Battle of the Bulge.

Oh, I really didn't want to go here. But because it seems we just can't avoid "what were you thinking?" news about politics and the bureaucracy today, check out this story from online magazine Salon about the Bush "bulge" in the first presidential debate that has conspiracy theorists in a dither. (It's worth signing up for a "day pass" from the magazine just to see it.) The article quotes Robert M. Nelson, a senior NASA scientist, who's conducted his own analysis of the videotape of the debate and decided that, oh, yes, the president may very well have had an electronic device strapped to his back. Now granted, Nelson did all his "investigating" (including experimenting with wearing various configurations of jackets and shirts and testing them under his bathroom light!) on his own time, using his own computers and software. But do we really need civil servants stepping into this mess at this late stage?