Diabolical! President Bush has timed his nomination of Michael Chertoff as Homeland Security chief to coincide with Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the MacWorld convention. Thus, a nation of left-leaning technophilic taste-makers has to struggle to focus on the news at hand rather than the $500 dollar, cute-as-a-button Mac mini, or, even worse, the $100, completely beautiful iPod shuffle.

Weaker minds than mine would be overloaded by this, and are probably spending their afternoon poring over the technical specs of the new products while haunting the online stores for the shortest waiting periods. But our new Secretary of Homeland security is news, dammit, it’s important, and I shall not be swayed.

So let’s look at Judge Chertoff. One thing that you need to know is that he’s only been a judge for a year. He’s actually quite similar to our previous nominee, a law-and-Xtreme-order type who ensured that our response to 9/11 would involve the curtailment of civil liberties and the detention of hundreds of completely innocent Arab-Americans. Essentially, he’s got the same operating system as Kerik.

And what an OS it is! Big, friendly, easily comprehendible icons. Smooth, intuitive operation that is virtually impervious to pernicious outside influences. And his education and prosecutorial history guarantees that he’s got almost double the RAM of his predecessor!

In short, I’m thrilled. Chertoff is state-of-the-art. He’s sleek, well-designed, and virtually crash-proof. And it all comes in a tiny, attractive package.


[Chertoff (right) with supporter:
Ready for action!]

Of course, Chertoff does have his drawbacks. We’ll need accessories, and his flash memory is stable and cheap, yes, but it does not extend as far as previous models. But all-in-all, one can’t help but be impressed with this dynamic new approach to such a vital niche…

…er, I gotta go. There’s this other site where I have to do this… thing.