Teapot, meet tempest

Unidentified "eye brows" are being raised in DC. It seems Defense Secretary Leon Panetta plans to "spend most weekends and days off at his 12-acre walnut farm in scenic Carmel Valley, where he and his wife, Sylvia, make their home," says the LA Times. You can hear the harrumphing from here. I mean, great jumping jehoshaphat! "Even some of Panetta's friends wonder how he can get away so regularly," speculates the Times (which quoted none of the secretary's compadres). After all, the Times solemnly reports, Panetta's department is "by far the largest in the U.S. government" and it "faces multiple wars and daily crises." Yet Panetta deigns it okay to leave the Pentagon building? What on earth is he thinking? It is truly amazing what manages to get published in the major dailies. Would you believe that this article ― surely a slam-dunk for a Pulitizer ― is 915 words long? There are only two possibilities. Either the LA Times anointed a pimpled-face, summer intern as the approving editor or the paper never heard of a newfangled device available to Panetta when he's away from his office: the telephone.