Gingrich says Joe Camel isn't so bad, but Leonardo DiCaprio is to blame, for smoking in Titanic. I agree, let's castrate Leo.

Rep Dan Burton calls Clinton a "scumbag", and will release Webster Hubbell's prison phone conversations, which would be illegal for anyone else to do.

Crappy Georgian history professors fight to the death: Gingrich may face a challenge for his seat by Christina Jeffrey, who he once appointed House Historian, until her remarks in favor of equal rights for the views of Nazis in educational programs about the Holocaust came to light.

In Miami, police hauled a 10-year old boy to jail because he kicked his mother in a restaurant, charged with domestic battery. The cops say that the domestic violence law required the arrest.

China bans door to door salesmen, fearing that Mary Kay and Amway are ideological cults run by charismatic leaders.

Delaware driver's licenses are to indicate sex offenders. You know, to show that drivers have to wear corrective lenses, not have a child in the trunk, that sort of thing.

California leg. fails to repeal the old law letting state and local governments fire members of the Communist Party. The impressive thing is that there are still Republicans willing to support it.

Netanyahu agrees to meet with Arafat. At the same time, he invites into government the Moledet party, which supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

For those following the love life of the rhino named Frikkie who lives just outside Kruger Park in South Africa, you will be delighted to learn that he has finally successfully mated with a member of his own species, after squashing several zebras.

With all the panic about pervs in schools, California now requires fingerprints, as do many other states, no doubt soon to be all of them. The problem with this is that not everyone has fingerprints. Recently fired: a social studies teacher with atopic dermatitis. But anyone who has worked with harsh cleaning supplies and such like chemicals might have the same problem. Simple solution, I'd have thought: ear prints.

Good things fall from the sky

Bernard Lewinsky in LA Times interview about daughter Monica: "She's a very smart, intelligent, beautiful girl who's going to go places, and
unfortunately she's taking her licks...."

And giving them.

Mississississississippi state rep. Bobby Moak (R-Taliban) proposes a law for people caught with marijuana to face "the removal of a body part in lieu of other sentences imposed by the court for violations of the Controlled Substances Law", the specific body part to be chosen by negotiation.

Russian irony

Sarov is one of those old Soviet closed cities that doesn't appear on maps. There are still closed cities, which in practice means that no visitors are allowed, all phone calls are monitored, and the place is surrounded by a fence and heavily guarded. Sarov is where the a- and h-bombs were developed and now has a population of 80,000. Liberals in the Duma proposed opening it up, but the residents decided that given the way the rest of Russia is going, they would just as soon keep the barbed wire fence, thank you very much. The lesson is that good fences, interior ministry troops, gun emplacements, internal passports, and restricted rail access, make good neighbors.

A miracle of technology that I first heard of a year or two ago: the self-chilling soda can. You activate it and two minutes later the contents are cold. Is that great or what? Unfortunately, any widespread use would have turned the Earth's atmosphere into something resembling that of Venus very quickly, but they have changed the coolant. It can also be used on ice cream. Did you know 1 trillion soda cans are sold every year?

In the race for the bottom, a Texas state legislator proposes a bill to execute 11-year olds.

Speaking of dead children, guess what Renault uses to test car safety?

The answer is dead children, it wasn't a trick question.

The archbishop of Turin says that any priest who visits the Shroud of Turin can absolve women for abortion, which normally requires excommunication. I'll never understand the Catholic church. A get out of hell free card as a promotional item for a tourist attraction.

Pol Pot is dead, and we really mean it this time. Fortunately, if the war crimes tribunal is looking for a suitable subject, Henry Kissinger, who just this week talked about "the so-called bombing of Cambodia", is still alive.

Virginia executed a Paraguayan in violation of the Vienna Convention. The State Department says it has in fact provided the proper remedy to Paraguay: it has apologized and promised that it may not happen again, unless it does.

One of the escapees from the Bay of Pigs admits having eaten another, while lost at sea. Insert your own joke here relating "Bay of Pigs" to "the other white meat".

The Christian Right is lining up behind Senator John Ashcroft as its candidate for president in 2000. Keep an eye out.

The NY Times has a story about Idaho on today's front page, which shows how big a news day this was. The capitol of Republicanism and child abuse of the US. There's not much crime, but they're still sending a lot of people to jail--just mostly people who didn't do anything much.

NY Times headline reports that, after bits of Yankee Stadium fell down, "Yankees Are on First at Shea/ And the World Doesn't End"

Concrete submarines and other scientific marvels

You think I'm kidding about the concrete submarine, don't you? No no no. Today's London Sunday Times, besides going over every piddling detail of the failed Irish peace accord (just thought I'd be the first to use that phrase), has been dominated by the Wonders of Science and the Horrors of Medicine.

First, a couple of items that don't fit into my theme: a Japanese POW who has been in Siberia since 1945 went back home this week. Evidently, no one ever bothered trying to find them after the last (in theory) batch was released in 1956.

China has been developing a practice of investigative journalism, at least in Guangdong province. The up-side: sometimes their stories get people executed, like an official who hit-and-ran, thinking he could get away with it. Woodward and Bernstein, eat your hearts out.

In the twenty or so years after WW II, Sweden, previously known for sterilizing the retarded, also had an official but illegal program of lobotomizing mental patients, including children, without getting relatives' permission. Maybe 4,500.

South Africa has its first white witch doctor.

The first transplant of a genetically manipulated pig heart into a human will occur in Israel. Yes, yes, I know, but evidently it is kosher.

A British company is selling a motorcycle capable of going 225 mph. They won't say why.

A popular science book is reviewed in the Times, called "Why Is Sex Fun?"

Russian nuclear power plants. The Y2K bug. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Bored Saudi princesses, stuck in palaces but whose bills are paid by the taxpayers (and there are 5,000 princes and princesses!), have found an escape: internet chat rooms. Of course Saudi Arabia has no internet provider, so they dial up London or the US, so it's a bit pricey.

I promised concrete submarines, here they are:

The Sunday Times
Sunday April 12 1998 NEWS: BRITAIN

Russia makes waves with concrete sub
by Hugh McManners

IT floats like a brick but stings like a bee. The Russian navy is developing a concrete submarine that is designed to master the waves by sitting on the ocean floor.

The heavier-than-water submarines will lie at hitherto impossible depths and attack surface vessels with vertically fired torpedoes. Their concrete hulls and silent propulsion systems will make them invisible to sonar, while their angle of fire from the sea bed will allow them to cover swathes of ocean above.

Defence sources say they believe the Russians are close to perfecting the c-subs, as they are known in industry circles, and may already have launched test vessels. The craft, which are based on 30-year-old designs for underwater aircraft, could revolutionise marine warfare.

The most robust of conventional submarines can only submerge to 1,800 feet because of the high water pressure exerted on their steel hulls. They are also buoyant and submerge themselves only by filling their internal tanks with water.

C-subs, however, will descend to the deepest ocean beds under their own weight where they will operate as silent predators. External "listening pods" will detect the movement of surface craft and target them with torpedoes.

The c-subs move like jet aircraft, with wings that create "lift" when the vessels move forward. The jets can be rotated to provide lift from the sea floor using swivelling nozzles similar to those on Harrier jump jets.

The battery-powered engines are modelled on gas turbines, sucking in water at the front before forcing it out at the back under high pressure, creating thrust. The batteries will be stored in the concrete hull: unlike conventional submarines there is no weight limit, so large numbers of cells can be carried.

The c-subs will use a minimal crew, who will operate in cabins the size of a minibus. The craft would be expected to hunt in "wolf packs", rather like the German U-boats during the second world war, using the most advanced weapons technology available.

Sources at Dera, Britain's military research establishment, say the Russians have also made and tested a torpedo which can travel three times faster than the Royal Navy's weapons.

Codenamed Shkval, the torpedo uses drag reduction technology to travel at 200 knots (230mph), making it virtually undetectable and giving ships under attack no time to take evasive action. The drag reduction is achieved by using engine power to aerate the water in front of the torpedo so that it flies through air bubbles rather than water. This greatly reduces the drag of the water, enabling extremely high speeds.

This technology could be applied to the concrete submarines themselves, allowing them to break the 60-knot speed barrier of conventional undersea vessels.

The idea for concrete submarines that fly like aircraft was developed and patented by Heinz Lipschutz, a German marine engineer, between 1957 and the late 1980s. He said he repeatedly tried to interest the Royal Navy in the concept, but instead was disappointed to see his ideas developed by German and Russian naval architects.

Julian Nettlefold, editor of Battlespace, the international defence electronics newsletter, said Britain was in danger of becoming outgunned underwater. "Other countries such as Germany, Russia and America are pushing ahead with research into this exciting concept. With these craft being potentially so cheap to make, there is the danger of countries such as Iran and Libya using them to threaten American carrier groups, or to barricade certain ocean routes," he said.

"It's a shame that Britain has failed to take this idea seriously."

The World Court has intervened in a US criminal case for the first time. Virginia is about to execute a Paraguayan citizen contrary to a US-Paraguay treaty. Virginia, of course, does not care.

California is trying to execute a crazy man. Now if he does get sent to an institution instead, shouldn't any psychiatrists attending him be subject to losing their licenses, like doctors who participate in lethal injections, since any cure would result in execution?

In an orgy of self-delusion, a Northern Ireland "Easter Peace" is signed. How this worked is that a whole array of new bodies will be set up, giving every party to the accord something to undermine, like children happily breaking their new toys on Christmas Day. The assembly will create an executive at which, presumably, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley are expected to sit at the same table. The people I feel sorry for are the Welsh and Jerseyans who have to be on the Council. Since the Unionists wouldn't have accepted a council with just Irish and North Irish representatives, Blair drafted in members of the Welsh assembly, the Scottish parliament, and the whatever they call thems of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. Blair tried to call this the Council of the British Isles, but the Irish objected to the word British, so they'll have to have endless debates about a better name. Meanwhile, to show how well peace is taking effect, the IRA conducted two kneecappings yesterday and a new wall is being built to separate Catholics and Protestants in north Belfast.

