Elian is back in Cuba. Ha ha ha, your magic dolphins cannot save you now!

The Russian high school student, although offered a free scholarship at a university, although one specializing in the wrong field, still has not had her grades restore. Someone needs to parachute in some spin doctors. The local education authority report that marked down her grades included in its four pages 33 spelling and 97 punctuation errors, according to one newspaper.

The Supreme Court upholds Miranda not because it thinks Miranda is constitutionally required, but as part of a separation-of-powers pissing
match with Congress. Right decision, wrong reason.

The Supes also strike down Nebraska's partial birth abortion law, while telling it how to write one they will accept. So not the victory it has been portrayed as.

They also allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gays on the grounds that the courts have no right to examine an organization's claim that discrimination is part of its "expressive message."

That said, I have no objection to the Boy Scouts excluding gays, just so long as they get no government funding and their uniforms are banned from schools.

In South Africa, the parties which were bitter enemies under apartheid, the Nationalists and the Democrats, have merged to form a single party, to be the official opposition to the ANC. In other words, they have submerged all their political differences to form a party based solely on ethnicity. South Africa has finally joined the African mainstream.

School prayer got banned by the Supreme Court again. By the way,
wasn't that Texas law great, allowing the students to vote for a student to lead prayers before football games? Who would have thought that a school sponsoring a vote over whose religion was better would had any problem with the Supes?

Oxford University, which has been the target of government attacks as being elitist, will not give Tony Blair an honorary degree. The chancellor says that Blair has only a "second-class mind." Whether pissing off the PM is the action of a first-class mind remains an open question.

Although that Russian girl's grades remain marked down, she did get that camcorder she asked for. She will now have a permanent record of the day her life's dreams went down the toilet.

In chapter 839 of Hollywood's war against culture and sanity, we come to the planned remake of Alec Guiness's Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Will Smith and Robin Williams.

The Daily Show quoted Bill Gates as saying that whenever something gets too popular, the government tries to take it away--like slaves and Thalidomide, they added.

In 1972 Shrub was suspended from flying for having failed to take his medical. Coincidentally, this was the first year in which his medical would have included a drug test. That is one interpretation. The other is that he simply failed to do it like he failed to do any of the other duties he was supposed to perform in his last year in the National Guard, like show up.

When NATO made the ceasefire agreement with Serbia last year, it deleted a clause from the first draft requiring it to release Albanians held in prisons. 1,300 still remain. If I'm reading this right, last month 143 men who had been arrested at random were sentenced to long terms for the murder of a Serb policeman, which occurred after the arrest of some or all of them.

Check out the Chicago Tribune website for an analysis of all 131 (whoops, 132 since they published this morning) of Shrub's executions. Find out how many lawyers have been disbarred, how many jailhouse informants were used, how many lawyers presented no witnesses during the sentencing phase, including one who didn't know he was allowed to. Find out who "Dr. Death" is. And he is not the forensic scientist temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, or the pathologist who made up autopsies. Thrill to the story of a confession coerced by El Paso police, who had Juarez police break into the home of the suspect's Mexican relatives and threaten to hook their genitals up to generators. (A harmless violation of his rights, according to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal, which is all Republican and one of whose members made up most of his resume and was caught practicing law without a license in Florida, and all of that was known at time of his election and he was elected anyway and he has since been arrested for ticket-scalping). Very entertaining in the sickest possible way. And how about this for a closing argument: "Ladies and gentlemen," Pena began, "yesterday when I was talking to you all the lights went out. I don't know. Maybe that was a message. Today it rained. Maybe that was a message. Maybe the rain drops are the key issues, but that's what you have to decide today." "The system. Justice. I don't know. But that's what y'all are going to do."

Should be available for a while. Long but well worth it. If anyone can't access it, I'll pass on a copy on request.

Tony Blair is being criticized in embarrassing leaked policy memos for being out of touch, and was heckled last week at the Women's Institute. To prove that he is not out of touch, he is finally going to tackle the fox-hunting issue. According to a report released today, "There is a lack of firm scientific evidence about the effect on the welfare of a fox of being closely pursued, caught and killed above ground by hounds. We are satisfied, nevertheless, that this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the fox."

A twin was born in Britain today, 28 days after the other twin.

In order to place bets, I guess, on which inflated internet company is going to go under next, go to www.fuckedcompany.com. I'm telling you, there is a site for everything.

In another example of democracy at its finest, the other son of deceased President Assad of Syria has put in a claim to be his successor. This will last until someone finds a dictionary with a good definition of "president."

The Supreme Court ruled that a person who was told to wait 8 days with appendicitis cannot sue her HMO because her appendix burst, as this was what HMOs were designed to do, and what Congress intended.

