Mission freakin' accomplished.

I don't care how ironic that sounds to some, it's true. Osama Bin Laden declared war on America, waged that war for years (and killed Americans in doing so), then hid for many more years, and was finally hunted down and killed like an animal. Mission accomplished.

I wouldn't care, at this point, if the White House dusted off the old Bush banner and hung it out on the front of the building. Because the mission of killing our number one enemy was successfully accomplished last week, which pushed almost all other news aside. Some days in the news business you find a "single-story day." This was a single-story week. It was that important.

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The Obama White House was decisive and bold in how they went after Osama Bin Laden last weekend. But in all the planning for this mission, it seems that nobody really planned ahead for success. Because, post-raid, the White House has had somewhat of a communication problem explaining everything to the public. This was avoidable, but is also mostly excusable due to the success of the mission (if you think the political arguments are rough now, just imagine what they would be like if we had failed somehow). Doing a practice run of the press management afterwards was probably pretty low on everyone's priority list last week, in other words, and most of the issues raised since then are already mere historical footnotes to the fact that we "got him."

But there's one issue which is indeed a valid one. The White House should never have let the military use the code name "Geronimo" for either the mission or Osama Bin Laden himself (depending on which media report you believe). Even if they had allow its use, they never should have publicly released the fact that the words transmitted to indicate success were "Geronimo E.K.I.A." (or, if used for the mission, perhaps "Geronimo, E.K.I.A.") The acronym stands for "enemy killed in action," and was the signal that Osama Bin Laden was dead.

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Gas prices up, Obama polls down

This is going to be the shortest one of these columns I've ever done.

Every so often, I write a column and it is out of date very soon after it is published. On occasion, my columns are out of date as they are published, because I cannot read the news and write at the same time. But I don't think I've ever written a column before which was provably out of date before I even wrote it. That describes this month's Obama Poll Watch column, however, because the news of Obama's polling numbers in April is already secondhand news. So I wouldn't blame you a bit if you just skipped the whole column entirely, this month.

The death of Osama Bin Laden on the second day of this month has overshadowed Obama's poll numbers from last month already. Obama's poll numbers in May are going to be a lot more interesting (to put it mildly) than his poll numbers from April are going to be. I realize all of this, but I still (for completeness' sake) feel obligated to put out this monthly report of where Obama stood last month with the public.

As I said, this is going to be a very short column, far shorter than our usual in-depth look at what is going on in the polling world. Let's just start with our monthly chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

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I don't write about sports very often. This column isn't even really about sports, either, it's about doing what is right. In baseball terms: "stepping up to the plate." The Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team needs to do so, because it is already overdue.

In case you haven't heard the story, San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stowe traveled down to Los Angeles to catch the "opening day" game versus the Dodgers, a few weeks ago. These two clubs have an intense rivalry, I should add, although that really doesn't excuse any of this or even really make a difference. The Giants fan was brutally attacked in the parking lot after the game (assumably by a Dodgers fan). He was struck without warning, from behind, and then his head hit the pavement. He is likely never to fully recover the resulting brain injuries inflicted upon him, and was still in a coma the last time I heard news of him.

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To me, the most momentous phrase in the American lexicon is when a friend calls up and says some version of the following:

"Turn on your television... to any channel."

This is a scary phrase, for the most part, because of what it implies: some momentous event has not only happened, but all the television networks have switched over to live coverage of the news. You switch on your TV, and you don't even have to hunt for whatever's going on, because there it is on all of the possible serious channels. Last night, America had another of these moments.

What made it different than all the other such "any channel" moments in the past decade, though, was that the news was not bad. We did not hear about a natural disaster occurring, we did not hear about a space shuttle disintegrating, and we did not hear about a war starting. Instead, we heard about the death of America's number one sworn enemy, Osama Bin Laden. While realizing that "celebrating" anyone's death is not just a little bit unseemly, it was hard to see last night's news as anything but good for the United States of America.

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This is going to be a somewhat surprising column introduction, for our regular readers. For new or occasional readers, I'd have to recommend just skipping this whole introduction entirely, and scrolling down to the awards section and the talking points for the semi-serious commentary. Because I'm about to talk about something I've been absolutely ridiculing all week long -- the royal wedding. And how the American media missed a joke (not to mention a kiss), despite spending millions of dollars in coverage in an orgy of "reporting on the shiny and the distracting, and calling it news." In other words, they couldn't even get it right at their absolute shallowest. Which is why I certainly won't be offended if you just skip this entire section. In other words, I can't believe I'm about to do this... but here goes.