Last week I mentioned that the gangster and convicted felon Andrei "The Pimple" Klimentyev had been elected mayor of Russia's 3rd-largest city Novgorod. I neglected to follow up when he was deposed almost immediately on a fraud charge, which turned out to be for making campaign promises he couldn't possibly fulfill.

Looking at Clinton's continued popularity, Bob Packwood is thinking about going back into politics. The Slate suggests the slogan "Still Packing Wood".

The British, who are slow but steady in these matters, have figured out who the four people were who killed King Harold in 1066. The descendants of one of them are still farming the 4,000 acres they were given as a reward.

In 1984, the California Department of Corrections removed from its list of official goals "rehabilitation".

William Safire's NY Times column for today decries Clinton's being allowed to make far-reaching arguments for executive privilege in secret session, for no obvious legitimate reason. Andrew Sullivan's op-ed piece notes that while Clinton opposes job discrimination against gays, as commander in chief he has now fired more gays than any other employer in the US. Sullivan asks "Is is too much to ask that this President finally live up to his own words? Or with this President, is that now utterly beside the point?" I assume that's a rhetorical question, Andrew.

Beaten up, raped, and speaking Albanian

From London Times:
"They're terrified of Bill Clinton, completely terrified," a leading conservative lobbyist said. "They're afraid that if they get in a room with him they'll be beaten up, raped, come out speaking Albanian - they don't know what horrible things will happen to them."

Also from London Times:
* Lord Hattersley, lifelong opponent of the Lords, made his maiden speech in the Upper House yesterday. Eloquent as ever, he offered a plausible case for taking a peerage. But every time a true Socialist rises, ennobled, in the Lords, a little fairy somewhere dies.


Quote from the judge who threw out the Paula Jones lawsuit: "Although it is not clear why plaintiff failed to receive flowers on Secretary's Day in 1992, such an omission does not give rise to a Federal cause of action in the absence of evidence of some more tangible change in duties or working conditions."

The New York Times notes that Pakistan just tested a missile capable of reacing Delhi, but fails to mention that it is named after the Afghan Muslim king who invaded India in the 12th century. India previously deployed a missile that will give Pakistan 3 minutes of reaction time. Good luck, guys.

A Reuters story begins: "The Taliban authorities amputated a hand of a convicted thief in a sports stadium here today and used the occasion to defend their human rights record."

The number of people expelled from the military for homosexuality has increased dramatically since Clinton's change of policy. DOD is blaming the gays, saying that people are claiming homosexuality as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Guns don't kill people, bullets do

This may or may not have been a real letter to USA Today: "I would like to commend the National Rifle Association on its program to teach youngsters how to use firearms safely. It works. Neither of the two young shooters in Jonesboro were injured."

Headline: "Clinton Gets Off". Yes he does, yes he does.

AARP poster girl: An 88-year old great-grandmother is arrested in Virginia for killing a guy.

A few years ago a San Francisco cop who likes to carry around a ventriloquist's dummy named Officer Brendan O'Smarty and who had gotten into some trouble with his superiors because they thought he should, oh, I don't know, catch criminals or something, initiated an initiative on the city ballot (cost = several hundred thousand dollars) and got the good people of Starship Frisco to validate his mid-life crisis. It seems he is now in dispute with the IRS, 'cause he's trying to write a certain chunk of wood off his taxes.

Some time ago I posted an article which said that ear-prints are as individual as finger-prints, but the first attempt (in Britain) to use them in a court of law was laughed out by the jury yesterday.

The British Tory party's compassion is not entirely fictitious, although the object of that compassion is. The party has united in support of a review of the sentence imposed on one of the characters on Coronation Street, the long-running soap opera.

Rep. Jay Kim asks for his federal sentence of house detention to be postponed, as it would interfere with his reelection campaign.

The new mayor of Russia's 3rd largest city Novgorod is convicted felon (fraud, pornography and embezzling a state loan) and nightclub owner Andrei "The Pimple" Klimentyev. He ran openly as a gangster, but then again the person he defeated ran openly as a lawyer.

102-year olds in the news: a woman who emigrated from the US to Israel, the oldest such emigrant ever (I think they told her it was Florida); a British man who was declared missing in action in the Great War but turned up in time for his own funeral, 80 years ago.

Interesting article in the Sunday NY Times on how police departments are training cops to ignore suspects' invoking of their Miranda rights.

Paula Jones's latest court filings bring gossip to a fine art. To prove a pattern of intimidation by Clinton of witnesses, they cite a woman who will not testify against him as an example. They claim based on no evidence at all that Clinton raped her in the late 1970s.

Stupid casting idea of the week: Meg Ryan as Sylvia Plath.

The Nation of Islam appoints one of Malcolm X's convicted murderers to head a Harlem mosque.

It seems that there is a drunk driving lobby which recently defeated an attempt in Maryland to lower the drunk driving standard to .08 and is working to do the same at the national level. Naturally, it consists of liquor companies and chain restaurants/bars. Who ever thought that Hooters could be on the wrong side of an issue?

A 4-year old in Ohio showed up at daycare with a handgun. For the second time.

The grandfather of one of those loveable tykes in Arkansas says that he was taught how to shoot at 6, but he always shot safely. I wonder what his definition of safe is? Maybe he wore a condom.

Kenneth Starr subpoenas two bookstores to find out what Monica Lewinsky has been reading. He's really becoming the nosy neighbor on a sitcom, but with subpoena power.

Meanwhile, Clinton has forced the claim of executive privilege to greater lengths than did Nixon. Congratulations, Billy Bob.

Ariel Sharon said on tv that Israel will sooner or later assassinate the guy they got caught trying to kill in Jordan a few months ago.

The British Parliament votes 211-15 to ban caning from all public (private, you know) schools. Can't wait to see what the next generation of Etonians' sexual perversions will consist of.

Al Checchi, accused of not being a Democrat for donating the legal max to Robert Dole & Malcolm Forbes Jr., said that was just a courtesy. What's wrong with a nice card? Chocolates are always nice too.

In October 1993, the US Marines Historical Reenactment Society evidently performed their version of My Lai in Somalia, killing over 1,000 Somalis, taking hostages, using bodies as barricades, etc etc. Nice to be hearing about this now.

The latest breakout in the increasingly out of control world of fertility research: sperm from a dead guy. Sperm from someone dead over 24 hours was removed and successfully fertilized eggs. And the stuff can be frozen. So there have been an increasing number of requests for extractions from dead teenagers (to carry on the family lineage) and that sort of thing.

Dean McHenry, the guiding force behind UCSC, has died.

So has Dr. Spock and I can no longer resist: He's dead, Jim.

There's talk of a Jewish cable channel in Britain. One idea: a dating program on traditional lines, questions being asked of someone hidden from the contestant, except that in this case, the questions are to be asked by the contestant's...Jewish mother. Oy. Jenny McCarthy will probably not be on this one.

How do American dental students get teeth to practice on? The French have reverted to the traditional medical practice of graverobbing, or actually bribing gravediggers.

A belated Purple Heart was given to a prisoner on San Quentin's death row today. It's part of his crazy-veteran defense, but they still had the normal ceremony.

The Amazing Kreskin has said he will get to the bottom of the whole Whitewater thing by reading the minds of all concerned, for $1. Anything's better than Death by 60 Minutes. Just saw Ann Lewis, White House Communications Director, being savaged on Nightline for giving the same line on Willey that she attacked when it was used against Anita Hill. Someone suggested that the response of feminists to this one indicates that feminism is no longer a principle but a political tool.

The story to look for in the next few days will be about the information contained in the just-released files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Keep an eye out.

The new status item for drug dealers is watch-alligators, replacing the pit bulls they used to use.

New Labour, Old Genitals: David Spry elected for the Labour party to the town council of Bristol (coincidentally, Bristols means breasts in cockney) has since become a pre-op transexual called Rosalind. I blame Monty Python, and Benny Hill. He/she was not allowed into the women's group of the Labour party.

The Chinification of US prisons

The world's largest democracy, so-called, just gets sillier. The Hindu fundies have taken over, if they can dispense enough bribes to keep power, and pledge to build nuclear weapons, presumably for use against McDonald's (that's a sacred cow joke, if anybody didn't get it). Meanwhile the Congress Party, in an act of ancestor-in-law worship that should set back the feminist movement even further, puts Italian widow Sonia Gandhi in charge of their party. She did it on the condition that she wouldn't have to do any actual work.

A new book says that Lyndon Johnson bugged Veep Hubert Humphrey and sabotaged his 1968 presidential campaign.

I trust everyone watched 60 Minutes last night, because you just can't hear enough about Clinton's penis (or, the leader of the leader of the free world, as it's known).

You may already have won

Clinton has been toying with adopting Truman's strategy of attacking the do-nothing Congress, his ambivalence perhaps reflecting the relief most of us feels when this particular Congress is not doing anything. Certainly, Clinton picked a bad place to start, insisting on Congress ratifying the tobacco deal. Assuming this has nothing to do with campaign contributions, this shows how committed Clinton has become to the idea of a budget surplus (his budget numbers require the money from the tobacco companies). However, the continuing flow of revelations about past practices suggests that rushing the deal would be to give an amnesty without knowing what crimes were being amnestied.

Speaking of amnesties, 1) the South African Truth Commission just asked the courts to reverse its own amnesty of ANC leaders in the absence of testimony from them, as was required of everyone else. 2) Kim Dae-jung's amnesty of 5.5 million Koreans failed to include the world's longest serving political prisoner (since 1958--in solitary) and several other POCs, who refused the condition of renouncing their political beliefs (the bit that none of the American media seem to have noticed). But it does include a lot of convicted drunk drivers who will presumably now get their licenses back.

The Serbian media keep referring to the Albanians of Kosovo as a minority. Do you think even Serbs believe that 90% constitute a minority? It's that sort of thinking that made Wilson cancel the requirement that the state should try to give 5% of its contracts to businesses owned by women.

