What Caught My Eye Today

National Security - The Bush administration is poised to suspend a major post-9/11 security initiative to cope with increasingly angry complaints from Americans whose summer vacations are threatened by new passport rules. The proposal will temporarily waive a requirement that U.S. passports be used for air travel to and from Canada and Mexico, provided the traveler can prove he or she has already applied for a passport. The suspension in the rules is aimed at clearing a massive backlog of passport applications at the State Department that has slowed processing to a crawl. Some officials said the change would last several months; others said as long as six months. Let me see if I've got this straight...the White House had to tweak its national security policy to accommodate summer vacation? I think we need to revisit our priorities.

Russia - Vladimir Putin, bitterly opposed to a U.S. missile shield in Europe, presented President Bush with a surprise counterproposal Thursday built around a Soviet-era radar system in Azerbaijan rather than new defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Bush said it was an interesting suggestion and promised to consider it. Putin's formula would force a major rethinking of U.S. plans for defending Europe against attack from hostile regimes such as Iran or North Korea. Putin's counterproposal would use an aging radar installation at Gabala in northern Azerbaijan, a central Asian country bordering the Caspian Sea, to watch for missile threats. Rather than build interceptor rockets in Poland, Putin suggested using missiles on U.S. Aegis cruisers to shoot down any threat. The nerve of this guy. Coming up with a viable solution that we didn't think of ourselves? Who does this jerk think he is?

Iraq - The four-year U.S. military death toll in Iraq passed 3,500 after a soldier was reported killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad. The mounting U.S. casualties, most by makeshift bombs placed in potholes on roads or in fields where troops conduct foot patrols, come as American troops work with Iraqi forces on the streets and in remote outposts as part of a joint crackdown on sectarian violence. No smart-ass remarks on this item. Just a prayer for the safe return of our troops as soon as possible.

Immigration - A sharply divided U.S. Senate on Thursday threw into doubt the fate of the plan backed by President George W. Bush to revamp U.S. immigration laws and left lawmakers scrambling to salvage the fragile deal. The Senate fell 27 votes short of the 60 needed to limit the debate and advance the bill as amended toward a final vote (63-33 against advancing the bill), dealing a serious blow to the comprehensive effort to overhaul immigration law before Bush leaves office in January 2009. Republicans said they needed more time to consider amendments to the complex and controversial legislation. Democrats accused them of trying to kill the bill by prolonging debate and said Bush needs to get his fellow Republicans in line if he hopes to win the major legislative achievement during his final months in office. Meanwhile, a public opinion poll showed Americans were ambivalent about the bill. The poll said most people surveyed supported its objectives, but about 41 percent of those who had heard about the legislation were against it. So to sum up, the Senate cannot make up its mind again and the public doesn't seem to care one way or the other. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Paris Hilton - Hotel heiress Paris Hilton was let out of jail early and put under house arrest on Thursday, drawing fire from prosecutors and court officials and sparking public debate about celebrity justice. A statement from the Los Angeles Superior Court said the decision to release Hilton for unspecified health reasons after she had served three days of her three-week sentence was made without the consent of the sentencing judge. Officials said Hilton was sent home early on Thursday wearing an electronic ankle bracelet to track her movements and ordered confined to her Hollywood Hills house for 40 days. Now now, those broken fingernails can develop into nasty infections if not properly tended to. Let's all give Paris a break shall we?

Hockey - The Anaheim Ducks became the first California-based team to sip from the Stanley Cup after their 6-2 Game Five victory over the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday. It also marks the third straight time the Cup will find a home in the southern United States following victories by the Carolina Hurricanes (2006) and Tampa Bay Lightning (2004), bringing credibility to ice hockey's non-traditional markets. But what their success has failed to attract is the motherlode of new fans to a game which remains very much a niche sport below the Canadian border. The first two games of the best-of-seven series available on the NHL's U.S. cable partner Versus, averaged only 500,000 viewers. When the series switched to NBC the ratings were equally gloomy, Game Four pulling in just over one million viewers matching the network's lowest ever rated prime-time broadcast. That's got to hurt. Reruns of Law and Order on TNT (and pretty much every other cabe channel in existence pull in better numbers than that.

Yachting - The America's Cup is now set. Swiss entry, Alinghi, will face Emirates Team New Zealand in a best of 9 series starting June 23. And yes, you can catch all the action live on...that's right, Versus. It's got to add insult to injury for the NHL to have the same media presence in the U.S. as a quadrennial boat race.