Quick, call Homeland Security and hide the silverware.

Officials from county governments all over the country are descending on Washington, D.C. for a National Association of Counties confab. What a convention! An army of Babbits in plaid pants and white, tassled loafers. Imagine the hijinks at the hospitality suite.

None other than our own Bill “Boss” Ryan, the chairman of the Westchester County Board of Legislators is rushing down there to participate in the fun, according to a press release that came over the electronic transom today.

The press release says, “The organization advances issues with a unified voice before the federal government, improves the public’s understanding of county government, assists counties in finding and sharing innovative solutions through education and research, and provides value-added services to save counties and taxpayers money.”

Yes, that’s right. A better understanding of county government. Saving taxpayers money. Value-added services and stuff. That’s what we’re talkin’ about.

The betting here is that The Boss will be in charge of the midnight conga line after he gives a seminar on how to push pay raises past an uncooperative electorate.

Last week, I wrote a column about how poorly the nation’s college students performed on a 60-question civics and history literacy test developed by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. The test was given to 14,000 seniors and freshmen in 50 schools and most failed.

The highest average grade, a D-plus, was recorded at Harvard University. Pretty bad. I took the online test and got an 81.6, a low B. Some colleagues at the newspaper took it as well with mixed results. One guy got a 46, and another got 55 out of the 60 multiple-choice questions right, a 91.6.

You have to read or pay attention in class to do well on that test. But here’s a 20-question “quiz”:http://www.cramersweeney.com/smartmarketing.html which measures how much marketing information about product brands, mascots, jingles and other worthless junk you’ve passively soaked up from years of being bombarded by TV commercials.

The test was sent to me today from by friend Tim Hays of Hastings. He “aced” it. I got 16 out of 20 right, an 80 score.

See how you do.

Tune in today at 12 noon for “High Noon” at 1460 AM, or log onto www.wvox.com. Political analyst Mike Edelman and I will be talking about the upcoming March 4 primaries and how the rest of the campaign for the Whie House seems to be shaping up. If you miss today’s broadcast and want to hear it, come back to this posting and click on the audio-archive link. Calls will be taken today at 914-636-0110.

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Last Saturday, I saw “August: Osage County,” a play that originated with the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago and has gotten rave reviews since it moved to the Imperial Theater in New York City for a limited run.
To say the three-act play was merely about an unhappy family reunion would be a disservice to the author, Terry Letts. I’m not a theater critic, but it was to my mind an outstanding piece of work about the great, complicated, never fully predictable mess of life…and I’ll just leave it at that.
It begins with a monologue from the family patriarch, a heavy drinking poet and college professor who later disappears thereby prompting the reunion of three sisters and other assorted family members, including their preternaturally nasty, pill-popping mothe.
The father was played by Dennis Letts, who in real life was the 73-year-old father of the playwright.
I say “was,” because Dennis Letts died the night before I saw the Saturday matinee. The audience wasn’t informed of that fact. All we knew is that Letts was being replaced by an understudy. I didn’t know Letts had succombed to a five-month bout of cancer until I saw his obituary yesterday.
I’m sure the actors knew, however. And I’m guessing they were told of his passing before Saturday’s afternoon performance.
Their work was electrifying. They acted their hearts out.
When the play was over, the audience gave them a standing ovation. Some of the actors were crying. Standing on the stage, they looked up to the balcony and pointed to someone and clapped for that person, whoever it was. Now I think perhaps it was Terry Letts, or someone else who had been close to the dead actor.
In all the years I’ve been going to the theater, I’d never seen anything like it. This was irony, to say the least.

Howard Wolfson of the Clinton campaign sent out an e-mail to the press last night, extolling Hillary’s gracious closing comments at the end of the debate with Barack Obama in Texas.
Her declaration that she was “honored” to be on the same national stage with Obama was universally praised, but to some it sounded like a valadictory to a faltering campaign.
Even Wolfson’s e-mail was headed, “Final Moment.” Perhaps a Freudian slip?
Here is his statement in full:

“What we saw in the final moments in that debate is why Hillary Clinton is the next President of the United States. Her strength, her life experience, her compassion. She’s tested and ready. It was the moment she retook the reins of this race and showed women and men why she is the best choice.”

Hillary Clinton (and recently John McCain) have been relentlessly hammering Barack Obama for not having enough “experience” to be president.

That’s a problem, alright. But only FOR THEM.

In a sense, both McCain and Clinton have too much experience, i.e. pasts filled with questionable actions and missteps. I’m not defending the piece in The New York Times today about McCain and his supposed relationship with a female lobbyist eight years ago, not by a long shot.