Web-site of the week: www.taliban.com

I said a few months ago that there would be ethnic rioting in places like Indonesia. Even I underestimated the cynicism of the Suharto government, which ITN says is organizing some of the rioting against Chinese shops, a sure distraction from the government's rampant corruption. Sworn in for yet another unopposed term, Suharto, who has only one name, like Madonna, or Godzilla, said that the good times (!) will not return to Indonesia. This is a day after he restored tax breaks and monopolies to his family.

Rep. Jay Kim, the first Korean member of the US Congress, will become the first to come to the House with one of those prison monitoring bracelets.

I am somebody--well, the son of somebody

In a profile of Jesse Jackson Jr., the NY Times says that he talks of the difficulties of a black man hailing a cab in D.C. Maybe they just realize he's a congressman.

The media always get interested in censorship just a bit late. For example, I just got from the Village Voice the answer to a question I had been wondering for weeks, namely, if there had been a war in Iraq, what would the press arrangements have been. In fact, it would have been the reviled pool system, which alternative media during the last Gulf war, and mainstream media afterwards, filed suit against, but which no one bothered to report would have been instituted again, if you can follow my grammar. Incidentally, all those interviews we did read last month with resigned but game servicepeople were chaperoned by minders from the Pentagon.

In Mein Kamf, to make a subtle segue, Hitler talked a lot about The Jew and the Jews, but only mentioned one specific Jew, an unnamed one he had gone to school with at Linz, who evidently soured him on the whole race. In a book out shortly, Kimberley Cornish, The Jew of Linz--excerpted in today's Sunday (London) Times, which can be easily retrieved from the Times web-site whenever you read this, it is suggested and I think close to proved that that Jew was the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. The same age, but 2 years ahead of Hitler, he shared many of the same interests and annoying habits, and matched many of the traits denounced in Mein Kampf. Hitler would later set up a steel works specifically to undermine the works owned by the Wittgenstein family. The book also argues that Wittgenstein was the unnamed homosexual teacher at Trinity College, Cambridge, who recruited the famous spies for the Soviet Union (Blunt, Philby, Burgess, Maclean).

I hope everyone's keeping up with the oil pipeline planned through the Caucasus. Russia seems so intent on making sure that it's path, to be chosen this month, goes through Russian territory, that it seems to be responsible for the assassination attempts last month on the presidents of Georgia and Azerbaijan, as well as the bloodless coup in Armenia, which Russia is arming for a renewed military confrontation with Azerbaijan.

The Supreme Court rules that local officials who deliberately violate civil rights have legislative immunity. In the case, a city council retaliated against a black woman who had complained about racial slurs from a co-worker by eliminating her job.

The Palestinian security forces are being trained in interrogation and eavesdropping by the CIA. I'm sure the news of that will relax everyone.

The UN war crimes tribunal cuts the sentence on a Croat who shot at least 70 Muslims to 5 years on account of his youth and remorse. So that's all right then.

By coincidence, ran into 2 stories of Starr's hypocrisy in a row. The first, on the Mother Jones website, shows how when Starr was attorney for GM, he did his damnedest to keep evidence of perjury out of the records, if not actually suborn perjury himself. The article is kind of interesting. It's about how GM, in the 70s decided it was cheaper to let a bunch of people die and pay the lawsuits than to make a rather cheap improvement to their automobiles.

The second, in the Washington Post, says that Starr has now subpoenaed two private investigators for the National Enquirer who in 1996 tried to find evidence that he was having an affair. Amazingly, they couldn't find evidence, and didn't run the story. That puts their journalistic ethics higher than those of any other news source in the country.

My long-time readers will recall the following, from Fri, 1 Nov 1996:

IN THE School of Islamic Thought that has shaped the ideology of the Taliban, there is an active debate on the appropriate punishment for homosexuals.

Mullah Mohammed Hassan, Governor of Kandahar, the fundamentalist movement's home province, explained the dilemma: "There are two kinds of strong punishment. There are those who say homosexuals should be thrown to their death from a high fort, and those who favour putting them in a pit and pushing a wall on top of them.

A follow-up:

International News Electronic Telegraph Friday 27 February 1998

Gay men survive execution attempt

THREE Afghan men convicted of sodomy have been spared after they survived an attempt to execute them by using a tank to bulldoze a wall on top of them. Thirty minutes later, they were found alive in the rubble.

I keep hearing about vampirism in youth subculture lately. Florida, which as ever has no clue about how such things are done, just sentenced one to the electric chair. What's a vampire doing in Florida anyway?

Oregon just decided to use Medicaid or some form of state funding for doctor-assisted suicides for poor people. This was decided by a health panel rather than the legislature, but you can just imagine the dilemma for Republicans: on the one hand it's socialized medicine, on the other hand, it's killing the poor. What to do, what to do.

The Vatican has found that since there is now so much call for the exorcism rite, that they should simplify it. For a start, it was never updated during Vatican II so it's still in Latin.

A Haifa rabbinical court rules that married women must be home by midnight. If I get this right, this has the force of law. These are the courts you go to to get a divorce. The woman in this case was heard to object, "But my husband was fucking other women."

Stephen Hawking's new theory says that something called inflation occurred before the beginning of the universe and that the universe will expand forever. He is wrong. What, who are you going to believe, me or some guy in a wheel chair?

The British government is threatening to eliminate the extra fee police officers earn by searching a dead body (£25, or 17 each if there are more than one).

Saddam Hussein: he starts a war, his popularity goes up, he loses a war, his popularity goes up, he averts a war, his popularity goes up, he gets a blow job from an intern, his popularity goes up....

Arrogant quote of the week, from Madeleine Albright: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future."

Correction of the week, from the Washington Post:
[39]CLARIFICATION
An article yesterday on variations in Paula Jones's account of alleged sexual harassment by President Clinton stated that her lawyers filed an amended complaint in December, a month after her deposition, to charge that Clinton tried to touch her "pelvic area." Jones's lawyer said yesterday that the first public reference to the "pelvic area" allegation appeared in an earlier document, filed in court on Oct. 27.

The CDC have stopped those obnoxious placebo tests of AIDS transmission by pregnant women that I railed against a few months ago.

Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, is writing a new book, unfortunately for HarperCollins, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is very interested in sucking up to the Chinese and so has ordered the book be toned down. I did not read about this in the London Times.

Austria is to change its marriage laws to require the husband to do half the washing up. As absurd as most Austrians find this, they have said nothing for 60 years about the law that allows divorce by men on the grounds of the wife refusing to cook or to clean.

So why does the US have no credibility over Iraq? Well, there's of course the Wag the Dog phenomenon (a movie recently shown on Iraqi tv, which is a serious miscalculation; as China knows, we don't care about human rights but the theft of intellectual property is another matter entirely). In the Middle East, it's the refusal to confront Israel about anything, although Israel like Iraq is in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and has weapons of mass destruction (WMD in killer-wonk speak). But I think for the rest of the world a serious obstacle to American credibility is our continued attitude towards Cuba. As in Iraq, the US is here trying to foist its foreign policy on the rest of the world, and more to the point, it underlines Hussein's point that there is nothing Iraq can do that will get the sanctions removed. 40 years of petty vindictiveness with no end in sight.

That damn machine again

From a New York magazine competition (8/4/97) for outgoing answering messages:

"Hello. This is Bob Dole. Bob Dole is not here right now..."

"This is Martha Stewart. While you are on hold, why not spray-paint your phone? First, put masking tape..."

The Roadrunner: "Beep beep"

Harry Houdini: "I'm all tied up right now..."

The Marquis de Sade: "I'm all tied up right now..."

"Hello, this is Jerry Seinfeld. Did you ever wonder why everyone has to say hello?....."

"Hi, this is Gary Karsparov. I could have taken your call, but the machine beat me to it."

"Paul McCartney here. daed ton m'I."

"You've reached the home of Erwin Schrodinger. I'm both in and not in at the moment..."

"You have reached the offices of Dr. Jekyll. Thank you for your patience during our transition."

"You have reached Weight Watchers. If this is an emergency, press the pound sign now."

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

2 completely unrelated news stories:

The French Ministry of Culture names a (closed) Paris brothel a historical monument.

Australia will preserve a hut in its station in Antarctica with a "Sistine ceiling" of 92 naked pin-ups.

With the War of Clinton's Penis tentatively scheduled in for the end of the month (let's see, it has to be after the Olympics, during a full moon, or was that no moon, and before the haj season. Have your people call my people.), no one seems to have noticed that Turkey invaded Iraq for the 87th time or whatever it is, a week or two ago, with the intention of making sure there are no Kurdish refugees, at least none that will live to tell the tale. The US has been remarkably quiet about the Kurds this time.

With all the hypocritical stories about the Russian 1995 deal (which may not even have gone anywhere) to help build the Iraqi chemical weapons industry (hypocritical because all the initial aid to Iraq in this department came from the US & Britain; the US sold Iraq its starter set of anthrax and botulism, some of it after the gassing of the Kurds in 1988) (Britain was also the first country to use chemical weapons on Iraq, yonks ago, ordered by Winston Churchill).

The US Senate passed a law allowing the president to refuse inspection of our chemical facilities in the name of national security.

Iraq is getting to be like the Monica story, where there are bits of rumor that you hear once and then never again, but are never quite sure whether that means they were wrong or that the media got bored. For example, did Iraq send all its bio weapons scientists into hiding in Libya? Is it true that Iraq offered bounties for killing UN & other foreign relief workers assisting the Kurds?

Pop quiz: which US president renounced research into biological weapons?
Answer at the end of this message.

A letter to the NY Times points out that in his press conference of Feb. 6, Clinton said that we will use force against Iraq, but said about Northern Ireland that "Nothing worth having can be accomplished through violence."

The LA Times Wednesday notes that the Senate (Republican) report on Clinton fund-raising talks about, but fails to prove, Chinese attempts to influence the 1996 election, but neglects to mention Taiwan. John Huang and Charlie Trie are both from Taiwan, and the famed Buddhist temple is also linked there. When all else failed, the Republicans referred to "Greater China" so that the Reds would take the fall for Taiwan's actions.

