After a two-day outage, from what I’m told was a bad cable, I’m back. Email will reach me again, so fire away.

Hint #471 that Politics Suck (and yet another reason I don’t like Robert Erlich). From the Baltimore Sun: Ehrlich associate targeted O’Malley.

“The governor had no idea,” Steffen said. “I don’t even think he knows where the Web site is. If anyone is guilty, it is me. There was no outside influence. It was all me.”

Yeah, right.

Gerry Brewster, a Towson Democrat who ran against Ehrlich in the governor’s first congressional election in 1994, said Steffen was well known as “the dirty tricks operative” of Ehrlich’s campaign.

It kinda makes me think of another dirty-tricks operative in the news today.

Romesick. You’ll need QuicktimeVR to view this shot of the Spanish Steps in Rome. (If that link doesn’t work, go here, look for the PANORAMS 2004 pulldown on the upper right side of the page, and open the Spanish Steps link under 2005.) We ate dinner to the immediate left of the Samsung advertisement/monument on the right side of the steps. Our hotel was a mere three blocks up the steps and almost directly as the crow flies behind Ghandi’s head.

In the sad news department, I read this afternoon that Incredible Jimmy Smith passed away today. If you’re not aquainted with Jimmy Smith, he was the absolute tip-top MACK on the Hammond B-3 organ, recording such excellent tracks as “Organ Grinder’s Swing” and “Root Down” (Sampled by the Beastie Boys, who always knew quality when they heard it). Recommended listening from the Dugan archive: Organ Grinder’s Swing, The Blue Note Years, and Back at the Chicken Shack. RIP, Jimmy.