Current Affairs

The press isn't always good at complex issues with lots of social, legal and moral ramifications. But give us a nice, round, easily grasped number, and we will go to town, as in all the hype surrounding Kenneth Lee Boyd, set to be "the nation's 1,000th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977." That's about 36 a year, my rusty math tells me, or fewer than one a week.

See, folks, this is Indiana. You can't just operate a sexual-torture business out of your home. You have to get a permit and make sure you're in the part of town that's properly zoned for sexual torture. And only in this state would the owner of such an operation feel compelled to say it includes "domestic training" while encouraging and practicing "sexual responsibility and chastity."

So now we have scientific validation of the maxim that familiarity breeds contempt:

But after a year with the same lover, the quantity of the 'love molecule' in their blood had fallen to the same level as that of the other groups.

Based on personal experience observation, I would have put it at six months, but I'm no scientist.

Supply your own sarcastic comments about this one. I merely note it and pass it along:

"There is no question that obesity is the underlying cause. We have identified a new problem . . ."

Uh-huh.

And the winner, at 77 million: Mao. Communists really were coldblooded monsters, and Ronald Reagan was talking about only a part of it when he (accurately) described the Evil Empire. More about the hideous math involved.

Considering the silly White House ritual on Thanksgiving turkeys, I think President Bush should have pardoned the Christmas tree and sent it to live out its final days in a forest somewhere, or at least somebody's back yard.

OK, guess I have to take back my snide comment about Canadians. In a time when Americans are being lectured about the need to understand other countries and cultures, it's refreshing to read something by someone trying to understand Americans:

My most general sense remains, that it's the world that is going to hell, and America that is the last tenuous bastion of sanity. The spirit of anti-Americanism that is abroad, is part of the disease. It is not a cure for anything.

I think we're at our "Walter Cronkite says we can't win" moment with the press and Iraq. I watched the news shows on Sunday, and it was pretty clear that most of them, especially the roundtable on "Meet the Press," have already accepted that the war is a lost cause. The mainstream media have never been particulary interested in why we might be there and certainly not in reporting any news that might make the case for war. But what if they're wrong?

Embarrassing? Well, I guess so:

For more than a year, the shirts and pants worn by agents and inspectors with U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been made in Mexico.

You'd think they could have them made here by, you know, all those illegal immigrants. Oh, and this just in: Bush to focus on illegal immigration. About time.

I really worry about those Canadians sometimes:

"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."