Today marks the Ides of March, made famous in history and literature as the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated by members of his inner circle in a deed of political and personal reckoning, and also that selfsame day last year when I posted my very first blog entry to the Huffington Post. I reread it yesterday to see what the Ides had tweaked in my brain last year, besides snippets of the Shakespeare I had to memorize in Mr. Polley's tenth grade English class. Turns out I was thinking of scandal — specifically, the Jack Abramoff imbroglio and all the D.C. fatcats who had been lining their pockets with Abramoff's graft. One year later, that scandal seems almost quaint, doesn't it? Sports tickets, sushi dinners, golf jaunts — sort of pales in comparison to what's happened since (deep breath): Walter Reed; fired U.S. Attorneys; Mark Foley; Scooter Libby; bank records; Macaca; Haditha; Rumsfeld (always with the Rumsfeld), Inhohfe; New Orleans (wait, there was news from New Orleans? Precisely); Curt Weldon, Bob Ney and Don Sherwood; The One Percent Doctrine; Cobra II; Fiasco; State of Denial; The Looming Tower; Do-Nothing Congress; losing Afghanistan; the Iraq civil war; fighting over whether to call the Iraq civil war a civil war; fighting them over there vs. fighting them over here; Dick Cheney, just because. This is not an exhaustive list.
And subpoena season hasn't even started yet! No doubt my second year at HuffPo will be as exciting and fast-paced, though hopefully without the frustrating, infuriating and sad parts. Thank you to anyone who ever read anything I wrote here, by choice or because you're my mom — it's always a pleasure to read your comments, and a learning experience to boot (especially in those early turns at RussertWatch — oh, how I learned at the feet of Tim Russert's overlarge noggin. Can a noggin have feet? Well, I guess somewhere in comments you can teach me that, too). It's been an interesting year, and, on balance, better for me than it was for Caesar. And on that upbeat note, happy blog-o-versary! Time flies when you're having fun, and despite the foregoing, I am. So, thanks for that. Now, go on, have some cake or something. I'm certainly going to.