  We study the statistics of the vorticity field in two-dimensional
Navier-Stokes turbulence with a linear Ekman friction. We show that the
small-scale vorticity fluctuations are intermittent, as conjectured by Nam et
al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. vol.84 (2000) 5134]. The small-scale statistics of
vorticity fluctuations coincides with the one of a passive scalar with finite
lifetime transported by the velocity field itself.
