By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Benjy, Cappy, Talleyrand, Sadie, David, Kit, Duffy, Maggie, Ben and Charlie.

Ten dogs have shared my life.

Duffy was evil. Talleyrand, the Irish setter, easily the dumbest. Ben the Aussie, hands down the best. I miss him still.

The point is, I am eminently qualified as a dog lover. And I still think Michael Vick should be given a chance to play in the National Football League.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I came in from running the dog on Sunday afternoon, and switched on the tube. As I surfed through the channels, I discovered that the women's U.S. Open golf championship was on, with four or five players within a shot or two of the lead.

Great stuff. There was Cristie Kerr, unsuccessfully trying to master the golfing demons as, hole by hole, she lost her confidence and the title. And Brittany Lincicome, making a back nine charge. And Paula Creamer, shooting a 69 with her trademark pink golf ball, to atone for that one awful hole that ruined her chances on Saturday.

And, best of all, there was tough, tiny Eun-Hee Ji of South Korea, dressed like some sort of ninja-biker-sprite, fighting back from a double bogey, hunting pins and sinking a 20-footer on 18 to win.

I gotta tell you, I was flabbergasted. I've been reading for months about how much trouble women's professional golf is in, now that Annika Whatshername has retired. But what I saw was a first-class athletic event.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

There is only one good reason for Leon Panetta to have shut down the CIA's secret program to kill Osama bin Laden. And it is not that Dick Cheney didn't tell Congress about it.

It's that, apparently, it didn't work.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Lest we think, as we celebrate the anniversary of the Scopes Monkey Trial, that the forces of ignorance and superstition have been thoroughly vanquished on the issue of evolution, news arrives from Texas, where its loony secessionist governor has appointed a flat-earth type to chair the state board of education.

It could have been worse. Gail Lowe is not quite so zealous as a rival candidate, Cynthia Dunbar, who believes that "intelligent design"—i.e. religion—should be taught in public school biology classes. Nor is she as bad as Don McLeroy, a creationist whose appointment for another term as chairman was rejected by the state Senate.

Lowe is a trimmer. She is not as outspoken as Dunbar or McLeroy, though she often voted with them in a bloc of seven social conservatives. She apparently believes that there is scientific evidence to support the notion that a supernatural Supreme Being created Man and Earth, and wants this weighed equally with Darwin's theory of evolution, which she finds inherently flawed. She told Texas Monthly that she and other creationist sympathizers "don't believe evolution ought to be taught as a fact."

Which is sad, as it contributes to the general dumbing down of our nation. And it is a bit scary, for those whose kids attend public schools in other states, in that textbook publishers tend to ponder the huge Texas market when they edit their biology texts.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I caught up with Sen. John Kerry this week and asked him about, among other things, the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Kerry, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, disclosed that he's decided to hold oversight hearings on the Obama administrations handling of the war. You can read about it at GlobalPost.

Kerry is one of the few top government officials who can impact U.S. policy to have fought in Vietnam. He soured on the war, and came home and enlisted in the antiwar movement, which made him a hero to American liberals.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Every once in a while I forget our president made his bones in the politics of Chicago. He's so dignified, you know.

And then I am reminded by a little item like this: Conservative legal scholar Douglas Kmiec has been nominated to serve as ambassador to Malta.

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

I suppose that Vanity Fair gets the scalp, in that Sarah Palin announced she would step down as governor and withdraw from... who knows?... after Todd Purdum's article was published with all those juicy anonymous quotes.

But if you really want a sense of why John McCain owes America an apology—and why Palin doesn't dare run for re-election—read this article from Portfolio by author and journalist Joe McGinnis. It shows how untethered Palin really is; examines her claim to fame in Alaska, and gets the Alaskans who know her to speak out on the record.

Well into the piece, Joe suggests that Sarah is our own budding Eva Peron. And, indeed, her rise has suggestive earmarks.