Jehovah's Witnesses will no longer be excommunicated ("defellowshipped") for having blood transfusions, but they're still not supposed to.

Some of Barak's coalition partners are pulling out because their rabbis ordered them to.

Beaver College in Philadelphia is giving in after 147 years of tittering (so to speak), and changing its name, although I haven't heard what to. Clitoris University springs to mind. Well maybe springs isn't the best verb. Evidently some prospective students couldn't get to the college's web site (beaver.edu) because of censorship software.

addendum

The state psychologist in Texas who told the jury that Hispanics are dangerous and should be put to death did the same in other trials. See the Sunday NY Times article on the Texas lawyer who represented more people who have been executed than any other lawyer in the US, in between drinks, and how in at least one case he put up no witnesses, including perfectly good alibi witnesses he had been too busy even to interview, and didn't cross-examine the only state witness.

I've been meaning to say this for two weeks, but it seems that Austria's neo-fascist Freedom Party has always been heavily subsidized by Libya.

That idiot judge in Alabama who insists on posting the Ten Commandments in his court, no doubt in the original Hebrew, is going to be the next chief justice of the Supreme Court there.

The Supreme Court vacated another Texas death sentence, in which the jury was told by the prosecutor, with no objection from the defense lawyer, that Hispanics are inherently dangerous, as is shown by their over-representation in the prison system.

If more proof were needed of the utter contempt politicians feel for the intelligence of the electorate, Congress passed a repeal of inheritance taxes, that fall on the richest 2% of the population, in an election year. I don't know what's worse, that or Dubya's sudden conversion to such popular issues as air pollution and insurance, when his record as governor indicates no such prior interest, meaning that even though he planned to run for president, he didn't feel obligated to do anything, as opposed to making speeches during the election year.

Prince William of Great Britain, Northern Island, Gibraltar and the Falklands, is about to turn 18. Let the media feeding frenzy
begin. Charles has shut the queen out of contact with the prince, in a successful effort to get her to cave and meet Camilla. Philip made a totally gratuitous defense of genetically-modified foods, precisely in order to annoy his son. The dysfunction goes on. Rather surprisingly, I read that Charles was actually present at the birth of William. Typically, Diana thought that he was paying too much attention to the baby, and not enough to her. Does anyone else see a parallel between Diana and Marysleysis, or however you spell it?

Chernobyl is finally to close down. At the employees' farewell party, all beer will have two heads.

The Justice Dept. says that there was no conspiracy in the Martin Luther King assassination. So that's all right then.

The UN is censoring "hate speech" in the Kosovan media.

NY Times headline: Democrats Try to Redefine Gore in Ad Blitz. As a mammal?

An Egyptian court says you can't divorce your wife (I divorce you I divorce you I divorce you) by e-mail.

Further raising the question of just how committed to democracy Japan is, after all those Shintoist statements by the prime minister, it seems that 1/4 of the seats in Parliament were inherited, some in their 3rd generation since the war. And this has been going on for a while. Why didn't I hear of this before?

The media in China are not allowed to use the name of the new Taiwanese president.

The Antiques Roadshow (British version) this week evaluated what turned out to be stolen silverware (worth #20,000).

I haven't looked at it yet, but the site charity.artificial.com evidently rates the panhandling techniques of actual homeless people. The mind boggles.

Clinton offers to extend the Star Wars umbrella over civilized countries, defined as "if you have to ask, you're not."

My cat decided I wasn't eating enough and brought me a bird. The first time that's ever happened, but not from want of trying. Any creature stupid enough to get caught by Turquoise does not deserve to be in the gene pool.

In a man-bites-dog story, an African country, Benin, has apologized to the US for the slave trade. This is actually legitimate, since the Dahomean state (as it was then) based its wealth on raiding parties into the interior, which captured slaves from other states and sold them on. It was also known for its king having a bodyguard composed entirely of women. Topless women, if I'm not very much mistaken.

Compassionate conservatism, Shrub-style: it is compassionate to grant a stay of execution in order to run DNA tests. It is conservative to sweat the guy until 18 minutes before the scheduled execution.

Israel has pulled out of Lebanon. After Kosovo and Chechnya, it has decided that occupying armies are just so '80s; aerial bombardment is the new black. The head of the South Lebanese Army, which took all of 1.3 seconds to disintegrate after its masters left, said that he had thought they were allies and has now realized that Israel only cares about itself. I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes after I read that.

A Texas death-row inmate tried to sell seats to his execution on eBay, until he was caught at it. Oddly enough, no one was buying.

A "black box" has been developed for guns, in the first instance police guns, that will tell when and where it was shot and at what angle.

