As wily international astronomers placate those mad-dog partisans of Pluto, doesn't the spotlight inevitably shine on "Planet Denny" Hastert?

Help! Those gravitational waves are just sucking us into Planet Denny!

The good news for fans of Pluto is that the planet--or big rock, or whatever the heck it is--is being grandfathered into "planetary" status under a new definition produced by the Planet Definition Committee of the International Astronomical Union, at whose triannual meeting in Prague the proposal was to be introduced today. A vote is scheduled for Aug. 25.

The price of coddling the Pluto-crats is stiff, though. As Dennis Overbye reports in the New York Times ("For Now, Pluto Holds Its Place in Solar System"), in addition to the asteroid Ceres; Pluto's largest moon, Charon; and something called 2003 UB313, "an object orbiting far beyond Pluto in the outer solar system":

"At least a dozen more solar system objects are waiting in the wings for more data to see if they fit the new definition of planethood, which is that an object be massive enough that gravity has formed it into a sphere and that it circles a star and not some other planet."

It was probably just an oversight that Overbye made no mention of House Speaker Denny "I'm So Hungry I Could Eat a Planet" Hastert. It can hardly be coincidence that this new definition sounds as if it was written with our Denny specifically in mind.