Republican Jeanine Pirro, running for New York Attorney General, took umbrage over the timing of an investigation into her attempt to eavesdrop on her (supposedly) cheating husband. “The federal government,” she snapped, “is using taxpayers’ dollars to get involved in a marital situation… something that is not the proper review of the Department of Justice… this is an outrage.” The U.S. attorney swiftly responded to her rather caustic remonstration by subpoenaing the last seven years of her financial disclosure statements. Odds are that unveiling such intimacies as brokerage statements, bank transfers and real estate holdings won’t bode very well for a woman whose husband has already served 11 months for tax evasion. Which is now the second reason she’s sweating her husband’s aversion to condoms.

Meanwhile, freshly resigned Hewlett-Packard chairwoman Patricia Dunn is packing a valise for her own stay at the grey-bar hotel. After H-P admitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the company had illegally obtained personal phone records in an effort to identify who was leaking confidential business information, Dunn, along with four others, was indicted by California Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Dunn is charged with using false pretenses to obtain private records from a public utility, identity theft and that ubiquitous prosecutorial catchall, conspiracy. For a fleeting moment there, H-P’s juicy espionage scandal garnered the heft to eclipse from the cover of the Wall Street Journal far more consequential stories like the simultaneous demise of all three domestic automakers or the expanding phthisis of backdated stock options. In fact, the high tech cause célèbre piqued the attention of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which held hearings in which those called to testify pled the Fifth and whose members, therefore, were left to pontificate. Cognizant of the fact that his district is damn near surrounded by H-P’s 11 Texas outposts, Committee Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) tempered his criticism of the company’s “alarming” pattern of “deception” and “questionable conduct.” Other members were less constrained. “What were you thinking?” scolded Rep. John Dingle (D-MI), “[This] was a plumber’s operation that would make Richard Nixon blush.”

But the larger point is this: at the very moment that Congress is fashioning legislation that imbues the Bush administration with an unfettered ability to wiretap the citizenry, (and, as an adjunct, retroactive exoneration for any such crimes committed heretofore), Republicans have the audacity clamber up on their soap boxes and decry domestic spying and wanton government intrusion as woefully un-American.

Far more in keeping with the national zeitgeist, according to right wing apologists, is the habit of bringing, along with your sack lunch and textbooks, a loaded firearm to school. Sure, by now we’ve probably moved beyond Columbine and the University of Texas clock tower, but those were isolated, if previously unimaginable, incidents. Somewhere along the line school shootings became de rigueur, and are now incessantly raining down on our children in unavoidable clusters, like hailstorms conjured in Hell. Witness Eric Hainstock of Cazenovia, Wisconsin who gunned down Principal John Klang a day after receiving, Heaven forbid, a demerit for possession of tobacco. A mere hundred and twenty-five miles up the road in Green Bay, authorities arrested three teens who amassed a small arsenal of guns and bombs and had planned to “shoot up” East High School. One of the suspects said he was fueled by a “bunch of rage” after getting dumped by an Internet paramour. Another revealed he was in love with an East High co-ed, but that she was engaged to someone else.

According to the seasoned and sagacious Duane Morrison and Charles Carl Roberts IV, the misguided teens had it all wrong; coarse and unfocused violence is no way to handle unrequited love. Rather, the hoary duo advocated, a man should stride intently into the world and forcibly take that which he hankers for. Morrison demonstrated his theory by entering a Park County, Colorado high school classroom and sexually assaulting several girls before killing one victim and (thankfully) himself. Roberts, for his part, held several Amish girls prisoner in a one-room Pennsylvania schoolhouse before executing five hostages and then (most appreciatively) committing suicide. Evidence suggests the latter shootings took place before Roberts could employ the handcuffs and lubricant found in his utility belt. Obviously, these guys were in no mood to simply wait around for Cupid to flit down and work his magic; rather they were going to wrest away that little cherub’s bow and arrow and use them to rape a bunch of kids.