Answer: Nixon.

The LA school district police want to be allowed to carry shotguns in their patrol cars. "Hey, kid: SPIT OUT THAT GUM!"

Clinton admin says its authority to blow the shit out of Iraq derives from the resolution passed in 1991 before the War to Make the World Safe for Feudalism. Um, we did repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, didn't we? I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure that using this sort of standard would allow us to resume hostilities with Germany. We declared war in 1941, but I don't remember a peace treaty....

I performed a little gotcha on the Washington Post. If you check out the "Today's Paper" section of today's Slate (which you should each and every one of you have them send you by e-mail, by the way), you will see a mention of a fuck-up in yesterday's Post, which I brought to the attention of the Slate writer. An article on Zimbabwe was titled "Winter of Discontent". Zimbabwe is of course in the southern hemisphere so it is summer and the toilet bowl water revolves in the opposite direction from whichever direction it revolves here.

As I speak, there are Congresscritters on tv arguing about renaming National Airport after the Antichrist. They will have to remove all metal detectors, because Reagan thought everyone should have a right to be armed, and air traffic control would be performed by the first ten people who came in off the streets. New slogan: "Mistakes were made."

Yeltsin says that the US could start a world war if it uses force against Iraq. His handlers say this meant if the US uses tactical nukes. And they then say, no that doesn't mean that Russia would retaliate if nukes were used against Iraq. So presumably there would only be a world war if Iraq has nuclear weapons, which is rather the point.

Texas executes at 6 p.m. That means the last meal is served around the time all the old folk are taking advantage of the early bird special at Sizzler.

Nice to see the evangelicals out in force against someone being executed. Of course it's not really because she's a woman. After all, they'd all be happy to see Ellen DeGeneres given the death penalty.

Republicans, pissed that Clinton is still popular, going on offensive, including William Bennett, the brother of Clinton's lawyer.

Deja vu all over again: Iraq to use UN officials as human shields, ordering them into Baghdad hotels. Also, Pentagon touting its new smart bombs.

There is a campaign afoot in Britain to get a pardon for Helen Duncan, the last convicted witch. In 1941 at a seance she revealed the sinking of a ship that the government had covered up. She got 9 months, fortunately being sentenced under the 1735 Act which liberalized the law of witchcraft. The last execution was in 1712. The pardon campaign is being supported by Mrs Duncan, who died in 1956, although she says it's more important down here than up there.

Assisted suicide in Pennsylvania: Robert Smith executed. In jail for a robbery, he helped kill a man in jail for, and repeatedly bragging about, beating the 2-year old daughter of his girlfriend to death. The suicide part: Smith fired his lawyers and plead guilty, which he conditioned on getting the death sentence. The prosecutor had not asked for it: Smith did. He wanted to sell seats at his execution for $1,000 to benefit the family of his victim's victim; I assume Penn. didn't allow that.

The Clinton counterattack is not off to a good start. The Cum-back kid is not well served by his advisers. Dick Morris suggests that Hillary is a lesbian, and an unnamed White House aide tells the Washington Post, and I swear I'm not making this up, "She'd take little things and blow them up."

A new method that may help infertile men involves having his sperm developed inside...mice.

The most interesting bit in that Hillary Clinton interview was not the line about the vast right-wing conspiracy (Rush Limbaugh all by himself is a pretty vast right-wing conspiracy), but when she was asked about gifts Clinton is supposed to have given Ms Lewinsky. She said that it's “possible”. So one week into the scandal, we're expected to believe that she hasn't asked him about some of the basic facts.

Kenneth Starr, who once publicly rejected Clinton's arguments in the Paula Jones case that it should be postponed because the president is too busy to deal with such trivialities, today went to court to get Jones's lawyers to stop subpoeanaing his witnesses. The presidency may not be too important to be interfered with, but the investigation of the president, that's another matter.

The State of the Union address went on too long, in that people (well, me) got bored and started looking for hidden meanings. For example, he said something about people having the chance to get ahead with hard work. When he mentioned after-school programs, I figured it was because he was running out of interns of college age...

There are more INS agents with guns and the power to arrest than there are FBI agents with same.

Line from London Times story: "Middle America is blasé about oral sex." So that's ok, then.

Clinton is responsible for another atrocity: the word penis was spoken in the House of Commons today. Still, in the process, the next bombing of Iraq has been given a name: The War of Clinton's Penis. (For the historically-challenged among you, and you know who you are Kevin, that's a reference to the War of Jenkins’ Ear)

Toy for the boys

All the President's Bimbos: Most loopy line in the New York Times coverage of Zippergate: "It was not known whether the special prosecutor has subpoeoneaed the dress." CNN's coverage today, which mentioned resignation a dozen times before the first commercial, featured a Clinton counsel saying Gee, thanks for the question, Judy, now my kids will ask me what oral sex is when I get home." Arabs think this is all a Jewish ploy to kill the Israeli peace process. So Starr says that Lewinsky was free to go during all those 8 or 9 or 10 hours he detained her, and they even watched a movie on tv (There's No Business Like Show Business) and went out shopping (Crate and Barrel) while waiting for her mommie to arrive. Gee, doesn't that sound a whole lot like they weren't willing to let her out of their sight for a minute? Speaking of mommie, she's evidently famous for a book blowing the lid off the simmering cauldron of corruption that is the Three Tenors, promoting the book by hinting at an affair with Placido--it's a family thing, they just like chubby men.

Germany is now running genetic tests on people who want to immigrate there claiming to have relatives in the country.

The Swiss Supreme Court orders a motorist to pay a prostitute he ran over for loss of earnings.

The Unabomber's guilty plea includes a provision in which he gives up his right to appeal. Can that be constitutional?

A Florida judge orders a man w/HIV who had sex with a 16-yr old when he was 18, big deal, to get written consent before having sex.

So after all that talk about the pope's visit to Cuba being the Beginning of the End, what the pope really wanted to talk about was abortion and divorce. Who ever thought he was interested in democracy, anyway? They must not have been paying attention the last 20 years.

OK, back to the Clinton sex scandal of the week. Evidently Starr offered Tripp immunity solely on account of her taping Lewinsky illegally. Which is interesting, because he can't just waive Maryland's laws like that. Now just because the tapes were made illegally evidently doesn't mean Starr can't use them, because they weren't illegal under federal law.

So how did the Whitewater (remember that?) prosecutor wind up with control of this investigation as well? Evidently because he was already investigating Vernon Jordan for getting a job for Webster Hubbell, and now Jordan has gotten a job for Lewinsky (at Revlon! At least it wasn't for Paula Jones.). All of which makes Starr sound even more weaselly than Clinton.

The Slate notes the one thing absent in Clinton's semi-denial denial on MacNeil-Lehrer: any sense of outrage, such as an innocent man wrongly accused might have exhibited.

As I understand it, Tripp was previously working on an anti-Clinton book, dropped it, and has spent part of this week negotiating a contract for it. Her literary agent, according to Al Kamen of the Post, is a woman who in 1972 acted as a spy inside the McGovern campaign, where she posed as a reporter, for the RNC for $1,000 a week.

Nightline suggested that the particular weasel words Clinton's been using indicate that what he does with all these women is oral sex (well, has done to him), and that to him, that doesn't count. That's two images in this paragraph that you really didn't need to have in your head.

Saddam Hussein must be laughing his ass off.

What must Arafat have thought as he sat next to Clinton as he answered all those questions?

Bimbo eruptions/ jingle bells?

Billy Bob, Billy Bob, what will we do with you? Well, I have a few questions: 1) I keep hearing that Kenneth Starr offered Ms. Tripp immunity in exchange for wearing the wire, but I can't figure out what she needs immunity for. Anyone?

2) The FBI and Starr seem to me to have cooperated with Paula Jones's lawyers, in that the timing of their activities suggest they were waiting for Clinton and Lewinsky to perjure themselves, sitting on evidence in the meanwhile. Is this the proper role of either of them?

3) If Tripp was talking openly about the last mistress last summer, why was Lewinsky confiding in her more recently?

4) No one's yet asked Clinton about Gennifer Flowers. If it is true that his deposition admitted an affair with her, then he lied to the public about it and has no credibility over Lewinsky.

A Grateful Dead museum is planned for San Francisco. Expect to see a sign saying, "You must be this high..." (Will Durst)

In Britain, an obvious solution to a problem: the date-rape drug Rohypnol will no longer be colorless, but turn blue if put if liquid.

The latest Clinton scandal didn't move as fast as I thought it had, according to a piece in the Slate, which shows how the story moved through usenet groups into television without a mention in any of the papers for days, and was in fact killed in some of the weekly news magazines.

Republicans are going after another Clinton nominee to the federal bench, a black woman, for evidently having told a prosecutor in 1985 to shut her fucking mouth. Can't have a potty mouth in district court, now can we?

The FDA insists that it has the authority to regulate human cloning. No one seems to have asked whether clones are a food or a drug. But, of course, soylent green *is* people.

A 12-year old boy in England will get the day off school to attend the birth of his child.

A camel has been successfully bred with a llama. The result is a cama.

The world's interest in refugees continues to decline. How many stories have you seen about the sudden outpouring of Kurds from Turkey two or three weeks ago? It has now stopped, since the Europeans asked Turkey if it wouldn't mind cracking down on these people, as if Turkey actually needed an invitation to repress Kurds.

There are several stories in the Wed. Guardian about the rise of fascism among E German youth. Well, xenophobia at least. Half the country is now "foreigner free" zones.

This has been ancestors day in the British newspapers. Gandhi's great-something-grandson is running for the Indian parliament. Stalin's 2 grandchildren are profiled in the Times. One's a military man and rabid Stalinist, the other a theatrical producer who very much isn't. I sent an item a couple of months ago about the first creating a hit list of people who have said bad things about Stalin. The other grandson is on the list. William Gladstone's great-grandson is to make a 1,000-mile expedition in Tibet to find a duck previously thought to be extinct. It has a pink head. And what have we got? Michael Kennedy runs into a tree playing ski-football. I can't wait for the next generation of Kennedies. I foresee a series of running-with-scissors fatalities.

