Aside from the additional 20 degrees of warmth, what you want when you return to D.C. from a poorly-thought-out trip to Toronto is to see a young Iraqi journalist pelting George Bush with his shoes. Via Teddy, ThinkProgress has the video:


One of Teddy’s commenters, Erdia, translates what Muntader al-Zaidi, a 28-year old TV reporter, yelled at Bush: "This is the gift from the Iraqis, this is the farewell kiss, you dog" and "This is from the widows, the orphans and those killed in Iraq." Bush, true to form, used the incident to congratulate himself on decimating Iraq in the name of his ill-thought-through ideas about freedom. The New York Times captures the grotesquerie in an elegant manner:

He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as the man’s screaming could be heard outside.

According to the Times, al-Zaidi was "detained on unspecified charges," another hallmark of a free society.