who are chasin’ down leads in the Promised Land right now. MORE »

ABC’s investigative team, headed by Brian Ross and his Giant Cordless Phone of Importance, has a very important, not-fear-mongering-at-all story on how terrorists may or may not have added “mass chaos” to their Google Calendar agendas for tomorrow, a date calculated to cause the greatest psychological blow possible to Westerners. That’s right: Bill Parcells’ birthday. You may strike our cities, terrorists, but when you fuck with America’s Team, you open up a world of hurt. MORE »

• Reliable Source: Washington, D.C.’s former first lady Effi Barry is recovering from acute myeloid leukemia… Hilary Duff fired drummer/DC native Shauney “Baby” Dandy… [WP]
• Lowdown: Chris Hitchens on Brent Snowcroft: “I think he’s an idiot. I’ve always thought he was an idiot.” [NYDN]
• Rush & Molloy: Matt Lauer and Al Roker attended Elizabeth Vargas’ baby shower. “Bob Woodruff… donned a suit and tie for the first time since sustaining critical injuries in Iraq last January.” [NYDN]
• Page Six: A CBS News website story about Katie Couric curiously makes no mention of Dan Rather. [NYP]

• ABC News is convinced that foreign diplomats in the US are the most passive-aggressive people on the planet. [The Blotter]

• Congress to Smithsonian: eat shit and die. [LA Times]
• Mojo Nixon campaigns in Texas, “If your state don’t have Kinky Friedman, than your state could use some votin’.” [Mojo Nixon]
• The 2006 federal budget deficit is just barely out of medal contention. [Think Progress]
• The exact price Chris Matthews will pay for transparent knowledge of your soul. [Fishbowl DC]
• College Democrats are sure that you can’t raise money for something unless you dress like a five-dollar hooker. [Truth Caucus]
• Controversy at HUD! Agency only hires women with first names ending in “ee”! Some are cute, some are felons! [The Smoking Gun]

It’s been an exciting week in hating The Note. To recap:

• Dan Froomkin kicked things off on the 7th with a denial that he’s in the gang of 500 and a terse take-down of our “increasingly impenetrable, uninsightful and turgid” friends at the Political Unit.

• Then the Washington Monthly published an excerpt from Eric Boehlert’s book. The piece is a fun collection of The Note’s pet stories that, despite their best efforts, amounted to nothing. Remember the David Rosen story? No?
• HuffPo’s Rachel Sklar, friend of Wonkette, picks up trail and attacks them where it hurts: right in their stupid daily email blast.
• And our too-rich-and-too-thin New York sister learns, finally, of the pain we suffer every day. And we Note: Why the hell have ABC publicists started sending out obtuse excerpts from the Note without explanation? They’re not newsworthy, and, quite often, they’re lies. Anyone care to explain that?

After the jump, we’ll decode today’s Note.

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The intelligence community: Not interested in calls you make to plan your wedding, very interested in calls you make to Brian Ross. MORE »

Continuing our comprehensive coverage of media bathroom issues (and following hot on the heels of ABC’s other restroom woes), we received an exclusive report from our anonymous feminine products correspondent alerting us to a confusing disparity between some of the major networks bathroom policies. MORE »

* Reliable Source: Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s “original” statement about her run-in with a Capitol Hill officer said, “It is… a shame that while I conduct the country’s business, I have to stop and call the police to tell them that I’ve changed my hairstyle so that I’m not harassed at work.” McKinney has also noted that white officers are more likely than black officers to ask for her identification: “Some things never change — that’s what Tupac said.”. . . Bush called Bo Derek in 2000 to say, “Bo, let me just say that you and Josh [Bolten] together are a perfect 15.”. . . ABC is shooting a pilot for a show about “young hottie D.C. bureaucrats.” [WP]
* Inside the Beltway: Mayor of Bay St. Louis, Miss. attends Correspondents’ Association Dinner wearing shorts to display solidarity with hurricane victims. . . Donna Brazile as Cheney walks by: “Should I duck?”. . . John McLaughlin orders milk at the Morton’s bar, but has fruit punch instead. [WT]

A representative of “The Distilled Spirits Council of the Untied States” (can we please score an invite to one of your council meetings?), guessing (quite correctly) that he’d found a loyal ally in Wonkette, just sent us a press release responding to (or correcting, sort of?) a 20/20 piece that hasn’t actually aired yet. Because we believe very strongly in the mission of the good people at the Distilled Spirits Council, we’d like to point you to their letter to ABC. MORE »

“Do you watch that show Desperate Housewives? Laura likes it. Anyway, you kinda remind me of that Eva Longoria…”

Okay, we’ll ‘fess up: we kind of loved Elizabeth Vargas’s delightfully substance-free interview of President Bush. We analyzed some parts of the transcript earlier today; after the jump, we continue our parsing of presidential pronouncements.

Remember, these are just excerpts. You should really read the entire transcript, to get a complete sense of how inarticulate the president was — and how, even though he was incapable of speaking in complete sentences, Vargas was fawning all over him.

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Their blogging can be just as random as ADD-afflicted as anyone else’s, dammit! MORE »