Another Tory cover-up: during the last general election, a UFO was spotted hovering over Home Minister Michael Howard's house, but the party got the local papers not to report it. The Truth is Out There.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is largely taxpayer-financed, refused to extend a welcome to Arafat, who the State Dept had convinced to go, unless you can count as a welcome a comment to the effect that he could stand in line and buy a ticket like anyone else. Nice to see the museum performing its function of alleviating hatred (of everyone except Germans).

Our country of the week, almost in the news because Prince Charles will visit there: Bhutan. Population 600,000, one intersection with traffic lights. Evidently it is compulsory to wear the national costume, which for me is a dressing gown with argyle socks (if you don't believe me, try the Telegraph web site). And no TV. Oh, and the king is named Wangchuck.

Montana figures that as long as states are getting into the gambling business in a big way, they'll go even further into Mafia territory, and have legalized money laundering. Numbered accounts with Swiss-type secrecy, taxed at 1.5% (hell, it's not like any of that money will be taxed wherever it came from). No US citizens or convicted felons, minimum balance $200,000.

I was right about ethnic clashes in Asia. Chinese shopkeepers in Indonesia have been threatened by angry mobs.

Fri, 16 Jan 1998

According to Michael Reagan's book about Ronnie, he was deliberately projecting himself as a "trigger-happy cowboy" to fool the Russians, and that line about the bombing beginning in 5 minutes was part of a clever plan that ultimately brought about the collapse of Communism. No sarcastic comment of mine could add to this.

Texas settles its product liability suit with the tobacco companies, and its lawyers get $2.2 billion (and all the 'baccy they can chaw, it being Texas). Here's an idea: why don't the states stop hiring outside counsel, and keep the extra piddling small change that might save?

The oldest woman to give birth in Britain (60 at the time) is now also a single mother, as the father has gone back to his wife. Here's a creepy image for you: she's breast-feeding. Sure, you're all completely grossed out, but think about how the poor kid feels.

Hallmark is to develop sympathy cards for the relatives of suicides. The mind boggles.

Those of you who were with me in cyber-land in 1996 will remember I said at the time that the alleged traces of Martian life found on the meteorite in Antarctica would turn out not to be Martian. Far be it from me to miss a chance to say I told you so. I told you so.

Jamaica to resume executions.

More on that sex survey: PBS watchers have more sex than average, Catholics more than Protestants but less than Jews or agnostics (no word about atheists--they're the ones who are not saying Oh god oh god oh god during it), the richest have sex 5% more than average. Jazz listeners have more sex than rap listeners (unless you count what happens in prison). While the average may be 58 sex episodes (episodes?) per year, 15% of adults are having half the sex. The figure about the highly-educated having less sex actually means that women are having no sex, concentrating on their careers. Men have wives. People who go to concerts and sporting events have more sex, also those who smoke and drink, or own a gun. Adjust your lifestyles accordingly.

Those tobacco company documents make fun reading. Today they're claiming it's a typo, that they weren't going after 13-year olds, but 18 year olds. Don't let any kids read these documents: they'll be delighted to read that someone thinks of 12-year olds as "younger adults" (well, you can also be executed in Texas, I suppose those counts). They are also referred to as beginning smokers and, my personal favorite, replacement smokers.

Tue, 13 Jan 1998

The Supreme Court refuses to hear the case of a lesbian whose job invitation the Georgian Atty General revoked after hearing that she planned to marry her girlfriend. The ex-atty general says she might be perceived as not intending to uphold the state's laws against sodomy, showing himself to have as much clue as you'd expect of an official of the state of Georgia. He is now running for governor, despite an admitted adulterous affair with an employee--not that that has anything to do with hiring a young woman and then firing her when he found out she was a lesbian, no sirree bob.

A completely unrelated Georgia story:

Atlanta: Zell Miller, the Governor of Georgia, proposed that the state should provide the parents of every newborn with a classical music cassette or compact disc in order to boost the infant's intelligence later in life. Mr Miller proposed a $105,000 (#65,000) allocation for the programme in a $12.5 billion budget proposal, citing research showing that listening to a Mozart piano sonata led to an increase in students' IQ scores. (Reuters)

Of course if it does increase their IQ they have to leave the state--it's the law. Besides, Mozart leads to ballet which leads to sodomy, as we all know.

Himmler's appointment diary has been discovered, and historians are debating whether it contains the long-awaited smoking gun for the start of the Holocaust. He met with Hitler 12/18/41, subject: "the Jewish question." Himmler's note on the meeting: "To be exterminated as partisans." The order was given on December 12, the day after Germany declared war on the US.

The navy, taking its usual laid-back approach to don't ask-don't tell investigations, fires sailor Timothy McVeigh-No Relation. Mr No Relation's AOL profile said that he was gay, but it also only gave his first name. AOL is not legally allowed to give out information on customers to investigators without a warrant, but evidently the investigators didn't identify themselves, so it's ok to give out information to anyone who happens to call up.

Dole says illegal Democratic ads made him lose the election. Just keep telling yourself that.

Personal ad from *New Statesman*: "Angry young man, socialist, trade unionist, seeks angry young woman, rich, blonde, for mutual political awareness and more."

Cloning successfully creates a length of human blood vessel suitable for bypass surgery. Maybe Clinton, whose grasp of biology can be seen by his calling Socks "she" last week, could shut up about what he doesn't understand. That said, Dr. Richard Seed (Dick Seed, I mean really!) is without question the scum of the earth.

It seems that the Germans proved the link between tobacco and lung cancer back in 1941, but the report was never released. It's amazing what research can be done when the fuhrer really doesn't like smoking.

It is estimated that there are now 35,000 people living in polygamous families in the US, more than during Mormonism's heyday.

Charles Dickens caught VD from a French prostitute. Thought you'd like to know.

The age of puberty is still declining in this country. Black girls routinely (about half) have secondary sex characteristics by their 9th birthday. White girls 15%. Fat girls hit it early (the ratio of body fat fools their body--many of them also stop growing at that age). And girls in divorced families.

(from the Times):
Two NOP focus groups convened by The Sunday Times last week said that the Queen's handbag provoked more antagonism to the royal family than almost any other issue.

Wed, 7 Jan 1998

Quote of the day: You know, a long time ago, being crazy meant something. Nowadays, everybody's crazy.
--Charles Manson, in a 1994 television interview

Nice try:
Bonn: German finance officials provoked howls of protest when they suggested offering cash rewards to people who inform on big-time tax evaders. The Federation of German Taxpayers said offering such bounties would revive the denunciation culture exploited by the Nazi Gestapo and East German Stasi secret police forces. (Reuters)

Slow news day

The California Supreme Court rules that juries hearing cases of people fired "for cause" can hear only whether the employer had a reason to believe the charge was real and had conducted an investigation. In other words, innocence does not count. Someone tell the justices that this is not Texas, please.

Profile of a slow news day, from the contents page for the UK news section of the London Times:

[7]Muslims want name change for Mecca bingo
Community leaders say name is causing offence

[11]Fat is fanciable, says the body of evidence
Academic went on a high-calorie diet to discover how people would react to her at 15 stone

[15]Bonds of the Navy recruit 007 fans
Royal Navy's recruitment of Commander James Bond proves an unprecedented success

[20]Anger made me stab woman in head, says homeless teenager
19-year-old tells how he thrust knife to its hilt into woman's head in "rush of anger" on train

[21]Health risk to staff who say: Have a nice day
Strain of telling people to have a nice day can be fatal, according to study

[22]Robbers raided wrong shop [an optician!]
Paul Wilkinson reports on a hold-up doomed by criminal stupidity

[30]Car trek to circle world in 80 days
Motorists planning to drive classic cars around the world in 80 days to celebrate millennium

Mon, 5 Jan 1998

An American has just been elected president of Lithuania. He used to be a regional head of the EPA, controlling a larger budget than the whole nation of Lithuania has, so it's basically semi-retirement as far as he's concerned.

The pope says for the first time that he thinks Bulgaria and the commies were behind the 1981 assassination attempt.

You may remember a story I sent out several months before the stock market collapse in Asia which said that the Thai president had fired 5 cabinet members and was showing up at work in 5 in the morning (seriously pissing off his staff) and so on, because his lucky number is 5. Does anything that's happened since then give anyone the feeling that most of these countries are managing their economies any better? The response includes such measures as providing free funerals (Thailand), asking everyone to give their jewelry to the government (S Korea, Thailand), and of course, racism: Malaysia announced that it will expel one million foreigners, and no one's very happy about the United States either, although they're not exactly sure why, but they're sure it's our fault. I predict major ethnic conflicts over the next few years. But at least all that smug talk about the superiority of the Asian Way will be muted, although a commitment to democracy won't be enhanced in consequence.

Best quote on California education system (LA Times): "Dead last in reading . . . is nothing to write home about," added another official, noting that California's fourth-graders tied with Louisiana's as the worst in reading on the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress test.

Stupidest Pete Wilson idea on how to pay for a longer school year: stop paying teachers for the 5 minutes between classes.

Civil rights story of the week:

Hunkering down in parkas and blankets under skies that threatened rain, several gardeners began a hunger strike Saturday evening on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall to protest the city's imminent ban on gasoline-powered leaf blowers.

An Israeli kibbutz is the last to end a creapy kibbutzim tradition, close its childrens' barracks and return the kiddies to their parents.

The most bombed nation in the history of warfare is...anyone? That's right, Laos. Not only was it bombed in its own right, but US planes returning to Thailand from aborted bombing missions on North Vietnam dumped their payloads in Laos so as not to land with bombs on board. 30% of those bombs failed to go off, and continue to kill hundreds of children and others every year. It isn't as sexy as landmines, but they are a bitch to defuse. Mostly because the US refuses to tell anyone how to do it.

Most unfortunate sentence in a eulogy: someone at Michael Kennedy's funeral said that he'd touched a lot of people. Yeah, but he was never convicted! Nice to see a Kennedy in a story that would otherwise grace a Dave Barry column or News of the Weird. I guess he shouldn't have tried to punt.

