With the Academy Awards around the corner, many celebrities are consumed with what to wear. If the French National Assembly has any input, you won’t see any hijabs, yarmulkes or large crosses (sorry, Mel) on the red carpet this year. After Education Minister Luc Ferry reported a “spectacular rise in racism and anti-Semitism in the last three years,” a law was passed banning conspicuous displays of religious affiliation in public schools. While the legislation is seen as a victory for French secularism, World Jewish Congress VP Lord Greyville Janner was left only to declare that, “We are indeed doomed if we are to be defended by the French.”

The launch of Janet Jackson’s new album, “All For You,” is anything but doomed after her Superbowl nipple wink. That NFL commish Paul Tagliabue was hauled before Congress not only speaks to the pandemic of overreaction, but also evinces our susceptibility to such anatomical sophistry. Forget the tits; I say you’d better watch your mouth these days. Martha Stewart may do heavy jail time for uttering one small word: sell. Howard Dean’s screech made $40 million in campaign contributions vanish into the ether(net). Even the President is on the defensive – agreeing to an independent investigation of intelligence failures – after peppering his State of the Union address with idiotic phrases like “weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.” A post-broadcast Washington Post/ABC News poll showed this kind of gibberish was totally indecipherable, even among acute-listening demographics like gay couples and steroid-laden baseball players. Other poll results indicated that most people believed that Bush fabricated prewar WMD evidence and that Dr. Robert Atkins died of Mad Cow Disease.

In the wake of BSE, the outbreak of the Asian Bird flu may just spell the end of low-carb diets, though it couldn’t deter the Dick Cheney from a little duck hunting last month. The Vice President took Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia on a taxpayer-sponsored trip to a private hunting camp owned by oil services tycoon Wallace Carline. Bad weather kept the waterfowl at bay, but the notion of Equal Justice for All was shot-gunned to death in the marshes of Southern Louisiana. Cheney, it turns out, has a case pending before the Supreme Court and evidently enjoys a rarefied version of the judicial process. To be fair, I doubt that our social contract would survive if every slob out there had access to this kind of legal representation. Imagine getting arrested for drunk driving and having your neighbors put their paychecks in a hat so you could take the judge out to Hooters the night before your arraignment.

Cheney may very well get away with such a brazen affront, but for the rest of us, crime simply doesn’t pay. For our friends overseas, however, a plummeting greenback means a dollar’s worth of justice certainly doesn’t cost as much as it used to. A 42-year-old German man received merely 8 years in prison for butchering and eating another man. The court held that the light sentence was warranted because the assailant had no “base motives” in the crime. Some observers speculate that serving a crude Beaujolais Nouveau may have gotten him 15 – 20, which in any case is considerably more than was meted out to Abdul Kahn. Dr. Kahn, known as the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, garnered President Musharraf’s full pardon after appearing on state television and apologizing for selling atomic secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. As part of a quid pro quo, Dr. Kahn told a stunned nation that, “There was never, ever any kind of authorization for these activities by the government. I take full responsibility for my actions and seek your pardon.” The speech allowed the government to circumvent a public prosecution and keep its nuclear program tightly under wraps. Sources close to the negotiations between Dr. Kahn and the government recalled Musharraf’s final words: “Like, hey, Abdul, I’ve known you for many years and while your actions have threatened the very survival of mankind, I am inclined to forgive you.” I guess American standards are a bit more stringent – after 14 years of exile, Pete Rose finally admitted to betting on baseball and he still can’t get into the Hall of Fame.