In Tuesday’s Impromptus, I briefly recapitulated a conversation some of us had with John Bolton, the day before. And I left out one of his best lines (crack reporter that I am). At one point, he said, “Being at the U.N. is like being in the Twilight Zone — we’re kind of in a bubble here on First Avenue.”

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Nothing you don’t know, dear readers — but nicely expressed by our ambassador, as always.

Thinking about the New York Times, and what they and other papers have done, I thought of Max Eastman. He was the powerful intellectual, former Communist, who figured in the early National Review. He once said, about certain journalists, I believe, “No, they’re not on the other side — not card-carrying members. But say they were: How, exactly, would their behavior be different?” (They’d be more discreet, for one thing.)

I have paraphrased, but that’s what Eastman said, essentially.

Another thought was: Abe Rosenthal — who passed away in May — is well and truly dead. I doubt his New York Times would have compromised national security, because he knew that an enemy such as the Islamofascists had to be fought.

One more thing: I believe the Times has forfeited its right to admonish the Bush administration about “connecting the dots.” (Duh.) They have forfeited utterly their right to preach to the administration about how to keep Americans safe from terrorist attack.

From now on, their sole role is . . . what? Thwarter in chief?

No, sorry, I’ve one more thought: If President Clinton — Bill, I’m talking about, not the next President Clinton — were in office, conducting this war, would the Times have gone ahead and exposed that program?

There we get to a broader question: If President Clinton, not the hated evangelical from Texas, had taken out the Taliban and the regime of Saddam Hussein — two of the worst, most murderous, most illiberal regimes imaginable — would liberals in general have been hostile?

I’ll say what I’ve said before, repeatedly and tiresomely, I’m sure: A good many people would rather Afghan homosexuals be stoned to death than that they be liberated by George W. Bush.

Anyway . . .

Talk about tiresomeness — I’m back on my girl Laurie Kellman, and the Associated Press. Here is how an article of hers began yesterday (and bear in mind that this is a news story, from a wire service): “The narrow defeat of a proposal to ban flag desecration marks the second time in a month Senate Republicans have lost bids to amend the Constitution in ways designed to inspire social conservatives to vote in the midterm elections.”

That may or may not be true: but it is pure analysis/opinion, friends, not the way to lead a news story (in my opinion — speaking of those).

The article continues in that vein. If Ms. Kellman, and the others, want to work at Mother Jones — or the New York Times! — they should apply there.

A thought about Rush Limbaugh — not original, to be sure. Boy, do the media want to take him down. Boy oh boy, do they want to lay him out. And, in a sense, why wouldn’t they? Few have done more to damage them — to expose and ridicule them — these past 20 years or so.

Keep going, Rush, keep going.

Some of us have thought Dan Rather . . . well, not the most modest nun in the convent. But even I had to gasp slightly when I read a comment of his the other day. Asked about his and Mike Wallace’s departures, which coincide, he said, “We were the great ones.”

Yeah, I see.

Reading about Barack Obama, I got rather worried. According to the AP — the report is here — he “chastised fellow Democrats for failing to ‘acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people,’ and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.”

The telegenic Illinois senator said, “Not every mention of God in public is a breach to the wall of separation. Context matters. It is doubtful that children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance feel oppressed or brainwashed as a consequence of muttering the phrase ‘under God.’” And “having voluntary student prayer groups using school property to meet should not be a threat, any more than its use by the High School Republicans should threaten Democrats.”

Oh my gosh: a sane and understanding Democrat? If this catches on, we could be in trouble.

Then again, it would be good — very good — for the country.

I must say, when I first heard that Guantanamo prisoners were killing themselves for the purpose of irking the Americans and making them look bad, I was skeptical: I mean, that’s sort of an extreme measure, right? (And when Islamists kill themselves, they usually like to take innocents with them — as many as possible.) But I’m pretty much a believer now.

First, Bing West has a very, very interesting piece on Terror War prisoners in the upcoming National Review. He touches on this matter of Gitmo suicides, as on other matters. Also, I was struck by this report, headed “Official: Gitmo Prisoners Waging ‘Jihad.’”

We learned from the report that “the suicides of the three detainees prompted renewed calls from European countries and human rights groups to close Guantanamo.” I had to smile a little. According to the jihad theory, that’s exactly what the prisoners would have wanted, right?

More from the report: “A military doctor at the prison said the three detainees received psychological exams only days prior to their suicides and showed no signs of being depressed . . . The doctor suggested the exams, performed by mental health professionals one to two weeks before the suicides, supported assertions by military officials that the prisoners killed themselves as a political act — not because they were despondent about their prolonged detention.”

So now “the military has implemented strict measures to guard against future suicides, including only giving out bed sheets and blankets during sleeping hours and monitoring detainees in their cells every three minutes.”

And get this: “Any detainee thought to be a suicide risk is placed in a tear-proof anti-suicide smock — which can’t be fashioned into a makeshift noose — for 72 hours and given a psychological exam.”

Tear-proof anti-suicide smocks! Gosh, we’ll do anything to keep those people alive. Would that they valued life as much.

You may recall that, in Tuesday’s Impromptus, I quoted Linda Ellerbee’s tagline, “And so it goes,” and did so in a rather obnoxious way. Well, I heard from her — Linda Ellerbee, that is — and let me tell you: There is no more gracious soul alive. Not in journalism, anyway. I don’t care if she comes out for the abolition of conservative magazines, I’m an Ellerbee fan for life.

In the mid-1980s, she wrote a memoir called And So It Goes, by the way. And her latest book looks delicious: Take Big Bites: Adventures Around the World and Across the Table. As you can see from the cover photo, Linda doesn’t have the glasses anymore — those were as much a trademark as her tagline — but she is still beautiful, and full of class.

Have a little music criticism: For a recordings roundup, published in the New York Sun, please go here.

Have you seen the movie Click? Did you ever read the book The Fermata? If so, you are a very, very, very naughty person (although not as naughty as that book).

Let’s have a little mail. In my previous column, I had an item about some dumb Letterman crack, Rumsfeld, and the attitude of enlistees toward him. This item occasioned a lot of mail, all of it from the military. I thought you’d like to see one letter (or a portion of it):

Sir,

Remember when that soldier in Kuwait used the Tennessee newsman’s planted question to embarrass the SecDef? I was in charge of the protocol team that escorted the secretary and his entourage in Kuwait. Let me tell you, our schedule was constantly disrupted during that trip by the hordes of GIs who wanted to shake his hand, get their picture taken with him, tell him they were with him, etc. It was like being a roadie for Elvis.

Another reader called my attention to this Che T-shirt, which has the words “Resist Oppression.” The reader said, “Is that supposed to be ironic?”

Er . . .

Taking off on a point of mine, a reader wrote, “I teach English in Japan, and some of my students are angling to go study in the U.S. So I do a lot of cultural language prep. Since many of them smoke, one item on my list of things to cover is that smoke-free doesn’t mean what it sounds like to them. They assume it means ‘feel free to smoke.’”

Very nice!

And how about this?

Dear Jay,

I would like to assure you that the term “key fob” is alive and well (and pronounced with proper Midwestern diction). I work for a large financial institution, and we issue some of our customers security devices for their online logins. While we officially refer to these devices (which attach to the keychain) by the vendor’s model name, internally they are almost universally known as “key fobs.” A day doesn’t go by that I don’t hear the term or see it in an e-mail.

Just another example of the linguistic charms of the banking industry. :-)

Not being able to improve on the linguistic charms of the banking industry — I’ll end here!

See you, patriotic dearhearts. (I’m not being jingoistic, McCarthyite, or whatever — just thinking ahead to the Fourth of July!)