Vacation Interruptus -- Again

Oh happy dog day!

The ventriloquist dummy took a powder, Stephen Lee Myers reports in The New York Times.

There will be many thumbsuckers mulling the whys and wherefores of the dummy's departure, but here's ours (click the photo there or below):

But here's a more important story of this dog day, reported by the AP's Deborah Hastings and published in the Navy Times:

One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

That's just the beginning of the story, which details the BananaRepublic's treatment of whistleblowers in ways you won't believe.