How humdrum can you get? My hometown paper, the New York Times, today reported that the Senate had approved “$63 billion More for War in Iraq” in a 7-paragraph Associated Press piece at the bottom of page 20. As the fourth paragraph of the piece began, you could find out the evidently even less interesting news that “with the latest infusion of money, Congress will have approved about $500 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other antiterrorism efforts in the five years since the September 11 attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service.”

For the 13-paragraph story that sits above and dominates it, “Wedding Off, Jilted Bride Turns Party Into a Benefit,” the Times actually sent out a reporter, Stephanie Strom. It’s an impressive numbers piece too. “One hundred and eighty guests had tickets from all over the country and the Virgin Islands to come and make a weekend of my wedding,” said the jilted bride, Kyle Paxman before she found out her prospective groom was “cheating on her.” Stuck with the reception costs anyway, she invited 125 women guests, all expected to write checks to charity, and so began “empowering herself” and launching “the healing process.”

Perhaps Ms. Paxman could give the Bush administration a few tips on how to extricate yourself from a sticky situation.