The Israeli Supreme Court abolishes the law against women reading from the Torah at the Wailing Wall, formerly subject to 6 mos in prison.

A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court votes to disbar Clinton. I guess it was a bad decision to have slept with all of their wives.

John Gielgud is dead at only 96. Dammit, he was still working, he was too young to die! It'll be interesting to see if the NY Times obit mentions that he was gay. Gielgud was known for gaffes, which may or may not have been. Seated next to the prime minister 50 years ago at a dinner, his opening conversational gambit was, "Where are you living now?" If history records Attlee's answer, I haven't seen it. Similarly, he once asked
Christopher Reeve what he was currently working on. Reeve was at a studio in London, and was wearing a red cape and a blue shirt with a big S on it. According to the Times obit, "If marble could speak, it would have sounded like Gielgud."

And if any of you only remember him from Arthur, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

One of those new regional leaders in Russia was the last member of the KGB to make an arrest for political crimes, in 1988.

Tony Blair's wife Cherie Booth has a baby. For those betting on "Leo," collect at once (the British will bet on anything). It seems that not only was Cherie's father an actor on the British prototype for All in the Family (I like to think playing Meathead, but I've never checked on this), but there were several other actors named Booth in her family tree, one of whom made a bit of a name for himself in 1865.

OK, so I revealed here a month or so back that the racial epithet used by whatever Texas official that was, was "porch monkeys" (which Kevin would really like to know to what that term refers) (that was terrible English, wasn't it?). Anyway, it seems that as a kid, Barbara Bush washed Dubya's mouth out with soap for using some racial epithet. Anyone care to find out which one?

In Britain, an animal rights group attacked a meat factory today, firebombing ten lorries. In non-animal rights circles, we call that a "barbeque."

The ears that wear the crown

Prince Charles was speaking out this week against genetically modified foods. The victim of a botched genetics experiment himself, Charles said "And Monsanto is developing these huge ears of corn. What, what's everyone laughing about?"

13 members of the House voted for increased fuel efficiency standards for cars & SUVs, three hundred and some odd for freezing them, the lop-sidedness of the vote telling you something about how the guardians of our collective interest are no smarter than those acting from self-interest. As to vehicle safety, well, if you could buy a vehicle that increased the likelihood of having an accident in which you killed someone else ten-fold, while reducing the likelihood of death to your own children to zero, you might well consider that to be in your own interests, but the collective interests of society should compel government to stop you doing it. This is why we have a government. Incidentally, when you see the statistics about SUVs hitting smaller cars, you never see stats about what happens when SUVs hit each other--which would be a good start, if you ask me.

Can you tell I was nearly side-swiped yesterday?

Clinton is to forego his plans to address the nation on China trade tomorrow, realizing it would be easier just to bribe members of Congress.

The Sunday Times says that Israel started tapping Clinton's e-mail in 1998. Didn't Ken Starr say something along those lines too?

I mentioned a few days ago that Putin had organized Russia into 7 new regions. He has appointed the heads of those regions, 5 of whom are generals from the Chechen wars or KGB people, at least one famous for his treatment of dissidents. Bad treatment, that is.

Best book title of the day: Speak Clearly Into the Chandelier: Cultural Politics Between Britain and Russia, 1973-2000.

Washington Post headline: "Fire Ruined 5 Historical A-Bomb Buildings".

In Britain, a "Champion for Older Persons" has been named, to advocate whatever for people over 50. He is, of course, 46, which makes him too young, he claims, to know why everyone is now referring to him as Champion the Wonder Horse.

So the IRA finally agrees, not to decommission its arms, but to put them beyond use, subject to inspections. It is the inspections bit that I don't think they've quite thought through. Since they are not giving up their arms, the inspectors must keep the locations secret. Now imagine a black South African, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the former president of Finland wandering around Ireland trying to look inconspicuous.

Vladimir Putin, who we still know very little about and so don't pay enough attention to, has just given his plan to tackle the problem of centrifugal forces. He is dividing the country into 7 regional districts, which precisely overlap with the military districts, with the same headquarters. Not very subtle, really.

The 100th birthday of the Queen Mum in August will be the first royal occasion to sell seats to corporate sponsors. Next they'll be putting Pepsi ads on her oversized hats.

The Pakistani Supreme Court says that last year's coup was legal because the government was corrupt. I therefore feel legally justified in asserting that the current military government is corrupt and that I am now the King of Pakistan.

Los Alamos is on fire. The people of Hiroshima must be laughing their asses off.

A casino in Coachella Valley, wherever that might be (California is all I know, so it's obviously a reservation) has bought a defibrilator.

