Because of bureaucratic screwups, thousands of U.S. veterans have been unable to get into a VA medical facility. Marine veteran Jeffrey Duck couldn't get out. After he sat waiting in a consultation room at a clinic in Orange City, Va., for more than three hours, Duck realized everyone had left the building and he was locked in. He called 911 and got rescued ... without receiving any medical attention.


"And that's the way it is," Walter Cronkite might say. But it's not the way it ought to be. Instead of the government keeping the public fully informed about America's space program, as in Cronkite's day, the Obama administration's commemoration of the 45th anniversary of the moon landing mission was held behind closed doors. President Obama met with surviving members of the Apollo 11 crew at the White House, but no reporters or TV crews were allowed in the meeting.


Sources who have nothing better to do than monitor Twitter made known these tweets by 88-year-old Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., who has learned a lot in his 58 years in Congress - but not everything: "I'm the last original author of the Clean Water Act, but I have no idea who/what a Kardashian is," he messaged in response to a tweet by someone at the Environmental Protection Agency. After a crash course about "the dizzying world of celebutantes," Roll Call's gossip blog reported, Dingell announced, "Staff has now informed me of what a Kardashian is. I'm only left with more questions."