I trust everyone's following the new twist in our Cuban refugee policy, where some refugees were given exemptions to the usual policy of not allowing any boat people into the US, which applied to others on the same raft. To quote the NY Times, these Cubans "had a big advantage over their compatriots. They can pitch, catch or hit a baseball really well." Baseball been berry berry good to me.

Unfortunate headline: "Officer Shot by Man Celebrating New Year".

Dan Quayle being Dan Quayle last year: "You need to take these life-threatening drugs seriously and get them on the market."

You-are-tampering-in-god's-domain headline, from London Sunday Times: "Scientists build living breasts". Evidently it's a natural process something like cloning, I guess, that should replace silicone.

For some reason this hasn't made the American papers yet, but Pol Pot seems to have "escaped" into China.

Newest thing in India: bamboo dentures.

Syria's defense minister in 1983 (and possibly still defense minister, the story is unclear) told Lebanese resistance leaders at the time that they could kill as many American or British UN troops as they liked, but not any Italians. He had a crush on Gina Lollobrigida.

The ban on smoking in bars even made the international news (well, it was a slow news week), but what else did Calif's legislatidiots get up to in their nearly 1000 new laws? Some excerpts below. Remember, breast feeding good, cloning bad:

Welfare overhaul--Among many changes in welfare law, no welfare recipient can be on welfare for more than five years. During any one stint, new welfare applicants will be limited to 18 months of aid. Able-bodied recipients must work or participate in job training for 20 hours a week, and make sure their children attend school. (AB 1542 by Assemblywoman Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego).

Testing--Students in grades 2 through 11 will have to take a standardized achievement test. Until now, districts had a choice of many tests. (SB 376 by Sen. Dede Alpert, D-Coronado).

Threats--School authorities acquire the authority to expel students who make violent threats against school personnel or property. (AB 307 by Assemblyman Howard Kaloogian, R-Carlsbad).

Executions--Immediate family members of victims must be allowed to witness executions if they want. (AB 566 by Assemblyman Tom McClintock, R-Northridge).

Adult sex offenders--People found not guilty of a sex crime by reason of insanity must register as sex offenders. (AB 290 by Assemblywoman Barbara Alby, R-Fair Oaks).

Rapists--Convicted rapists are prohibited from obtaining custody of, or visiting without supervision, children conceived as a result of the rape. (AB 1222 by Assemblyman Roderick Wright, D-Los Angeles).

Cock fighting--A bill backed by Sheriff Sherman Block makes it easier to seize roosters and other fighting animals and the paraphernalia associated with such pursuits; also allows judges to order the animals killed. (SB 196 by Sen. Pete Knight, R-Palmdale).

Sex offenders--Juveniles convicted of some types of rape must register with police as sex offenders. (SB 314 by Sen. Ruben Ayala, D-Chino).

Victims--Victims of juvenile crime can submit written statements about the impact of the crime on their lives in reports to judges who sentence the delinquents. (SB 1195 by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank).

Identity--By approval of a juvenile court judge, police can publicly identify minors who are sought for arrest in various felonies. (SB 1058 by Sen. Adam Schiff D-Burbank).

Tattoos--The California Youth Authority must buy laser equipment to remove tattoos from juveniles leaving custody to seek jobs. The procedure will occur at sites to be selected in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area. (SB 526 by Sen. Tom Hayden, D-Los Angeles).

Hearsay exception--Sworn statements from witnesses who later die under suspicious circumstances are admissible in gang crimes--an exception to the usual rule barring of hearsay testimony. (SB 941 by Sen. Tim Leslie, R-Carnelian Bay).

Gun crimes--In a bill dubbed the "10-20-life" measure by its backers, criminals who carry a gun during the commission of a crime will face an additional 10 years in prison. Anyone who fires a gun faces an extra 20 years in prison. If the bullet injures a victim, the criminal faces life in prison. (AB 4 by Assemblyman Tom Bordonaro, R-Paso Robles).

Ammo sales--It's now against the law to sell ammunition that can be used in concealed weapons to persons under 21. (AB 1221 by Assemblywoman Dion Aroner, D-Berkeley).

Gun noise--Shooting ranges are exempt from liability for the noise they generate. (SB 517 by Sen. Ray Haynes, R-Riverside).

Grenades--It no longer will be legal to possess practice military hand grenades, or replicas, that can be altered to explode--a source of weaponry used by some Los Angeles gangs. (AB 202 by Assemblyman Jack Scott, D-Altadena).

Drugs and driving--The Legislature extended until 1999 a law requiring that anyone convicted of any drug offense will lose his or her license for six months, whether or not the offense was related to driving. (AB 74 by Assemblyman Larry Bowler, R-Elk Grove).

Breast feeding--Women can breast feed their children in public without fear that they will be asked to leave business establishments or face other repercussions. (AB 157 by Assemblyman Antonio Villaraigosa, D-Los Angeles).

Self-esteem--The state Department of Social Services is required to disseminate information to foster homes and child welfare organizations declaring the importance of self-esteem. (SB 916 by Sen. John Vasconcellos, D-Santa Clara). [Jerry Brown lives!]

Cloning--No person may clone a human being or purchase or sell an ovum, zygote, embryo, or fetus for the purpose of cloning a human being. Violators may be fined by health authorities. (SB 1344 by Sen. Pat Johnston, D-Stockton).

Pain relief--Doctors are required to offer patients the option of taking opiates such as morphine to relieve severe and lasting pain, even if the doctor does not personally wish to write the prescription. (SB 402 by Sen. Leroy Greene, D-Carmichael).

Body piercing--It's now an infraction for anyone to pierce the lip, tongue, nose, eyebrow or body part other than ears of someone under age 18 unless the child's parent is present, or provides consent in a notarized letter. (AB 99 by Assemblyman George Runner, R-Lancaster).

Cyber-seduction--Use of the Internet to distribute material calculated to sexually seduce minors becomes a crime punishable by jail or prison time. (AB 181 by Assemblyman Steve Kuykendall, R-Rancho Palos Verdes).

Endangered species--Developers, miners and other landowners may kill or harm an endangered species or its habitat if they compensate fully for the loss, through habitat creation or other means. (SB 879 by Sen. Patrick Johnston, D-Stockton).

Farmers--Growers may kill an endangered species without penalty if it is an accident that occurs during routine agricultural practices. (SB 231 by Sen. Jim Costa, D-Fresno).

State dirt--"San Joaquin soil" is now designated as the official California state dirt. (SB 389 by Sen. Dick Monteith, R-Modesto).

Pig menace--People don't need to get a permit to kill wild pigs, so long as the porker is threatening life, livestock or property. (SB 329 by Sen. Bruce McPherson, R-Santa Cruz).

Tobacco crimes--It's now illegal for youths under age 18 to attempt to purchase cigarettes or other tobacco products. Previously, Tobacco crimes--It's now illegal for youths under age 18 to attempt to purchase cigarettes or other tobacco products. Previously, it was illegal for them to possess tobacco products. (SB 198 by Sen. David Kelley, R-Idyllwild).

Tobacco liability--Tobacco products lose their automatic protection from liability lawsuits charging damage to health. (SB 67 by Sen. Quentin Kopp, I-San Francisco).

Yesterday I saw a shiny very black Acura with the license plate "Lord Vadr".

The new president of Pakistan, after the last one is forced out, is a Muslim loon and former judge who once ordered a robber's hands and feet amputated and opposed women having the right to initiate divorce or be awarded custody of children.

This week I've been especially thrilled that the US does not have Britain's libel laws. It is illegal to name the 17-year old son of the tough-on-crime-tough-on-the-causes-of-crime Home Secretary who was caught selling dope. He seems likely not even to be tried, but the reporter who bought the weed has been arrested.

Careful readers of the previous paragraph will notice that I violated British law by revealing a piece of information that if I know it, most of Britain must as well, but it's not in any of the newspapers.

It should be noted that the Ulster Loyalist shot to death in his cell yesterday, a man who rejoiced in the name King Rat, was in the Maze Prison, the same one from which a Nat escaped earlier this month dressed in women's clothes. Security, anyone?

Sentence of the day, From the Guardian: "The Prince of Wales would also probably not have met the Spice Girls in public had a sense of crisis not prevailed."

Sloppy headline of the week: "Brazil man kills wife for meager Christmas meal."

Hawaii's domestic partners law, 4 months old, is a miserable failure, with only 296 couples signed up. And not all of those are gay, since while it doesn't apply to hetero couples, it does apply to siblings, widows & adult children, etc. Kinky.

A Republican Xmas story: Michigan state Rep. Jack Horton (R-1950s) says that mothers shouldn't work, so he fires an employee of seven years who has just adopted. He says he's following his principles, which is not a word usually applied to misogyny. Naturally, he is a supporter of forcing mothers on welfare to work 20 hours a week.

Clinton has issued his annual pardons, which do not amazingly enough include anyone on his staff or immediate family, but do include some guy who was court-martialed in 1947 for stealing 4 pounds of butter, and someone who stole a bunch of spark plugs and is thankful that Clinton has restored his civil rights: he can now be a gun-owner again.

Finally, a cheery holiday thought: Russia has ended its pledge of no first use of nuclear weapons.

In the past 5 years, while the homicide rate in the US has dropped 22%, that on Indian reservations has increased 87%. Does anyone know why? A recent spill of classified info shows that it is possible for governments to keep secrets for long periods of time, always a valuable reminder:

JFK was, as has been generally believed, ordering a withdrawal of troops from Vietnam before he died. And the US developed and deployed baby nukes, 1 kiloton devices designed for mining harbors and such, carried by parachutists and divers. Also the "Davy Crockett" nuclear bazooka. If you're doing any last-minute shopping.... Also, the head of the KGB 1961-67 says that the plot that deposed Khruschev was only bloodless because he refused Brezhnev's request that he assassinate Mr. K. Also, a couple of people from State under Carter, including Richard Holbrooke, have a piece in today's NY Times to the effect that Kim Dae Jung was expected to be executed in 1980, but that South Korea was waiting until before Reagan's inauguration, figuring that Reagan would let them get away with what Carter wouldn't. So Holbrooke contacted RR's nominee to head NSC, Richard Allen, and had him contact Seoul. Also, the CIA crippled Taiwan's secret nuclear program with a spy who defected to the US in 1987, taking all the papers with him. I'd say we need juries second-guessing tv casting decisions like we need pregnant "vixens". The story is so silly that no one's complaining about the 1st Amendment aspect. Bosnian Serb elections are in and the fascist wins over the fascist.

