I missed Commander In Chief last night. I’ve missed it every night. (But I never miss it much.) I watched the three-minute recap on ABC’s website today.

In this episode (number 9), our bathrobe-clad president Mackenzie Allen (Geena Davis) agonizes over the decision to commute the sentence of a death row inmate, a murderess named Linda Bodum. The convict’s lawyer is an old boyfriend of the president, who comes to the White House to beg for clemency. If Geena doesn’t commute the death sentence, she “might as well stick the needle in her arm yourself,” he whines.

By the end of the show, Madam President decides to spare the wretched woman’s life, because she “deserves as much compassion” as the turkey she pardoned for Thanksgiving. How nice.

Matthew Franck points out a hole in the plot:

The only trouble is, the murderer is languishing on Texas’s death row — perpetrator of a crime under state law, convicted under state law, awaiting execution by state authorities. No one told the writers or producers of this stupid show that a president has no power to pardon, or to commute the sentence of, such a prisoner…

It is kind of amazing that nobody involved in the production of that show — the writers, the director, the cast, the producers — nobody ever said, “um, the president can’t really do that, dude.”

Their notion that the president can fix every little problem in the world goes a long way toward explaining how liberals can blame George Bush for everything. They think he really spends his time evilly not fixing stuff. Wars, hurricanes, AIDS, poverty — he could end them all with a phone call! That bastard!

I’m sorry to tell you this, but it is time once again for The Bonfire of the Vanities, brought to you this week by Wizbang (”banging wizzes since 2003″) and Sean Gleeson.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Bonfire, it is a weekly carnival of posts submitted by bloggers. But unlike those other carnivals you may have seen which assemble well written essays and poetry and whatnot, the Bonfire is a round-up of that week’s very worst posts. Some of them are truly awful.

Go ahead, have a look at Beth’s post. Sure, she marked that link “NSFW” (Not Safe For Work), but I swear there should be a new acronym FTLOATIHDNCTL, meaning “For the love of all that is holy, do not click this link!” Maybe I’ll propose that standard at my next U.N. summit. (But I did like the Dave Barry column generator.)

Speaking of offensive, Jack Cluth has a sacrilegious toy. (FTLOATIHDNCTL)

You remember in The Thing, when this gooey monster took over everybody except Kurt Russell? Well, that’s what Don Surber is doing to the blogosphere, and if you aren’t panicked about it, then you already are Don Surber. Ferdinand, as Kurt Russell, has the details.
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Charles is taking submissions for geographic puns. That is, puns on the names of places. You know, like “What did Delaware? Her New Jersey.” That sort of thing.

It reminds me of a riddle Phoebe posed to me years ago. The challenge was: “What four Oklahoma cities make a sentence?” Phoebe did not tell me the answer — which was “Sallisaw Henryetta Wagoner Bowlegs” — but left me to puzzle it out myself.

I sat at the coffee table with a beer and an atlas for half an hour, and finally announced that I had the answer: “Wewoka Hooker Heavener Beaver!”

It was then that we realized there must be hundreds of solutions. How many can you think of? (A handy list of all the towns in Oklahoma is provided.)

This strange Oklahoma City landmark is at 2205 N. Portland, just a stone’s throw from our house. We’ve driven by it a hundred times, and every time we wonder, “Why does that building say ‘BLOG’?”

Yes, yes, we know it really says “BLDG,” but it’s still kind of funny.

Generally, when “2008 politics” are mentioned, it is the presidential contest that is being discussed. But that year, there will be an even bigger issue on the ballot than who will sit in the White House — even though it will be on the ballot in only one state. Because 2008 will be the year that gay marriage disappears from America.

The folks who imposed gay marriage on Massachusetts chose their target with care. Amending a constitution is an ungainly task in any state, but it is particularly ponderous in the Bay State. The same-sex marriage proponents knew that if they could get a court to overturn marriage law in Massachusetts, it would take years for the people to set matters right again.

But years have a way of passing. As soon as the ink was dry on the 2003 ruling which undefined marriage, the arduous work of rectifying the law was begun. Since then, the clock has been quietly ticking down to 2008, when the people of Massachusetts will vote on, and approve, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman. Three days ago, the first hurdle was cleared, with the submission of a petition containing twice the number of signatures needed to put the issue before the voters.

The ticking of the clock will not be so quiet later on, as the eyes of the coutry turn to this most crucial of elections. Expect it to be a major issue in the presidential race, and the focus of many, many media reports and blog posts. Every major newspaper will editorialize about this amendment. People on both sides of the issue will actually move to Massachusetts just to register and vote there. The money spent on advertising will be staggering. But the clock will keep ticking regardless.

Every time marriage is on the ballot, marriage wins. Nineteen states have ratified marriage protection amendments, and nowhere has such an amendment been rejected by the voters. This is true in conservative states and liberal states. In 2008, the only American state to sanction homosexual marriage will put an end to it.

Hysterical war protester Cindy Sheehan attended the unveiling of a memorial to her lost sanity today in Crawford, Texas.

“This is nice, real nice, people,” she said to the crowd of assorted nuts gathered to mark the six-month anniversary since any news magazine had the word “Sheehan” on its cover.

“My sanity was another casualty of this war, which was all a great big lie!” she intoned, to thunderous applause. “They say we’re fighting the ‘terrorists,’ but we all know who the real terrorists are! They’re the Jew…” she started to say as her microphone was taken from her by her “manager,” who works for a Canadian mental health facility.