Help me welcome back Douglas Tallman to the legislative coverage in the Gazette. After essentially going on vacation during the election season, and thereby failing to cover the District races in Montgomery County, Mr. Tallman has a tremendous amount of catching up to do. Perhaps the other reporters who were called away from their usual assignments to cover Mr. Tallman's beat can be of assistance in that.

Meanwhile, in the Washington Post, Marc Fisher continues to pontificate from on high about Washington D.C. Given a front page piece in Sunday's Outlook, he chose parked cars and litter as two critical issues for Mayor Fenty to concentrate on. With all of the serious, life and death matters Mr. Fenty has before him, those hardly seem like issues of import. And Mike Musgrove provided a column extolling the superiority of XBox 360 over the Playstation 3. Just one problem: Microsoft is one of many corporate interests financially intertwined with the Post. And it just happens to manufacture the XBox 360. Hmm.

Finally, no sooner has Gerald Ford passed than we encounter another significant American: Evel Knievel. In a front-page story in yesterday's USA Today, the paper's top sports columnist, Jon Saraceno, caught up with a depleted Knievel who suffers from multiple medical problems. But what an icon. I still remember my plastic Evel Knievel costume and the toys. Today's "extreme sports" do not compare. If Evel Knievel couldn't do it, it couldn't be done. If it seems impossible, you try your best anyway. And if you fail spectacularly, you don't quit; you try it again. Those are American ideals embodied by Evel Knievel.