The holiday season is upon us and that can mean only one thing: secret executions in Japan. Probably tomorrow, a whole bunch of people will be taken out of their cells and hanged. Didn't know that Japan had the death penalty, did you? That's cause it's all done in secret. Even the executees don't know who they are yet, and certainly not their lawyers, cause it's a secret until they are, as I said, taken out of their cells and hanged. Whatever happened to a lump of coal in a stocking?

The shortest president in American history was James Madison, 5'4" and under 100 pounds.

More in my continuing coverage of sterilization of the retarded: Australia is still doing it, although it's illegal now.

Fun fact of the day: the moon is 15,654,023,458 inches from the earth, give or take an inch. A very expensive project just bounced a laser off the moon, because you really need to have that distance accurate to within an inch, just like you can never have too many digits in pi.

Latest black conspiracy theory: Ron Brown was assassinated. Oh I know his plane crashed, but evidently he was shot to death as well, either before or after the crash. Alan Keyes and Congresscritter Maxine Waters want an investigation.

Did the New York Times really think that the predominance in public suggestions that the new White House dog be named "Fudge" was because of his coloring? One former White House aide, I forget who, wrote a piece in the Times last week suggesting that the dog should watch its back, given what happens to the unconditionally loyal in this administration. Last month there was a big fuss in Britain over the disappearance of the Downing St. cat Humphrey (named after Sir Humphrey Appleby of the tv series Yes Minister), whose kidney ailments have made him an embarrassment, shall we say. There were suggestions that he was put down because Cherie Blair hates cats. It turns out that this was a lie put out by the Conservative Party Central Office. And some cable company just hired 3 strippers to surprise Tory leader William Hague, who is getting married tomorrow. Humphrey's exile should be a lesson to Socks and Buddy: don't pee on anything, or you may "disappear." After all, you don't see Warren Christopher around anymore.

Sometimes I get a wild urge to relieve my bladder over it, splattingly on the ant-like crowds

Alan Clark, the famous British politician and adulterer, is suing the Evening Standard for satirical diary entries in his style, saying it detracts from his reputation as a man of letters. Here is an excerpt from his real diaries:

"I travelled down by train, and a plump young lady came into my compartment at Waterloo. She was not wearing a bra, and her delightful globes bounced prominently ... I gave her a huge grin; I couldn't help it." (18/2/84)

"Palace Hotel, Helsinki, Saturday, 27 September: God knows what's going to happen tomorrow. A kind of 'getting to know you' day has been laid on, with fishing on the lakes, drinking schnapps and (I don't like the sound of this at all) a sauna. Doesn't everybody wander about sweating, but naked?

"But I don't in the least bit mind letting girls see my penis. I suppose it's because I fear - for quite extraneous physical reasons - becoming lightly, or indeed heavily, tumescent and attracting the attention of other men."

"Department of Employment, Thursday June 23, 1983: there is a tiny balcon, a gutter really, with a very low parapet, below knee height. Certain death on the Victoria Street pavement eight floors below. Sometimes I get a wild urge to relieve my bladder over it, splattingly on the ant-like crowds."

"British Embassy, Sofia, Wednesday April 13, 1988: far too many people seem to know that today is my birthday, which of course I don't like at all as it makes it more difficult to ignore the fact that I am 60. I refuse to be 60. 'Mirror, mirror on the wall ...' etc. And the Bulgarians are threatening to sing Happy Birthday."

The bit about the dead resumé-enhancing ambassador I most enjoy is that he used his "military record" to overcome Republican objections to his being completely unqualified to be ambassador to Switzerland, and to evidently thinking that Switz. was a NATO ally. Does anyone else remember Reagan lying about his non-existent war record, or Dan Quayle claiming to be a "Vietnam era veteran"?

In 2350 BC, the great civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia all collapsed at once. The cause seems to have been massive meteor strikes. They'll be back in 3000 A.D. Keep watching the skies.

Emissaries of the Taliban spent the week in Texas, signing a $3 billion deal with Unocal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan, backed by the US government.

This week, the day before Gerry Adams met Tony Blair at No. 10, an IRA prisoner escaped. This from the Sunday Times:

Asked to explain how a man dressed in a badly fitting wig, inexpertly applied make-up and a home-made frock managed to walk out of a maximum security jail in Northern Ireland, a source close to the governor said: "Well it's hardly our fault. I mean we have Mo Mowlam in and out of here all the time."

That Israeli Mossad official who made up his Syrian source used to teach at the Mossad spy school--a course on "The Lie as Art."

The cold war is over. Germany will sooner or later move its capital to Berlin, where the government always used to make its best decisions. And Kazakhstan just this week moved its capital to Akmola. Mosquitos in the summer, -40 degrees in the winter, hundreds of people dying of cold each year because the gas and power supply is less than reliable.

Two records in Britain: their oldest person just died at 114, which means she was 18 when Queen Victoria died. She is not the oldest person ever to live in Britain, if you count Thomas Parr, who died in 1635 at the age of 152. Well, that's what it says in those ads for Parr's Life Pills I keep seeing in newspapers from the 1840s.

And someone set the traffic ticket record, for speeding at 154 MPH. An Aston Martin, if you're wondering.

We'll see if I'm right, but this may be the next Christian right-wing scandal after gays in Disneyland and Ellen DeGeneres: the Mass. Supreme Court has ruled that a divorced father who has recently found god may not teach his children about it, and certainly may not take them to his church where they are likely to be told that non-Christians like their mother, an Orthodox Jew, are going to burn in hell.

The Supreme Court just made an important decision on double jeopardy. The previous standard, since 1989, states that civil penalties can only be assessed separately from criminal ones if the amount involved is to compensate the government for injury caused, and not if they are so high as to constitute an actual punishment. Which seems reasonable. This has been reversed, 9-0 yet, which means that, what, 4 or 5 people must have changed their minds since 1989. The definition of whether a fine is civil rather than criminal is--whatever Congress says it is when it enacts the fine.

Now I'll repeat my question of last week since nobody answered it: SINCE WHEN DO WE HAVE TRIAL IN ABSENTIA IN THIS COUNTRY?

First sentence of a book review in the American Historical Review: "The study of ancient Greek music is a curious one, in that we have little idea how it sounded."

Another academic book for everyone on your xmas list: “A Dictionary of Shakespeare's Sexual Puns and Their Significance”. 20 bucks at finer bookstore everywhere. 372 pages, believe it or not.

You might check out the web site of the Museum of Bad Art.

The sooner they get Yeltsin out of office and into his own Pizza Hut contract, the better. The amazing thing is that only a day or two after his presumably drunken offer to cut nuclear warheads by one-third was disavowed by his handlers, his new offer to cut his ground and naval forces by 40% was actually reported as a serious news story.

No mention yet in American papers of Arafat's promise of a couple of days ago to declare independence in 1999 and NetanYAHOOOOO's threat to send in the troops.

Incidentally, the coverage of the Israeli Cabinet's fake commitment to withdraw an unspecified number of troops from an unspecified section of the West Bank at an unspecified date in the future got coverage almost as uncynical as Yeltsin's promises have been getting. If I were the Serbs or Saddam Hussein, I'd be issuing press releases during Free Ride Week.

As Nazi looted gold talks continue, little mention is being made of gypsies. A disproportionate amount of gold was taken from them, since gypsies are traditionally not great believers in bank accounts. Some of that gold was sent by the Catholics who ran camps in Croatia, where 28,000 gypsies were killed, to the Vatican.

There is a great battle going on as to who is the current Emperor of France, the inheritor of Napoleon's title (actually, Prince, but what the hell). The late Prince Louis Napoleon disinherited his son for marrying a commoner, and without permission yet. So lawyers for the grandson, age 11, are fighting it out with the disinherited Prince Charles. Say what you will, it's still probably of greater significance than the debate over whether Janet Reno should have appointed a special prosecutor over the burning question of which telephone Al Gore used.

In Maryland, lawyers are soliciting business by mail from people who are wanted by the police, but who do not necessarily know until then that they are wanted by the police.

Back to Israel: we'll see how this plays out, since Israeli censorship is pretty good at keeping information from the US as well as its own citizens, but it seems that last year a senior Mossad official almost started a war with Syria. For years he had used a fake Syrian source (or possibly a real source he just hadn't spoken to in years) to claim that Syria had no interest in peace. Last summer this right-wing loon decided to kill any possible pull-out from the Golan Heights by claiming that Syria was about to launch a military strike. Israel deployed its tanks, but didn't go over the edge. We'll see whether this gets any coverage in the US, where there has been almost none given to information from the Kremlin archives showing that the world was very close to a nuclear war in 1983.

A question for the lawyers: since when does this country convict people in absentia? France just refused to extradite someone convicted of murder in Pennsylvania, who would not have gotten a proper retrial.

Another lovely trend: an organization in L.A. is paying drug addicts $200 to be sterilized.

An interesting demographics story in today's Post and elsewhere observes that black male life expectancy in the District of Columbia is now 57.9 years, although a Sioux reservation has lower, while black men just over the border in Virginia live 14 years longer, and Asian women in upstate NJ live 97.7 years. Men of all races live 63 years in Baltimore (but it seems longer), which is lower than in Russia, while those in 2 Utah counties live 77.5 years (but it seems longer). There is thus a 40-yr gap in life expectancy between different groups in this country. By coincidence, British health figures in tomorrow's papers make a comparison possible. There is no racial breakdown, but the figures otherwise are much more closely grouped. Men in Cambridge live 7 years longer than those in Manchester or Liverpool, and the longest-lived women (by health district) live 12 years longer than the shortest-lived men, but that's hardly 40 years. No region deviates more than 5 years from the average male or female life expectancy. The NHS lives.

