No Rest For The Weary

Weekly commentary by CBS Evening News anchor and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer.

The Fourth of July fell in the middle of last week, so I did what a lot of Americans did and took the whole week off.

By the Fourth of July, the country has usually settled into the summer doldrums. Congress, thankfully, has taken its summer recess, Presidents are taking it easy, the rest of us are thinking vacation thoughts and news organizations dial back.

Not so last week. There was so much news that if they did such a thing, news organizations would have called their reserves to active duty. Talk about an argument against Intelligent Design. It was a week when nothing made sense.

For the first time, NASA sent astronauts into space over the objections of their safety experts. So far, so good on that, thank goodness.

North Korea staged its own Fourth of July fireworks by inexplicably firing seven missiles into the air -- the one that was supposed to scare us turned out to be a dud.

Ken Lay died and some commentators actually suggested it wasn't quite fair for him to escape prison by having a fatal heart attack.

Google made its way into Webster's Dictionary. The bad news is, it is sure to lose its capital G.

The thunderstorms that have been raking Washington got so bad on the Fourth that crowds that had poured onto the Capitol Mall to watch the fireworks took refuge in the subways, and even Porta Potties.

Fortunately, there were no injuries when the storm hit the can.

Did I say that? Hmmm. I better get out of this vacation mode and back to work before I get into trouble.