[J m HofMarN]

So, I'm half asleep and multi tasking, and I ended up not registering when I switched between some of the news I was reading on my faithful msnbc. It gave me an idea. Read two or three news stories at once and then mismatch their paragraphs to form one news story. Here's my (largely accidental) one.



DES MOINES - Ten months ago, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton went here on her first trip to Iowa as a presidential candidate and laid out a case for her candidacy to a cheering crowd in a packed gymnasium.

Rahul Sharma, the superintendent of police, said 299 of 377 inmates fled from the Dantewada prison, nearly 350 miles south of Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh state. The jailbreak occurred while dinner was being served.

Mrs. Clinton returned late last week. But the crowd was much smaller and more sedate. And rather than discussing her candidacy, Mrs. Clinton explained the caucus process and showed a video titled “Caucusing Is Easy.”

"The inmates overpowered the prison guards and fled amid gunfire," Sharma told the New Delhi Television news channel.

Iowa, where Mrs. Clinton and her husband do not have the advantage of having run a primary campaign, as they have in New Hampshire, is a place that has appeared to frustrate the Clinton political operation from the day she arrived here. Bill Clinton never competed in Iowa caucuses; the state

is a stronghold of the communist rebels, who have been fighting for more than two decades demanding land and jobs for agricultural laborers and the poor. Thousands of people have been killed in the insurgency.

A poor showing in this state on Jan. 3 could have ramifications in New Hampshire five days later, where polls suggest growing support for Mr. Obama, particularly among independent voters,

who claim to be inspired by Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong, have often targeted police and government officials, whom they accuse of colluding with landlords and rich farmers to exploit the poor.

[J m HofMarN]

Keith Olbermann hates a kitten:

While the leadership in Congress has self-destructed over the revelations of an unmatched, and unrelieved, march through a cesspool ...

A kitten was trapped in a crate that had been nailed shut and left in the frigid weather.

But it is the context that truly makes the head spin.

FIRST came the sound of tortured animal cries. What was found next when they followed the sounds under a North Kildonan bridge flabbergasted them.

The president doesn’t just hear what he wants. He hears things that only he can hear. Yesterday at a fundraiser for an Arizona congressman, Mr. Bush claimed, quote

"It was horrible. And it was absolutely freezing that day. I can't understand how someone could leave something like that,"

It defies belief that this president and his administration

,who the Winnipeg Humane Society is hailing for the rescue of the 11-month-old tabby,

continues to find new unexplored political gutters into which they could wallow.

And it may find a home with the Minski family.

"We do have two cats of our own and a dog but it's just a miracle if it survives," Minski said.

We have, of course, survived all manner of political hackery, of every shape, size and party. We will have to suffer it, for as long as the Republic stands.