Current Affairs

Yeah, the vice president should have been more forthcoming about his hunting accident, and the White House should have been more forthcoming. As a sports writer, who does not normally talk about politics, said to me, "This IS a big deal. He's the vice president; he doesn't have a private life." About the only thing the delay did was reinforce the stereotypes many hold about the Bush administration -- the secrecy, the obstinancy, all of it.

Well, maybe this is true:

Money doesn't buy happiness, and now there's a study to prove it. Australian researchers found that people in well-off Sydney are among the most miserable in the country, while those in some of the poorest areas are much more satisfied with their lives.

But it's been my experience that money makes shopping for happiness a lot more enjoyable.

Think even lethal injection is a cruel and unusual form of capital punishment? This seems like a pretty good alternative.

Anybody else have a problem with government ordering a business to stock a specific item?

A Massachusetts regulatory board voted on Tuesday to require Wal-Mart stores to stock morning-after contraceptives, two weeks after three women in the state sued Wal-Mart for refusing to fill orders for the pills.

I was glad to see this piece on why the "Brokeback Mountain" breakout meme ("Even Red State conservatives are flocking to see it!") is BS (if you fear I am descending into vulgarity, consider that it stands for "baloney sandwich"; no, not bologna -- we like to spell things like they sound in Kentucky). Now, I don't have to seem like the only homophobe or in-denial-about-his-own-gay-tendencies man in town because I don't want to go see simulated homosexual sex on the big screen.

• If you've just gotten married, enjoy the first year; it's all downhill after that.
• If your girlfriend's in jail, make sure you take her good gifts.
• If your date just doesn't work out, ask for your money back.

Happy Valentine's Day!

OK, enough of this nonsense -- rioting and burning and killing people over cartoons? I think it's time to quit pussyfootin' around and send in someone to clean the mess up and make certain overly sensitve people understand that actions have consequences. Say uncle, fundamentalist fanatics.

Quit yer whinin', kids, nobody's buying it. The most fascinating thing about this poll of parents about their children's homework is that they don't think the load is too heavy, even though they believe the kids do more homework than the kids say they actually do:

I think I wrote recently that the problem isn't with the specific things the Bush administration is doing with wiretaps; they're specifically targeted at legitimate terrorism worries. The problem is that with a new kind of war, which might not have an identifiable end, whatever civil liberties we agree to give up might be gone forever. Read this account of data-mining and try to decide if it's a logical response to the world we live in now or a scary escalation of the continued erosion of our privacy.

I'm linking to this Carolyn Hax column partly because the first letter is from "Frustrated in Indiana," which shouldn't surprise anybody; there's a lot of seething resentment out there in sexually dysfunctuional Hoosierland. But I also really like Hax's columns. The advice column was a tired, worn-out format until she came along with a fresh perspective and bushels of common sense.