Chuck Quackenbush, the state's insurance commissioner, had a secret fund of nearly $2 million to fund tv commercials featuring Chuck Quackenbush right before his last election. One said that his department had a billion to return to Californians. He was referring to the assets of 86 failed insurance companies. The filing deadline had expired for 84 of them.

Sierra Leonean rebels are threatening to skin UN hostages alive. And they could do it, too.

Maureen Dowd describes Guliani as a charismatic, drink-the-Kool-Aid kind of leader.

A sumo wrestler is disqualified after his loin cloth falls off. Evidently that's against the rules.

In 1958 the Air Force investigated the possibility, since it was so far behind in the space race, of exploding a nuclear weapon on the moon. On the dark side, with the sun behind it, so that the mushroom cloud (would there be a mushroom cloud in a vacuum? Somehow I doubt it, but the reporter wasn't up on his physics) would be visible from earth. It would also have been a serious plastic surgery job on the Man in the Moon.

Speaking of which, there is an operation to stop blushing. Evidently it's a serious problem for some folks. By the way, I forget what they're calling it, but shyness seems to be the big new psychiatric growth market. You may have seen ads for drugs for this on tv. Anyway, stopping the flow of blood to the cheeks is not as easy as it sounds. It's actually controlled by something or other near the lungs, so this is major abdominal surgery.

A story about someone who collects collective nouns. In case you were wondering, which you weren't: a smuck of jellyfish, a grist of bees, a bale of turtles, a siege of herons.

It's a girl! India has its 1 billionth Indian-type person born today. Indian authorities say they can't imagine how their population keeps growing so rapidly. The girl, whose name I can't remember offhand, but it means faith in Hindi, was born this morning. Her engagement was announced this afternoon.

A town in Cornwall, drawing up a map to hand out to all the tourists, found out that one of its roads was called Cowshit Lane. They are deciding whether to include that on the map.

A long piece in the Friday Washington Post on Texas and the death penalty (hey hey GWB, how many kids did you kill today? [so it doesn't rhyme, shoot me, but not in Texas if you know what's good for you] Why, one, actually). That lawyer who kept falling asleep during trials? 12 of his clients have been executed.

The US Air Force tried to keep secret a report that says that in Kosovo NATO only hit 14 Serb tanks, while claiming 120, 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220, 20 artillery pieces not 450. This won't be a secret to you people, since I said the same thing last June. Newsweek got it this week.

NY Times Headline: Pilot's Rapid Descent Cited in Osprey Crash. That's pretty much the definition of a crash, isn't it?

The US plans to seek the death penalty for the embassy bombings in 1998 in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, although I'm pretty sure neither of those places were in the US. By the way, I wonder how the Sudanese pharmaceutical industry is recovering. The US is never going to admit it was wrong on that one, is it?

Speaking of never admitting you're wrong, Salon has a piece on a probably innocent person Texas is planning to execute next month. He was convicted on a) the fact that he's an asshole in general, b) an eye-witness who the police corrupted by showing a photo alone before they put it in a photo array, c) his alleged fellow-murderers. The fun part of the article is the way the latter kept having to change their testimony, under the direction of the police, when it was simply wrong. That car was proven to
be up on blocks the night of the murder? Well, then it must have been this other car. I said she was screaming but she was found with a gag on her mouth? Um, he must have gagged her after she was dead. And so on.

One detail: the Texas Parole and Pardons Board never actually meets, hold investigations, even has conference calls. They just rubber stamp every execution.

Finally, a report says that cockroaches and other bugs feel pain. The scientists seem to think this will change the way people deal with insects. They are wrong.

San Francisco bans discrimination against fat people, although "sizeism" probably includes people of other sizes and shapes as well. I predict a really tangled lawsuit when a fat person accidentally sits on a midget.

An op-ed piece in the Times notes that while Dubya brags about having ended social promotion, the kids it affects are now in kindergarten. By the way, isn't "social promotion" the perfect term to describe Dubya's whole career to date?

The Zimbabwe attacks on white farmers look like spreading to Kenya.

Had it not been for a sarcastic piece in The Onion, "NPR Listener
Concerned About Sierra Leone," I might have said something here about Sierra Leone, where UN peacekeepers, in another stunning demonstration of competence, today ran out of bullets.

From the table of contents page to the British news section of the London Times:

[26]Impotence 'doctor' is jailed for deception
Potentially dangerous drugs sold to vulnerable clients at inflated
prices

Inflated...prices. Talk about adding insult to injury, huh?

Zimbabwe just imported 21,000 AK-47s for distribution to the police and squatters. This should be a fun election.

The Italian police, living up to their reputation for competence, have failed to capture an escaped prisoner after 46 days. The prison is on an island 1 mile square, and he hasn't left it.

Britain is celebrating a little rock slide in Dover, which means that France is now officially 60 feet further away.