Priests, of course, have no need for such weaponry. They are abetted in their systemic pedophilic efforts by the full weight of the Church and, perhaps, when pressed, a little wine from the sacrament. And because the image of a clergyman buggering a helpless young lad is by now a shopworn caricature, special credit goes to Fathers John Skehan and Francis Guinan of St. Vincent Ferrer Catholic Church in Florida for turning such a well-established stereotype smartly on its head. The pair was arrested on charges of skimming $8 million from collection plates and using the cash to pay for gambling trips to Vegas, beachside condos, rare coin collections, and girlfriends. Yes, that’s right, girlfriends. As if to lend symmetry to this Bizarro-World landscape, a Republican Congressman, on the heels of the Duke Cunningham bribes and hookers scandal, resigned after his lurid and copious man-on-boy e-mails spewed frothily into the public domain.

Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) had for years preyed on teenage pages working the Capitol, sending such prosaic electronic messages as:

How my favorite young stud
Did you spank it this weekend… where do you unload
Cute butt bouncing in the air
Send me a pic
Totally stiff wood… strip down and get relaxed

The GOP House leadership claims it knew only of a blander set of communications that they described as “overly-friendly”. As in, “I went home for Thanksgiving and my ‘overly-friendly’ Uncle Rudy grabbed a handful of cranberry jelly and fisted me in front of my wife and kids.” With pols scrambling to cover their own ass (pun intended) accusations and denials are flying around Washington like seagulls with bird flu; the contagion had already doomed several erstwhile healthy Republican reelection campaigns, like that of National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Tom Reynolds (R-NY). In May of this year, when Foley feared he could no longer live in the closet, it was Reynolds who convinced him to run for a seventh term; shortly thereafter, Reynolds feltched $100,000 from Foley’s personal PAC. Despite flapping jowls puffy oratory, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was, as we now know, well aware of the situation all along, yet chose to keep Foley on as Chair of the Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children where comments like “we need to… unite… on America’s children” and “The high court has sided with PEDOPHILES OVER CHILDREN” have taken on freshly disturbing connotations. Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach (draw your own conclusions) is being vigorously defended by his roommate and chief of staff Scott Palmer (draw your own conclusions) who swears he was not informed by Reynolds’ (and former Foley) staffer Kirk Fordam years ago. Fordam, who was recently shit-canned, is nonetheless supported by reams (pun intended) of corroborating evidence.

Religious conservatives are trying to paint the story with the broad brush of homophobia, but the fact remains that this is an issue of pedophilia, not sexual orientation. You can’t toss out members of Congress simply for appearing gay. Otherwise members of the 700 Club would be chasing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rep. David Dreier (R-CA) with pitchforks and torches.

The utterly disgraced Foley at first offered up the Mel Gibson defense by blaming booze and slinking off to rehab. But after watching Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) admit himself to an alcohol clinic after pleading guilty to accepting bribes from convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was immediately suspicious: “I don’t buy this at all. I think it is a phony defense. The fact is I think he’s responsible for what he did here and I think it’s a gimmick.” When a cacophony of long-time friends and associates later revealed the congressman as nary more than a teetotaler, Foley abruptly shifted the blame onto Jesus, claiming repeated molestation at the hands of his parish priest. (Again, kudos to Skehan and Guinan.) But not every alter boy becomes a pedophile, and Foley may soon be propping up new bogeymen. Perhaps it was tainted spinach or (as some gay right advocates argue) a genetic predisposition. Could it be that Foley inherited his penile fascination from his great grandfather, Dr. Frederick E.B. Foley, inventor of the eponymous catheter? I guess Foley’s lawyers are gonna have to run that one up the pole.

President Bush was so incensed when several prominent Republican senators voted down his plan to legalize torture that he petulantly tore through the Rose Garden on his tricycle and threw his Baby-Huey sized lollipop at the gaggle of reporters who had gathered on the White House lawn.  A bit of overreacting methinks.  It’s not like a bunch of Thai generals surrounded the place with tanks.  But still, in the lock-step Rovian nightmare that enshrouds Washington, any discord is seen as revolutionary.  The Che Guevara this time around is John McCain, whose five grueling years in Vietnamese captivity give him unquestioned authority on the subject.  Against gathering opposition, Mr. Bush at first tried to be adult and work out a compromise plan, though the blunt instruments of coercive interrogation to not easily lend themselves to statutory parsing.

