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From The Ryskind Sketchbook

It's traditional to close the year by updating your biggest stories. Here goes: Remember how Sandy Berger's defenders said the explanation for his document trespass was his absent-mindedness and penchant for clutter? And yet:

Former National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger, fined $50,000 for taking classified documents from the National Archives, hid the papers under a construction trailer where they later could easily be retrieved, a report yesterday said.

I'd be more horrified about this, except I recently learned that a member of my own family once purloined materials for his first book from the Library of Congress by having his wife drop them out a window to him. So I guess I have no room to point fingers. (For the record, nothing classified, and everything was returned.)