All of us knew that when Gen. Colin Powell appeared on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday to endorse the candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama, he would make headlines; what we did not know is that he would also offer one of the most eloquent unscripted, uninterrupted soliloquies in the history of American politics. As you can hear for yourself below, it was like something out of a movie (particularly after the 4:27 mark), and it reminds us why Powell was regarded as the nation's great non-partisan, disinterested statesman before the Bush Administration used him to sell the misguided Iraq War and tarnished his reputation forever. In this appearance, he went a long way towards reclaiming it...

Seven cast and crew members working on Oliver Stone's George W. Bush bio-pic W., including Josh Brolin (who is portraying the second Pres. Bush) and Jeffrey Wright (who is portraying Gen. Colin Powell), were arrested just after 2am on Saturday morning following a bar fight in Shrevport, Louisiana. Details are still emerging, but the metaphors/symbolism, on so many levels, cannot be missed: chaos among the Bush Administration; Bush and Powell at odds again; and, most interesting of all, apparently yet another experience—alcohol abuse (see here and here)—that overlaps the lives of Brolin and Bush. (If you missed it, Nat Rogers at The Film Experience site has compiled a tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless chilling list of others.) One can only wonder what will happen next... Brolin choking on a pretzel? Bush shooting a dog?

UPDATE (7/14, 12:42a): The latest version of the story, via Hollywood-Elsewhere, is much less dramatic... apparently, after being asked several times to leave the bar at closing time, the guys were uncooperative, so the police were called in, and Brolin and Wright were charged with interfering with police (a misdemeanor). The only remaining juicy element of this story is that Wright—who always struck me as a rather sedate kind of guy—apparently resisted arrest, and was therefore maced and stun-gunned.