Imagine the difficulty, for instance, electrocuting one testicle without harming its twin.  Could detainees, for example, be wholly tortured on Wednesdays and Fridays, but remain protected by the Geneva Convention during the rest of the week?  There are obvious kinks on the tightrope between desire and accommodation, yet Mr. Bush remained steady enough to insist that any law be applied retroactively. Which will be of the utmost import when the incoming Democratic majority starts cataloging the litany of impeachable offences.  Historical absolution, the President confessed to his cronies, will “define whether or not we can protect ourselves.”  In the end, though, the President capitulated and only days after stating that prisoner abuse was absolutely essential “in order for us to protect America” he declared, in a flip-flop worthy of John Kerry, he intends “to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture.”  In other words, we use outside contractors for that.

Like, God willing, Nancy Grace. Hell, that bitch could get Pakistani President Musharraf to cough up bin Laden, Al-Zawahiri and the whole damn gang up in Waziristan. But for the nonce we must, despite Bush’s declaration that “the United States will not tolerate nations that harbor terrorists,” endure Pakistan’s peace treaty – ‘the military will no longer operate where al Qaeda operatives are believed to be hiding… [Moreover,] bin Laden would not be taken into custody as long as he remains a peaceful citizen.” – with the Taliban. We must tolerate it because the President opined that we are precluded from sending in American Special Forces by virtue of the fact that “Pakistan is a sovereign nation. In order for us to send in thousands of troops into a sovereign nation we’ve got to be invited by the government.” Apparently we somehow overlooked such formalities when it came to Iraq or Afghanistan or Nicaragua or, well, you get the point.

Although, to be fair to the Cowboy-in-Chief, party crashers are often met with harsh recriminations. As of last week, 2,690 U.S. servicemen had died in Iraq and over 20,000 had been wounded. Remember, not even television bounty hunter Duane “Dog” Chapman is immune to castigation for unauthorized acts of force on foreign soil. U.S. Marshals recently carried out a Mexican arrest warrant against Chapman following the Dog’s unsanctioned apprehension of serial rapist and Max Factor scion Andrew Luster in Puerto Vallarta. With Luster serving a 124-year stretch in California, Chapman finds himself behind bars awaiting an extradition hearing in Honolulu. Though heavyweights like Colin Powell are beginning to doubt our moral authority, are we not justified in pursuing such evil perpetrators? The Pope certainly thinks so. After the Pontiff intimated that Muslims are violent, they bombed two churches and killed a nun just to prove him wrong. So the stakes are high, and not just for security reasons, but also for preservation of our culture. Which is why immigration is such a hot button issue. Westerners simply do not want to surrender their deities and customs to outsiders.

Towel heads in particular have demonstrably divergent notions of how a society should behave. We are uncomfortable with their edicts regarding the (narrow) rights that should be accorded women, dietary restrictions and the treatment of animals. To wit: An Indian policeman was fined for “allowing” his guard dog to become pregnant. Constable Sunil Kumar “was not serious about his duties,” grumbled Deputy Inspector General S. Bhatnagar. “The Labrador… at the time of her delivery was on leave. It is a very sensitive issue in our department.” Kumar, unsuccessfully, rejoined, “When an animal experiences the urge to mate, it does not pay heed to its trainer.” Unless, of course, the trainer is engaged in the mating. A Sudanese man was forced by tribal elders to take a goat as his wife after he was caught fully mounted and pumping his loins into the animal’s hindquarters. The goat’s owner, one Mr. Alifi heard a loud noise and went outside to confront the barnyard fornicator. “He fell off the back of the goat, so I captured him and tied him up.” The betrothed, a Mr. Tombe, was ordered to pay a dowry of 15,000 dinars to Mr. Alifi, who later quipped, “We have given him the goat and as far as we know they are still together.”

