Senators are shocked and concerned at gossip alledging UN Ambassador designate John Bolton may not be a fun boss (Never mind that this is a beam many of them might pull from their own eyes).

Management style apparently, suddenly outweighs foreign policy qualifications and work experience. Maintaining employee self-esteem is the important thing at the UN, sensitive Democrat legislators aver, and a couple of Republicans apparently agree.

So, they've reportedly turned to the ultimate good boss, Colin Powell. His advice has not been disclosed, though the Guardian claims to know, as usual, thanks to their reporter's incredible psychic powers.

That, or leaky Senate staffers who will say anything to Bork one of President Bush's nominees.

The Wendy's finger food lady has been arrested on unspecified charges. Somebody must've fingered her... (Sorry! We offer out best apology yet for that one).

Japan offered its best apology yet to China today.

Want to express your views on the burning theological issues of the day to the new Pope? Your prayer is granted, my child: Just shoot him an email at benedictxvi@vatican.va .

Just like John Paul II, the first wired Pope, he'd love to hear from you. Or, you can just visit his old fan club and find out what he thinks about things without even asking.

Another more worldly perspective is that the advent of a new Pope is a good chance to make a little money.

After what seemed like a tiny respite from such things, terrorists have kidnapped another American civillian, having apparently learned they get no results from holding GI Joe dolls hostage.

For good measure, they blew up 2 car bombs in Baghdad, killing 16 innocent people to make their very important political point.

One of the most messed up of modern feminists, Andrea Dworkin, has died at age 58. The most famous of her many hysterical pronouncements: "Marriage is a legal license to rape," (Letters From a War Zone, 1989).

Pope and future Saint John Paul II has been laid to rest under Saint Peter's in Rome, not in Poland as some had speculated -- though his will, released yesterday, indicates he contemplated it for awhile.

Some have a rather jaundiced view of him, it seems, mainly because the Pope held that God invented your sex life and has something to say about.

As we all know, sex was declared the holiest and most sacrosanct area of life in 1968 by Saint Infantus Boomerus, and suggesting that there are any restrictions upon it is generally recognized as the unpardonable sin.

Remember all those polls showing americans overwhelmingly in favor of yanking Terri Schiavo's feeding tube and letting her starve to death over 13 agonizing days? Well, now that she's safely dead, it turns out we didn't think that after all, says this Zogby Poll.

Hopeful for the future, perhaps, but quite too late to stop an atrocity. Not that the courts would have allowed that anyway.

"What this world needs," says UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, skipping desperately away from scandal, "is a good 5 cent human rights body!"

There is bus service from India to Pakistan, and vice versa.

This is significant because for the last 60 years they've mostly just blown up each other's busses. Now they're trying not to.

After exploring the red planet with such spirit, Spirit and Opportunity had their opportunity to explore Mars extended 18 months.

Iraqis have now chosen their President (Jalal Talabani -- a Kurd!), and two Vice-Presidents (a Shiite and a Sunni). Saddam Hussein tuned in from his prison cell to watch the action. This is significant, if for no other reason, because prior to this Iraqi Kurds have mainly played the role of WMD guinea pigs.

Now for the hard part: A Prime Minister. As stated previously on Gnomon, this will most likely be a Mr. Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shiite.

Alan Greenspan says exorbitantly high oil prices are good for us -- in the long run.

Comforted in this knowledge, prices went down.

Meanwhile, the body of Terri Schiavo -- for whose life John Paul pleaded and whose death he denounced -- has been autopsied, cremated, and shipped to Pennsylvania by court order.

He was derided by those who hate the idea of true moral authority, but beloved by virtually everyone else -- irrespective of religious or cultural dividing lines. Pope John Paul II is dead at age 84.

Some are saying the most consequential Pope since John XXIII or Pius IX has died. The Vatican says, "Not yet."

Terri Schiavo finally sucumbed to her enforced starvation yesterday, of course -- even as we were writing our final update.

This Blog has been somewhat purposefully consumed by the story of her final days, as many have noticed. During this period, we have received messages from well- and ill-wishers asking, "Why are you devoting so much time to this?"

Insisting, "There are other, more important things to write about!"

Demanding, "Get off the Schiavo thing! We get it already!"

Gnomon subscribes to the deuteronomic school of history: Good nations, in the judeo-christian sense of the word, prosper; bad nations eventually founder. Naive as it no doubt sounds to cynical political science professors, American has throughout its history tried as a whole to be a "good" nation.

As we pointed out in our first article, this was not a watershed in that we were doing something we've never done before. We have starved unwanted babies and disabled people to death for at least a decade now. But it was a profound crisis point in American history because this practice was for the first time brought squarely into the public consciousness and we were compelled to take sides.

John Leo has a very well-written article about this in the latest US News. Bioethics started as a judeo-christian effort to encourage a bias towards life in these difficultsituations. But secular scholars have hijacked Bioethics and made it into another tool to cheapen life, to progress toward euthanasia, and eventually eugenics, and frankly turn 2000 years of morality (that they eschew) upside down.

Folks, listen to your old Gnomon: Why did we harp on Terri Schiavo? Why is this episode so important? Why should you be concerned?

Because this was the point at which we as a people were confronted with the choice between convenience and life -- convenience or life on the road to a Gattaca-like, eugenically purified society as determined by the elite. If the push polls are to be believed, we chose convenience.

Our fervent hope is that this will mark the point we begin to walk back amoral bioethics laws we've allowed to malignantly bloom on the periphery of our conciousness for the past few decades, and rennovate the arrogant, legalistic judiciary that enforces them.

Our fervent hope is Terri Schiavo will spur this nation will reconsider before it is too late -- and choose life.