Plus ça change: a Supreme Court ruling said that it is time that blacks cease "to be the special favorite of the laws, and his rights as a citizen, or a man, are to be protected in the ordinary modes by which other men's rights are protected." This was in an 1883 decision striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed equal access to restaurants, rail cars, etc.

Speaking of protection, a fed district court, I believe, refused to let a class-action suit go ahead on behalf of inmates the LA County Jail fails to release when their sentences are up. This happens hundreds if not thousands of times a year because they're a little slow processing paperwork. They can sue on an individual basis which, since the average over-stay is 2 or 3 days, should ensure the cases are not worth a lawyer's time to handle.

Quote of the day: "Masturbation is the thinking man's television." Christopher Hampton

LA Times headline: "Survey of Top Students Reveals Many Cheat on Tests, Ignore Cigarette Ads"

The DEA is threatening to go after the licenses of doctors who follow the new Oregon assisted suicide law.

A story in the Daily Cal highlights the most screwed-over people at Berkeley: people assigned to gay-theme dorms who are not themselves actually gay. In a masterpiece of bad editing, the article says that members of the dorms participate in weekly meetings and go on group outings.

The Supreme Court let stand a ruling supporting strip searches of second graders.

Iraqis are gathering voluntarily (cough) to be human shields to protect the presidential palace. Not to protect the president, who would certainly not be so stupid as to hang out at ground zero, so just to protect his palace.

There was to be a vote in the Senate on the ability of senators to put holds on nominees anonymously, but the vote was killed, anonymously.

Reports leaked to Israeli tv say that Shin Bet hired a right-wing loon to infiltrate the right-wing loons, and he did so so effectively that he was the one who convinced Yigal Amir to assassinate Yitzak Rabin.

A House-Senate conference committee dropped a provision in the intelligence budget that would have allowed employees to whistle-blow about illegal activities, to only those members of Congress on intelligence oversight committees. Clinton had threatened to veto the bills if this provision was included.

Pakistan, continuing its slow-motion Talibanization, has banned the unseemly showing of women without scarves on tv, removing certain shampoo, soap and toothpaste commercials. Presumably if you don't see them, they don't have to be clean either. On the Cartoon Network, they have censored a scene of the cat kissing a dog. I'd love to know where that one is prohibited in the Koran.

Anyone interested in the new Seymour Hersh book about JFK should check today's London Sunday Times, which has an excerpt.

Disgusting story of the week: You've heard of snuff films. The big new thing is squish films: women in high heels step on baby chicks and hamsters. In Germany this has progressed to cats and dogs. And Scientologists. Charming. This is European and American.

Clinton, speaking out against job discrimination against homosexuals: "Being gay, the last time I thought about it, seemed to have nothing to do with the ability to read a balance book, fix a broken bone or change a sparkplug." Joke 1: that's because when you last thought about it, you were thinking about two chicks doing it. Joke 2: not about changing a sparkplug? Have you ever met a lesbian? Joke 3: sure, it's about the ability to decorate an interior, to dress a hair, to...

By the way, at the event he met Ellen deGeneres, but that photo has not been released, just like when he met Salman Rushdie.

Follow-up: That judge who lied about being the brother of the kid who was killed in Alabama has said that he somehow mixed up in his mind the news event with the similar killing of his sister. Well, guess what--that didn't happen either. We should hardly be surprised as a black Republican is by definition lying to himself. By the way, what the hell was Clinton doing appointing a Republican to the 9th Circuit anyway?

Words to live by: "One man's trash is another man's dissertation." -- director of the George Bush Library, Museum, and Bungee-Jump Centre.

It'll never happen, of course, but the Lord Chancellor of Britain is threatening the venerable tradition of barristers wearing wigs. He is evidently fed up with his own rather more elaborate costume, which is the height of 17th-century fashion. He wants to change it so that he no longer looks like a pirate. He is such a susceptible chan-ce-lor.

Most Americans believe Congress needs a brain scan performed by a proctologist."

Election '97: none of the women, including the incumbent, won in the Jordanian parliamentary elections.

Maybe we could send them Christine Todd Whitman.

Chechnya has declared itself an Islamic republic. I forgot, why were we supporting independence for these people?

What does it say for your democracy, as in Uttar Pradesh, which if you didn't know is a state in the World's Largest Democracy, 50 years old this year, that in the state assembly building they have had to nail down all the chairs and remove all the paperweights and other throwable objects?

So Clinton's nominee to the 9th Circuit has to withdraw because for years he has been telling this story about being the brother of a black 13-year old shot dead in Birmingham after the 1963 church bombing, and no one ever thought to check.

Quote of the week: Rep. James A. Traficant Jr. (R-Ohio) during a House debate last week on immigration policy: "Let us look at the law, because most Americans believe Congress needs a brain scan performed by a proctologist."

Officers of the LAPD have been told to return the bayonets issued to them. The mind boggles.

Rumor says that Bob Dole has had a face lift. Anyone seen a recent picture?

A record 17 women are running for the Jordanian parliament in tomorrow's elections (against 535 men). The first and only woman MP was elected in 1993 and has been subject to a soupçon of harassment, most notably her husband being forced to divorce her.

Nelson Mandela met both Khadafi and the Spice Girls last week. Anyone have a joke on that?

Article in today's LA Times on forfeiture laws. The Justice Dept is due to argue before the Supreme Court that it's legal for the gov. to seize money taken in or out of the country but not reported, even when it was acquired perfectly legally. As I understand it, it is the money that is being punished for criminal activity, not the owner of the money.

From the London Sunday Times:

Garden guerrillas go to war on the gnome front
by Kirsty Lang

THE kidnappers pounce without warning, striking terror into suburban France. Their victims reappear far from home, abandoned in dense woodland or floating down rivers on rafts.

Last Friday, however, four members of the Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) were brought before a crowded courtroom in Bithune, northern France, to answer more than 150 charges of seizing garden gnomes, a miniature tea set and windmill, and a plastic toadstool.

Their lawyers defended their cause with passion. "Your honour, have you never heard the cries of anguished garden gnomes screaming with cold and the indignity of being treated as lamp posts by passing dogs?" said Bruno Dubout, a defence advocate, his face red with suppressed laughter. He suggested the word "gnome" was politically incorrect and should be replaced by "vertically challenged figurine".

The prosecutor refused to be diverted. "We are discussing stolen objects and the violation of people's gardens," she reminded the court sternly, demanding that the GLF leaders be sentenced to 80 hours' community service with the forestry commission. "This is a free country and people should have the right to keep gnomes even if others consider it to be in bad taste." The case was adjourned for two weeks.

Although the judge struggled to keep a straight face, the 10 victims of the new-wave terrorists were not amused. "This is nothing but a show trial," cried Louis Maille, a retired supermarket security guard. "Next time someone tries to steal my gnomes I won't bother going to the police. I'll be ready with my shotgun."

Maille demanded compensation of #500 for the loss of 10 gnomes. When the judge challenged the figure, he explained that they were "deluxe, glass-fibre gnomes" from Belgium.

Hundreds of people have fallen foul of the GLF, which was initially set up last year by a group of art students in Normandy as a "protest against bad taste", but prompted copy-cat raids throughout much of the country. GLF attack squads leave calling cards informing targets: "Your gnomes have now been liberated so they can live in peace in the forest."

Until the "Bithune Four" were captured last August, members had evaded detection. The Alengon branch in Normandy even held a press conference with their faces obscured by balaclavas. "We mean no harm to gnome owners," they explained solemnly. "We just feel these little creatures would be happier in their natural habitat instead of being imprisoned behind a garden fence."

The founder of the GLF, an elusive figure known only as "Le Prof", his nom de guerre, said last week he had become disturbed by the recent invasion of garden gnomes imported from Germany and Britain.

Speaking from a telephone box at an undisclosed location, he said: "Gnomes are the ultimate symbol of bad taste and kitsch. I find them offensive to my visual sensibilities." He admitted he had been surprised at the way the movement had taken off. "We obviously struck a nerve in France," he said.

So widespread are the GLF's operations now that many owners have been forced to bring their gnomes indoors at night or to buy guard dogs to protect them. Some have even organised themselves into gnome defence associations.

"The police don't take this issue seriously. This is not about liberation, it's about theft," complained Corinne Helga, of the Friends of Garden Gnomes Association in Strasbourg. Helga, a songwriter, has formed a pop group called the Gnomes which has made two singles singing their praises.

"Our aim is not to make money, but to make gnome owners more assertive and proud of their hobby," said Helga, who has 20 gnomes and a magic grotto in her garden. "I don't understand why they attract all this hatred. Gnomes are kind protectors of the earth."

Fritz Friedmann, of the International Association for the Protection of Garden Gnomes, based in Basel, Switzerland, believes the anti-gnome sentiment in France is a deeply sinister development. "The Nazis were the first people who tried to ban gnomes, but as soon as the second world war was over, people rushed out to buy them again," said Friedmann, 80, who publishes the Gnome Gazette.

French commentators have seized earnestly on the phenomenon as a manifestation of growing class divisions. "This is about the ruling classes having fun at the expense of working people," said Jean-Claude Kaufmann, a sociologist. Jean-Yves Jouannais, an art critic, has devoted an entire book to the subject of class, taste and the garden gnome.

Le Prof, however, vehemently denies being a member of the sneering classes. "There are several members from working-class backgrounds in the Gnome Liberation Front," he said. There is also a chubby skeleton in his closet: "My own parents have a gnome in their garden," he revealed, "which I've painted green and gold to make it look less offensive."

Much to the chagrin of Le Prof, the publicity generated by the GLF has prompted a sharp rise in the sale of garden gnomes in France.

A spokesman for Gardena France, the gnome market leader, said its sales had increased tenfold. "It's all very depressing," admitted Le Prof. "People just haven't got the point."