Once again, my muse is on an unannounced hiatus. Which may, perhaps, be an inconvenience to my regular readers (all three of you), but it seems to be unavoidable -- the inconsiderate minx doesn't tell me her travel plans, so I'm quite unable to inform the rest of you. And while she's either off on siesta at Capo, or teaching a platoon of incensed female bloggers proper combat discipline for their final assault on Kevin Drum, I'm stuck passing along a few bare links to stories you should already be aware of anyway. So, before I embarrass myself any further, here we go:

Susan Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla has been regularly quoting the TBR news site which I've irregularly mocked. That said, she's also been doing some digging of her own, and found some of its claims echoed from much more credible sources than "The Voice of the White House."

One of its most incendiary allegations is that Dubya's crew has been systematically underreporting casualties from Iraq. You can find a list of more mainstream reports suggesting as much here, but you'll miss the biggie -- a post pointing out that even though the official count of wounded is at around 10,000, more than 20,000 soldiers have been treated at Landstuhl Germany alone.

Another hobbyhorse of "The Voice of the White House" is the aerial assault on Iran which he's been predicting Any Day Now for months. Scott Ritter is now predicting it for this summer. Ritter is, you will recall, the former weapons inspector who was widely mocked before the war for his unbelievable contention that Saddam had no WMD.

Speaking of wild claims, one of the key Republican House leaders claimed at a convention last week that we're continuing to find evidence of Saddam's WMD programs. It turns out that these guys can't even quote Fox News right.

That'll do for now. When the muse returns (in extreme high dudgeon, I'll expect, about the rude guy at the taxi stand at the airport), there's something to be said about right wing definitions of loyalty, civility, and decorum -- but she's on tour somewhere, and I'm afraid it'll just have to wait.