Sadly, the life expectancy of a goat is only a dozen years and while Mrs. Tombe (no kid herself) will happily stick around longer than any of Rush Limbaugh?s three wives, Mr. Tombe must confront the looming reality of widowhood. He may want to put in a call to Dr. Hwang Woo-suk who has successfully cloned a cow, a pig, and most famously a dog. So the goat thing seems well within reach. What has eluded Dr. Hwang, on the other hand, is forgiveness for fudging groundbreaking scientific experiments that ostensibly produced 11 patient-specific stem cell lines from cloned human embryos. A modicum of relief, however, has befallen the good doctor as the guys in the lab coats over at Advanced Cell Technologies have, for the moment, wrested away a sizable portion of his genetic infamy. The company had (falsely) claimed it could successfully harvest a single cell from a multi-cell cluster without harming the embryo. This is important, as it would have obviated the Christian fundamentalist objection to stem cell research as taking life in the effort to preserve life and would have therefore paved the way for government funding. But, alas, it turns out that Advanced Cell achieved results by removing two, sometimes three cells, and in the process murdering dozens of helpless, unwanted, IVF-clinic embryos. Which were to be thrown out anyways. An indignant Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the subcommittee overseeing medical research, lashed out at the company for lying about “what you told the world.” Specter then lamented, ‘We have representation which created a lot of hopes… and now they appear to be dashed.” Advanced Cell’s V.P. for research, Robert Lanza bristled, “We have developed a technique and we have indeed shown it does work.” Lanza went on to point out that Senate Majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) – ostensibly a licensed physician – viewed hours of videotape showing one such embryo following the arc of a Mylar balloon and responding to other stimuli, and had, on the basis of such evidence, disputed the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Nonetheless, despite the expert medical opinion of Dr. Frist and the palpable marital bliss visited upon the Tombes, the White House has pledged to veto any legislation that supported “the most egregious abuses of medical research” geared towards “creating human-animal hybrids.” “Human life is a gift from our Creator,” bleated Mr. Bush, “and that gift should never be… devalued.” Baaa-humbug.

Republican Jonathan L. Payton is an otherwise obscure state legislator seeking reelection in Arizona. But Payton is also an intelligence officer in the Army Reserve and has asked… asked to be deployed to Iraq. He will report for duty only days before voters go to the polls because, in his words, “I had to put my money where my mouth is.” It’s a matter of record that during Vietnam Dick Cheney used five deferments to avoid the draft. As for the President, well, he simply went AWOL. And while it’s true that five sitting members of Congress are weekend warriors, they are protected by a federal weasel law that automatically assigns them to the Standby Reserve. It is rather improbable, then, that they will ever be hit with a stop loss order or lose a limb to an IED. Nonetheless, I think Lieutenant Payton is on to something. If every able bodied citizen who voted for George Bush had to serve on the front lines, we would have, even after adjusting for fraud and the elderly (recently slackened recruiting standards obviate the need to disqualify drug addicts or the criminally insane – two demographics, by the way, that overwhelmingly vote Republican), plenty of troops to clean up Iraq and to invade Iran as well.

Those of us left behind – the un-Raptured, if you will – can benignly watch summer’s last glints surrender to autumn’s leaves. And with the kiddies back in school and your swim trunks tucked furtively into the dark recesses of the old lady’s armoire, you are free, once again, to let your beer belly spill out all over the living room in celebration of the oncoming football season. The Dallas Cowboys, for those unaware, have acquired the maladaptive if supremely talented Terrell Owens, which should provide for plenty of headlines of one kind or another. What no longer garners attention in this era of outrageous salaries and free agency is the attendant carousel of roster changes demanded by the peculiar economics professional sports. (These are the same convoluted monetary forces that result in dozens of brand-new, half-empty stadiums.) Yet the San Diego Chargers had every reason to expect starting linebacker Steve Foley to take the field in Monday night’s opener against the hated Oakland Raiders.

