Sometimes I hate being rational. Sometimes I just want to cut loose and wallow in a big, fat, juicy conspiracy theory or two, particularly when there are news events that seem -- how can I put this? -- unusually well timed for the purposes of Bush and Rove.

Take the West Virginia doctors’ strike. Surgeons and others in that state are going on leaves of absence to protest high malpractice-insurance costs. By a remarkable coincidence, at just this moment the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress are planning to press for a "tort reform" bill that would limit malpractice awards for "pain and suffering" to $250,000.

Now, no one thinks you’re a nut if you suspect CIA involvement in, say, the goings-on in Venezuela. But it would be downright irrational to believe that the Bushies would try to import this tactic stateside and foment a strike here -- involving doctors, no less --just to serve their domestic political ends.

Wouldn’t it?

The other recent news event for which a dark conspiracy would be a highly satisfying explantion is Dr. Bill Frist’s timely roadside assistance at the scene of a Florida traffic accident on New Year’s Day in which passengers were ejected from their vehicle.

If I were a hardcore, tinfoil-wrapped conspiratorialist, I could blithely, satisfyingly imagine a Bush operative -- or a President himself -- so evil that he would sabotage a family’s SUV, killing a little girl and injuring five others, just so the White House’s handpicked congressional factotum could ring in the new year with an act of heroism. At the very least, I could imagine a lesser conspiracy -- say, the delivery of a police scanner to the Florida home of the good doctor/senator, sent there from a D.C. address by a man with the initials "K.R.," accompanied by a note reading, "Use this wisely." Frist does fly to Africa on a regular basis to perform surgery, so is it unimaginable that he might spend an evening or two monitoring the law-enforcement frequencies, car keys I hand, intending to hop in the car and "happen" upon some folks in distress, mere days before his debut as majority leader?

Naw -- I don’t believe any of this nonsense.

And I hope you don’t, either. So don’t go spreading this around as rumors, OK? I’m just goofing off here.