Reports like that are always cause for concern but they’re also common and, knock on wood, have yet to prelude an actual attack since 9/11. Upon hearing such a report most of us go on with our lives undeterred. We know that security professionals are on the job and that the average terrorist-wannabe is a lot dumber than we sometimes give him credit for.

Moreover, we aren’t going to be intimidated out of living our lives. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — right? Not for all of us it seems. The story goes on to say…

Without mentioning a specific threat to the Capitol, Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott (R-Miss.) ominously advised Thursday that Congress needed to pass changes to terrorist surveillance laws before leaving for the August recess and warned that otherwise “the disaster could be on our doorstep.”

When asked if people should leave Washington, DC, during the month of August, Lott responded, “I think it would be good to leave town in August, and it would probably be good to stay out until September the 12th.”

How pathetic is that? A legislator from the most powerful country in the world says we should be too frightened to stay in the nation’s capital.

I know he’s probably not that much of a wimp and is just using the threat of violence to advance his political ideology. Even so, I think it says something that a senator would not feel a sense of shame at displaying such ostensible cowardice in the face of a threat.

But all’s well that ends well. It looks like Congress is on the way to approve the expanded governmental powers that the Senator was talking about, so if Chicken Little Lott’s logic was sound, we may not have to worry about that suitcase nuke or other equally likely threats after all.

But I’d have to drive an hour to get there, so I pretty much never go. And that’s why DC is the worst place for pizza I’ve ever been in. Not because good pizza doesn’t exist, but because the appalling ratio of great to less-than-great pizza.

I live in Northwest DC and there are a ton of places that will deliver to me — Listrani’s, L’Appetito, Cafe Romeo, Philadelphia Pizza Company* and a few others. And some of these places aren’t bad at all … but none of them knock my socks off. I can do about as well cooking up a Wolfgang Puck’s frozen pizza.

I fear the day when I have friends in from NYC or Chicago or San Francisco and they suggest we get a pizza delivered. I’ll have to explain to them that, while we can get a pizza delivered, we can’t get a great one delivered. Will they, who will likely be used to living within walking distance of at least one phenomenal pizza place, even be able to wrap their heads around that?

*Don’t ask me ask me how Philadelphia Pizza Company got its name — as far as I can tell its only location is in DC and it bills itself as “New York Style Pizza.”

They’re all my dawgs even if only Eddie, the Husky mix, is my d-o-g dog.

Shouldn’t you skip work/school/whatever and drive your dog(s) to the park before it gets hot again? Or, if you don’t have a dog, isn’t it time you get one? Nevermind that Men’s Health ranks DC 49th out of 50 in their survey of the best cities for dogs.

Don’t live somewhere dog friendly? Time to move. Don’t like dogs? Then stay in, jerk. Watch Turkish Star Wars on YouTube or something.

Seen today on 44th St. NW.

Commuting quiz: It’s rush hour, you’re coming west out of Georgetown, passing by the Key Bridge, and you want to get on the Whitehurst Freeway without making the lengthy trip it would take to turn around and merge on to the Whitehurst ramp from the opposite direction — how can you possibly do that?

Answer: Get a diplomatic plate, like Mr. GD0108 here, come to a stop that gridlocks the intersection behind you, ignore the angry honking, bully your way forward until oncoming traffic stops, cut across, get on to Whitehurst and give an evil laugh as you speed away from the insignificant commoners of your host country.

WASHINGTON — GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani will unveil his “Justice Advisory Committee” this week on a two-day swing through heavily Republican western districts of Washington, D.C., home of the first presidential caucuses in 2008.

This is big news on many levels. The biggest surprise to me is that my NW neighborhood is heavily Republican. I know some GOP staffers live around here and that Karl Rove’s house/lair of villainy is somewhere in the area. But outside of the one guy from the dog park with the Bush bumper sticker (which I had suspected was there for ironic effect), I thought I was in a Volvo-driving, NPR-listening, tax-and-spend-loving, embryo-killing, criminal-hugging liberal paradise.

Note: Other sites claim that Iowa is the home of the first presidential caucuses, but that’s probably just spin.

Over ten years ago I saw the (real) Smashing Pumpkins play the 9:30 Club, at the club’s then-new (or still-new, if you’re enough of an old-timer) current location. I remember walking home in a blizzard because my friend didn’t want to risk going down side roads.

I was thinking of catching an encore of sorts this Tuesday, but since I’ve been stuck in ticket.com’s virtual waiting room for over 30 minutes, it’s not looking too good.

It then showed a couple of shots of her walking. Many in the audience laughed at these shots because she was walking on the sidewalk on K Street … right outside the AMC Loews Georgetown 14.

That’s my six-pack of wine sitting lonely at the customer service desk of the 1855 Wisconsin Avenue Safeway. See, Safeway has these dandy wine-carriers that are supposed to get you a 10% discount if you fill them. They say so right on the side: “Mix or match 6 bottles of wine or spirits, 10% off.” The wine prices even list what the price is when part of the 6-pack discount.

The only catch is Safeway doesn’t actually give you the discount. Last time that catch cost me $9 and I didn’t realize it until I was home. But that had been over a month ago and I figured they would have fixed it by now. Plus I would check this time.

The clerk rang me up and asked if I wanted to make a donation to prostate cancer. Going on the assumption that he meant a donation to fight prostate cancer, I said, “Sure, round it up … and I got the 10% discount for the wine, right?” He looked at my receipt a long, long time and said no. He sent me to customer service.

I waited over 10 minutes at the hilariously named customer service counter. There was no one there. A woman who had been there before me gave up and left. Before I died and turned in to a mummy, an employee showed and I explained my problem. She took my receipt, which showed my wine total to be $49.74, and she went and talked to someone. She came back, punched a lot of things into her computer, and handed me $2.86 because, obviously, $2.86 is 10% of $49.74.

DC is only a good city for car spotting if you like looking at SUV’s and BMW’s. That doesn’t bother me because I am not what you’d call a car guy … except when it comes to a beauty like the VW Karmann Ghia. I have a big-time crush on this one that likes to hang out around R Street NW.