WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Yes, it's that time again -- the time of year you've all been waiting for. Ollie Claus has made his list, he's checked it twice and, believe me, he knows who's been naughty and nice. And unlike in Finland, where the elves have been laid off for Christmas, the elves at this "North" pole have worked hard all year. We've put our heads together and come up with just the right gifts, but instead of enlisting the help of Rudolph and his reindeer, I've got a Marine helicopter squadron to help me make the rounds.

Without further delay, here is a sample of the gifts Ollie Claus has picked for 2003:

For Howard Dean and Maddy Albright, I give each a copy of Sidney "Grassy Knoll" Blumenthal's 1976 work, "Government by Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to Today." This book is chock full of "interesting theories," as Dean might say. In it are essays such as "A New Look at the Zapruder Film"; "From Dallas to Watergate"; and "Richard Nixon and Organized Crime." To rise to the top in today's Democrat Party, such paranoid prose is required reading, and Howard Dean -- who looks more fit to govern Jonestown than the United States -- has.

Of course, I was careful to buy these books at underground bookstores in Greenwich Village -- after all, if John Ashcroft had caught the elves checking them out of the library, he'd have sent men in white jackets to the North Pole to get them.

Oh (expletive deleted)! What the (expletive deleted) should I get for Wesley Clark and John Kerry? Of course, several bars of fine French-milled soap to wash out their dirty mouths. Despite their pathetic performances at the polls, Clark and Kerry are neck and neck in the profanity primary. In Kerry's defense, I suppose I, too, would be reduced to cursing and confusion if I were trailing Al Sharpton in the polls! In fact, Kerry's use of the f-word to Rolling Stone interviewers is probably nothing compared to what his wife Teresa Heinz and his CPA and banker said to him when he unveiled his plan to mortgage the house for his failing candidacy. Since Kerry was a sailor, let me give him a word of advice regarding his campaign that he might understand: Abandon ship!

As for Wesley Clark, get real, Wesley, you're not going to "beat the (expletive deleted)" out of anyone, least of all President George W. Bush. If you do as well in the primaries as West Point's football team did this year, you'll be lucky.

Poor Al Gore. The guy just can't get it right. His bold effort at making an early endorsement in the presidential sweepstakes led him to the most antiwar radical whose views mirror his own, and less than a week after endorsing Howard Dean's pessimistic pronouncements on Iraq, the 4th Infantry Division dragged Saddam out of a rat hole.

Al Gore needs to understand why liberating the Iraqi people is important to America's security, so I am giving him a copy of my latest book, "War Stories: Operation Iraqi Freedom." Besides, the former vice president, whose own books are the literary equivalent of the Edsel, should have a book from at least one best-selling author in his personal library. Continued...