Brace yourselves for the news.
A major Administration report on nuclear weapons is delayed one month from February 1 until March 1.
Dear readers, I am sure you are shocked, shocked beyond belief to think that the Executive Branch, Congress, state legislatures, non-profit groups, students, authors or even ordinary citizens would ever fail to meet a deadline.
Pundits and experts are opining about the significance of this nuclear policy delay.
It is said that the Administration is mired in bloody internal policy disputes over President Obama’s far-reaching nuclear weapons agenda.
Or the delay means that good guys (whomever they are, or perhaps even good gals, whomever they are) now have a better chance to prevail in the policy battles.
Or the nuclear weapons review will fizzle into deadlock.
Dear readers, it might just be possible that a delay is simply that, a delay. A failure to meet a deadline. A bureaucracy that could not get its act together. An unprecedented act in Washington, DC.
Not since Claude Rains in the movie “Casablanca” discovered there was gambling in “Rick’s Café Américain” have people been so shocked.
So when is a delay just a delay? Ask the former House Majority Leader from Sugerland, Texas, who dances with the stars.