The strike by the Writer’s Guild of America brought to a halt the taping of the late night talk shows, including David Letterman, Jay Leno and Jimmy Kimmel.
        But despite the work stoppage, writers tried to keep their skills sharp on events in the news. 
        In fact, The Morning Delivery, while strolling through picket lines overheard some writer’s working their material outside the NBC studios at Rockefeller Center and the CBS  lot in Studio City.
        Here are a few lines we picked up.

        1.) Newspaper circulation nationwide continued its downward tumble, daily circulation fell 2.6 % at major U.S. dailies, according to preliminary figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations
        An anonymous source, ``Sore Throat'', informs us U.S. dailies will put into action the following measures in hopes of boosting circulation: a.) Eliminate the opinion/editorial pages, and replace it with comic strips, including, ``Zippy the Pinhead'', ``Funky Winkerbean'', and ``Beatle Bailey''; b.) instead of endorsing presidential candidates in 2008, they’ll give their top recommendation on who should be Fox's next American Idol; c.) They’ll remind readers the best way to ripen green tomatoes is to wrap them with newspapers, and there’s no better way to wrap fish than with a daily newspaper.

        2.) A new Fox/Washington Times poll shows that 77 % of American’s oppose the idea of giving illegal aliens driver’s licenses, including the UFO’s Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich spotted over Shirley MacLain’s Washington home.

        3.) Despite the best intentions, not much was agreed upon in the U.S-China dialogue in Beijing on Tuesday between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chinese President Hu Jintao.  Both did agree that Houston Rocket’s center Yao Ming is a complete menace to opponents in the low -post, but needs to stay healthy if the Rockets hope to compete in the Western Conference.

        4.) The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to approve (11 to 8) the nomination of Michael B. Mukaskey as the next Attorney General, despite reservations voiced by a number of members, when the former Manhattan prosecutor refused to answer whether he considered waterboarding (simulated drowning) to be an illegal form of torture if used on terrorism suspects.
        This wasn’t Mukaskey’s first brush with controversy during the confirmation hearings. The retired federal judge refused to rule out subjecting terrorism suspects to watching the entire season of ABC’s Caveman.

        5.) Senator Hillary Clinton charged her Democratic rivals with piling-on during the last Democratic Debate in Philadelphia last week, labeling it unfair bullying tactics.
        Her opponents, though, were quick to point out the junior senator was guilty of some penalties herself, such as her ``neutral zone infraction’’ for not revealing her true intentions over the war in Iraq and how best to shore up an underfinanced Social Security system,  her `illegal shift’’ for first saying she liked Gov Pataki’s plan for granting driver’s licenses to illegal aliens’, but then saying she wouldn’t endorse it;  and the most egregious penalty of all, during a commercial break, she struck Senator John Edward’s on his head with her forearm, a flagrant foul, normally subject to automatic disqualification, had it not gone undetected by NBC’s Tim Russert and Brian Williams.

-Bill Lucey
billlucey@bellsouth.net