For reasons which surpasseth all understanding (at least to myself), I was actually up very early this morning, before the dawn as a matter of fact. This was due to a scheduled television appearance which, unfortunately, did not occur (for technical reasons). Since I was up, though, I caught the tail end of the British royal wedding, which (for us Pacific Coast Time folks) happened in the middle of the night. Surprisingly enough, I have a few things to point out about the event.

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In all the foofaroo over President Obama holding himself above Hawai'ian law by actually obtaining his "original" birth certificate (my humble prediction: sooner or later, some Republican is going to excoriate Obama for "breaking Hawai'ian law" over this incident), nobody has taken the time to apologize to Hawai'i, which I think is a shame. Because some mighty vile insinuations have been leveled towards the state in the preceding few years, by conspiracy theorists wide and far.

But that's OK. Hawai'i can take a joke. Even the joke of birtherism -- Hawai'i takes it all in stride.

I offer up, as evidence of this fact, the "reporting" done in Hawai'i by Triumph The Insult Comic Dog.

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Assassination, as a foreign policy option, is supposed to be completely forbidden to America. That's the theory, at least. But in our post-9/11 world, the once-unthinkable is now increasingly being seen as a viable option. The moral discussion of whether or not America should engage in assassination, though, hasn't even really begun in any noticeable way. Which is a shame, because the country as a whole should consider what its leaders are doing in this respect. Especially while we're bombing Tripoli, once again.

Assassination, as a concept, has been around pretty much as long as written records have existed. There are assassinations in the Old Testament of the Bible, and in the writings of Sun Tzu in China. In Rome, assassination was extremely common. Machiavelli mentions it favorably in The Prince. But defining what is (and what is not) actual assassination is harder than one might think.

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[Program Note: We are taking a break from our normal columns today for a very important reason. We apologize in advance for the lack of objectivity in today's offering. But seeing as how what we were working on for today was nothing more than a few pages of pure snark directed at air traffic controllers, it's probably best for all concerned that we take this break. If you're interested, this (unwritten) column would have heavily relied on the lyrics to Mike Oldfield's "Five Miles Out" (from the album of the same name), which you can read for yourself, and then pretty much understand what I would have written, anyway.]

It's that time of year again!

Netroots Nation, the big convention of lefty bloggers held annually by the Daily Kos crowd, is only a few short months away. Naturally, this means the online voting is getting fierce for the scholarships provided to worthy bloggers by Democracy For America.

And we here at ChrisWeigant.com simply cannot stay on the sidelines. Once again, we strongly, strongly urge all of our readers to cast their vote online for Matt Osborne to win one of these scholarships.

Matt is not only a friend of the site (whom we met electronically here in the comments section initially, and then in person at last year's Netroots Nation conclave), but is also a very hardworking blogger in his own right. If you haven't checked out the Osborne Ink site before now, you are quite honestly missing out on some topnotch blogging.

Matt was worthy of a scholarship last year, and he is just as worthy of a scholarship this year. I encourage everyone to cast your online vote for Matt right now, and after you've done so, keep checking back on the leaderboard page to see how he's doing in the voting. If he makes it into the top three vote-getters, he automatically will be awarded a scholarship.

I call upon the ChrisWeigant.com community to come through for Matt. He is the most deserving blogger I know for such an honor, and we should do everything we can to help him achieve it again this year.

So -- what are you waiting for? Go vote for Matt! The time is now! Cast your vote, and tell your friends!

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Most intelligent political analysts' reaction (right, left, and center) to the news that Donald Trump may be considering a run for the presidency could be summed up as some version of: "You have got to be kidding me." Followed quickly by: "This is going to be so much fun!" But the real punchline to this joke of a candidacy was actually on the punditocracy, when Trump's poll numbers took off and soon put him either in the lead or very close to it for the Republican nomination. Republican voters, it seems, aren't following the punditocracy's lead on "The Donald."

What it all means, from my perspective, is not very much. There are two basic trends at play here. The first is the fact that the political chattering class reads far too much into polls taken way too early. The second, which stems from the first, is that at this point "name recognition" is one of the biggest factors in whose name winds up on top of the list. Donald Trump's celebrity value is showing up loud and clear on the straw polls taken in the past few weeks. But this doesn't mean he is even going to run -- and if he does, it's likely not going to get him very far.

If you're reading this column, it's a good bet that you already know names such as Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty. But not many average American voters have. The politically-aware crowd is already vetting the Republican candidates (and possible candidates) and weighing their chances of success (hence the reference to "this column") -- but most Americans are simply not that interested at this point in time. Meaning Trump may be one of the only names in the list of possible candidates they've even heard of -- which can drive poll results like the ones we've seen in recent weeks.

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