But I am reminded of his involvement further back in time with that savings and loan crook John Keating. That McCain’s political career managed to survive that horrendous scandal is a minor miracle only a Mike “The Miracle-Believer” Huckabee could dream up.

Clinton’s dirt-laundry list is even longer—from Whitewater to pilfering stuff on the way out of the White House.

McCain and Clinton have accumulated experience to such an impressive point that they’ve each fully realized Lord Acton’s maxim about power and corruption. Both of them have been in Washington, too long.

At least McCain is a war hero.

The Clintonistas are a nasty bunch—and they’re trying so hard to dig into Obama’s past to find an illicit tryst, a bribe, an illegitimate child. Anything to hang him.

That’s what they really mean about experience. It’s not Obama’s ability to lead, based on his record that they’re worried about. They’re anxious that his record is actually spotless, free of the mud they desperately need to sling at him in order to pull out the nomination.

For proof, look no further than another story about the presidential race that ran on Page One in the Times next to the McCain piece. Mark Penn, Clinton’s chief adviser said in an e-mail that it was up to “the press to dig deeper and vet him (Obama) now. That’s not our job.”

Translation: We need dirt.

These are the people who profess to lead us. Character assassins.

A big thanks goes out to Nunzio Franchi of Yonkers, who wrote a letter to the editor urging me to run for governor.
About me, Nunzio wrote:
“He could and would get rid of all the corrupt politicians and save the taxpayers millions of dollars that now go into the pockets of the polticians.”
That’s flattering, to be sure. But what fun would we have if there was no one left in government to torment? We need crazy characters to kick around, people like Larry Schwartz, who serves as Westchester County Executive Andy Spano’s attack poodle.
Anyhow, if nominated I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.
Eight years ago, I mounted a write-in Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton and got 12 votes. That was it. Even my own mother voted against me. (She is a Wellesley grad, and they all stick together.)
I still have a lot of leftover bumper stickers…If anyone out there wants one, send me a self-addressed stamped envelope and I’ll send you one.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

It’s an old truth. I’ve personally learned and re-learned the adage many times, sometimes in ways that make me cringe to this day.
But it came back to me in a dramatic way when I was in Arizona, covering the Super Bowl.

The Super Bowl had nothing to do with the fresh revelation, incidentally. The inspiration was a story about a passenger on the Titanic.

In between column deadlines, I took a side trip to the Arizona Science Center in Phoenix where there was a haunting exhibit of relics scooped off the ocean floor at the site where the Titanic’s rusting hulk rests. The supposedly unsinkable ocean liner hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1912 and sank like a stone, taking with it 1,500 men, women and children.

But you saw the movie, so you alread knew that
.
One of the passengers bound for America was 17-year-old Edgar Samuel Andrew, whose hat and slippers are on display at the science center’s exhibit.

Poor Edgar had booked his trans-Atlantic journey on another ship, but a strike forced him to re-schedule his trip two weeks earlier than he had planned. The result was a ticket aboard the Titanic
.
Miffed that he had to leave England at an inconvient time, Andrew wrote a letter to a friend, which also was on display. I jotted it down.

It goes as follows:
“You figure, Josey, I am boarding the greatest steamship in the world but I don’t feel proud of it at all…Right now, I wish the Titanic were lying at the bottom of the ocean.”

The other day I telephoned Andy Spano’s nasty little attack dog and political mastermind, Larry “Bermuda” Schwartz, and invited him to come on the radio with me, but he declined. He said he was going to be “out of town” Thursday.
Larry’s fur really bristled over a couple of recent columns in which I pointed out that an Ardsley building Spano wants to buy for the county Board of Elections happens to be owned and legally represented by major campaign contributors.
The appointed hatchet man couldn’t wait to fire off a scathing letter to the editor, repleted with typos. How dare I question a $13.3 million deal and the motives behind it?
So I thought it might be good radio to put Larry on the air and let listeners ask him questions, too. But he said “no.”
Oh well. It’s an open invitation. I’ll even personally pick Schwartz up and drive him to the WVOX studio in New Rochelle.
Catch “High Noon” at noon, Thursday. Listen by turning to 1460 AM, or logging on to www.wvox.com
We’ll have plenty to talk about.

Sorry fans (or fan), but Westchester’s most vivacious radio program, “High Noon” was preempted today.
I think it was replaced by a special 60-minute interlude with a yoga master, or “The Hootnanny Hour.”
I’m not sure.
Anyway, the show will be back on the air on WVOX next week. I promise.