The Zeitgeist Checklist

The Zeitgeist Checklist is back. With the blessing of Charles Freund, who devised the checklist in the 1980s for Washington City Paper, Outlook and Slate.com are today reviving this weekly gauge of what Washington is thinking about.

	#1 GIT-NO War on Terrorism: The Supreme Court rules the Geneva Conventions are more than "quaint," as one Bushlawyer had put it. The Court delivers a spanking to the administration over its plan for military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay detainees. The court, in the Hamdan case, also rebukes new Chief Justice John Roberts, reversing the ruling he made in favor of the administration when he was an appellate judge.
	#2 NOT TOO SWIFT Homeland Security: It's open season (again) on the press, with Dick Cheney leading the firing squad and Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.)accusing the New York Times of treason for publishing information about how the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication(SWIFT) is helping to track terrorist finances. Never mind that much of the information had already been public; it's good politics to blame the media.
	#3 PUT OUT MORE FLAGS Culture Wars: Confronting budget deficits, a war and the looming bankruptcy of entitlement programs, the Senate decides to get serious - about flag burning. After two days of debate, the upper chamber comes within one vote of passing aconstitutional amendment to banflag desecration. The Senate was reacting to the nationwide wave of four flag burnings this year alone.
	#4 BERKSHIRE GIVEAWAY Philanthropy: In typically modest fashion, investor Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest man, says he'll give the bulk of his $44 billion fortune to the Gates Foundation. The combined largesse, dwarfing even the Rockefellers, may have made Oracle Corp.'s Larry Ellisonfeel like the invisible man. He rescinds a $115 million gift to Harvard.
	#5 INTERNAL RAINFALL SERVICE Weather: The federal government is routinely halted at the first sign of snow flurries, but this may be the first time it was shut down by rain. A foot of rain forces the closure of the IRS, the National Archives and the Justice Department. But the long arm of the law remains above water: Rush Limbaugh is detained in Florida for possession of Viagra.
	#6 AMNESTY IRRATIONAL Iraq: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki continues to reach out to insurgents with talk of an amnesty. He says those who have killed Americans and Iraqis won't be eligible, but Washington is suspicious. Will those who only maimed Americans be released? And what if they killed, say, Italians? Meantime, insurgents respond to Maliki with a series of deadly attacks on markets, police officers and military patrols.
	#7 GREEN GROVER, GREEN GROVER Abramoff: The Senate Indian Affairs Committee's report on theJack Abramoff affair stirs up trouble for three GOP players: Rep. Bob Ney (Ohio), anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and Georgia lieutenantgovernor candidate Ralph Reed. The report hints that Ney lied about his contacts with Abramoff's Indian clients, and says Norquist was a conduit for Reed to get Abramoff client money. "Call Ralph re Grover doing pass through," says one Abramoff e-mail from 1999.
	#8 TOO DARN HOT Economy: The government reports that the economy grew at the scorching annual pace of 5.6 percent in the first quarter. Does it mean the Fed has lost its ability to slow things down - and head off inflation? Ben Bernanke's Fed breaks a record: With this week's interest-rate increase, rates have been going up for 25 months.
	#9 DONG LONG-STANDING North Korea: Washington's interest is fading in North Korea's threat to test its Taepo Dong 2 long-range missile. There's no reason for this other than a short attention span. The Dong is believed to be on a launchpad, and the charter member of the Axis of Evil has not backed down
	#10 GOING, GOING, GHANA World Cup: Seems we dropped the ball. Only 8 percent of Americans were watching the soccer extravaganza, according to the Pew Research Center. And that was before Ghana eliminated the U.S. team in the first round.

By Dana Milbank - The Washington Post