Meanwhile, in other Gordon Brown news, the P.M. is involved in a nasty public dispute with the grieving mother of a British solider killed in Afghanistan who didn't appreciate the misspellings in a handwritten condolence note Brown sent her. This is pretty much the definition of a no-win situation for a politician . . . and it makes me think that the worthwhile practice of handwriting condolence letters (something that Robert Gates does, as I learned in Crowley's terrific profile) is precisely the sort of thing that risk-averse political advisers will eventually put an end to.