'Tis the season for holiday miracles, yessirree, and we think we may have spotted the very first one of the year! Well, okay, technically we didn't spot it; it was faithful viewer Dan Green who forwarded us the CNET article. And come to think of it, whoever wrote the CNET article must have spotted it before him, and any of the various sources quoted in the article presumably knew before us, too. But trust us: we're right up near the top of that list-- the list of people who noticed that Microsoft has zero security patches to issue this month! If that doesn't qualify as a bona fide miracle, nothing does. Seriously, zero security patches from Microsoft? In a whole month? It makes the virgin birth look like that "look, my thumb came off" trick you use to freak out your two-year-old nephew.

Oh, wait-- we just noticed that while there are, indeed, zero security patches this month, there's a decidedly greater-than-zero number of recently-discovered holes to plug. In other words, the holes are there (such as "seven Internet Explorer flaws found in late November"), and Microsoft just hasn't gotten around to fixing them yet. Quoth Microsoft's security program manager: "It is not that we are not doing anything, it's just that we don't have a patch ready in the pipeline." Translation: "We're not doing anything."

Now that we look at it, that's not much of a miracle at all. Heck, if anything, Microsoft not patching flaws is probably more in character, not less. Guess we should have read further than the headline.

Of course, now the fact that the Department of Homeland Security flunked a security check by a congressional oversight committee makes all that much more sense. Faithful viewer eric tipped us off to a Washington Post story which reports that the DHS, which is "the government's lead agency on matters of Internet security"-- topped the list of seven federal agencies who scored an "F" in the subject of network security. Kinda makes you feel all warm and sunny inside, doesn't it? And not at all like barricading yourself in your house with a few dozen guns and a stockpile of anthrax medication.

The DHS head's response was weak, weak, weak: "If the evaluation is accurate, then there's no sense in whining whether or not it's reasonable to expect us to be secure already... if we're insecure, we need to be honest and candid with ourselves and we need to take a stance that we'll do what it takes to put the government's house in order." Do what it takes? So, what, does that mean the DHS will break its dramatically ill-conceived $90 million contract with Microsoft and get that flaw-ridden junk off of the department's 140,000 computers? Because, you know, that would be a holiday miracle we could print on a freakin' t-shirt.