Short Fuse

Palin: A nonpolitical probe, until now
Alaska Republicans have filed suit to halt or delay an inquiry into Governor Sarah Palin's dismissal of the state's public safety commissioner on the grounds that the probe is "political." But stopping the investigation, or delaying the results until after the November election, is not? The dismissed commissioner has made a serious claim -- that Palin removed him for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law, a state trooper-- and it deserves a full airing. Plus, the investigation was authorized unanimously in July by a bipartisan legislative committee, before Palin was chosen as John McCain's running mate. Who is making it political now?

Traffic:Less road rage through enforcement
It's a predictable part of every rush-hour trip: The impatient motorists who push their way into the intersection and then, when the light changes, end up blocking traffic from the cross streets. In Boston, we tolerate that inconsiderate behavior year after year after year. Not in New York City, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg is willing to spend, rather than hoard, his political capital. His administration, intent on reducing congestion, has initiated a new crackdown on "blocking the box," an offense that can land a $115 ticket. Boston should follow Gotham's example and target drivers who, because they just can't wait, force everyone else to.

Propaganda:Scholarship it isn't
Jerome Corsi, author of "The Obama Nation," is a slippery propagandist who pollutes the public dialogue with insinuation thinly disguised as research. Still, Republican politicocum-publisher Mary Matalin has hilariously called Corsi's attack book "a piece of scholarship"; Rush Limbaugh has pronounced it "pretty damn good"; and Sean Hannity has been happy to lend air-time to Corsi's claims. So it's instructive that FactCheck.org, the widely respected truth squad, put Corsi's book under its nonpartisan microscope. FactCheck's analysis is worth reading in its entirety, but here's a summary: "Jerome Corsi's 'The Obama Nation' is a mishmash of unsupported conjecture, half-truths, logical fallacies, and outright falsehoods." Mary? Sean? Rush?