Unfortunately, Foley’s $775,000 contract wasn’t the only thing locked and loaded as the season approached. So too was the firearm of an unidentified off-duty police officer who shot Foley multiple times outside the player’s upscale home. The cop, out of uniform and driving an unmarked Japanese sedan, maintains he observed Foley recklessly speeding and, in the interest of public safety, entered into pursuit. Foley contends he thought he was being carjacked by a crazed gunman. Either way, it’s not exactly an aberration that the fuzz would think it necessary to gun down a 6’4″ 265 lb. Negro lurking around an affluent neighborhood. Look, Paris Hilton was pulled over for drunk driving and the officers extended nothing but courtesy (well, and an offer to sniff her panties). Even Warren Jeffs, the FBI’s most wanted polygamist, was taken into custody without force even though Jeffs’ $50,000 stack of cheddar and collection of cell phones did little to betray his lily-white, Utah inbreeding. Because was rollin’ like a player in a pimped out 2007 cherry-red Cadillac Escalade, the Las Vegas police may well have gone in guns blazing. But Tupac, this time, turned out to be a cracker. (A child-molesting cracker, but a cracker nonetheless.) So the evidence clearly points to racism; cops and large Negroes, therefore, are a decidedly bad mix, which can’t augur well for the NFL, because if you ever go to a football game you’ll assuredly see a plethora of both.

Now to the hardwood where USA’s collection of superstar basketball players was drubbed out of the World Championship tournament again – this time by a Greek team suffused with sluggish no-name sharpshooters willing to play defense. Pundits who cover the NBA lament the preponderance of individual play, the dearth of off-ball movement and the relative obscurity of any strategy to prevent one’s opponent from scoring. Yet payrolls continue to skyrocket, forcing small market teams to shuffle from one city to the next like some freight train hobo. Wouldn’t you think, therefore, that Howard Schultz or George Soros could snap up one of these flagging franchises, rent some crumbling arena in Akron or Cookville, hire the Lithuanian national coach, load the roster with low-paid Euros and kick some serious ass? Then again, it might be a somewhat of a stretch to take seriously – whether on Madison Avenue or in the ‘hood – a bunch of pasty white guys in ’70’s nutter shorts and store-bought shoes.

Yet for Steve Irwin, the lesson of underestimating your opponent came with dire consequences. Filming a new underwater adventure show, the erstwhile “Crocodile Hunter” was killed on the Great Barrier Reef when a stingray’s tail shot a noxious barb through his heart. Video footage reveals no evidence that the ray was threatened or provoked before the attack, although Irwin was a bit out of his element. Still, losing one of Australia’s biggest celebrities found Parliament suspending session to honor their countryman. Prime Minister John Howard: “He was a genuine, one-off, remarkable Australian individual and I am distressed at his death.” Oscar-wining friend Russell Crowe (himself known to battle feral New York hoteliers with nothing but telephone handsets) added, “He was and remains the ultimate wildlife warrior.” After handling gobs of poisonous snakes and wrestling hundreds of crocodiles twice his size, Irwin was well aware of the hazards of his chosen profession. It would have been equally sad if not unexpected if he was devoured by the jaws of a ten-foot reptile; but a stingray? The point is that you never know from which quarter danger will emerge.

Just ask Dell Computer. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that the Round Rock, Texas computer maker would be negatively impacted when IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo. I challenge you to find any American manufacturer who can compete against the Chinese with their slave labor, unconstrained polluting and inimical disregard of intellectual property rights. But who could have foreseen Dell losing market share to domestic plodder Hewlett-Packard? Especially since H-P, unlike Dell, has refused to slash prices. Thus Hewlett was able to report a huge leap in quarterly earnings at the same time Dell saw its profits cut in half; Dell’s first mover advantage of direct shipping and just-in-time assembly has obviously evaporated as these methods have been adopted industry-wide. To wit: since H-P’s much maligned 2002 merger with Compaq, the company’s stock has more than doubled. Dell shares, over that same span, are essentially flat. Now fetching 21 and change, Dell common did in the interim visit the low 40’s, but unless you fortuitously sold at the top, you – like so many of today’s bewildered homeowners – have gained nothing save the thrill of a round trip. Those holding pat until the next rally may want to reconsider because the story, unfortunately, gets worse. Dell has issued a recall for 4.1 million laptop batteries (the largest such retraction in history) because of problems with explosions and spontaneous combustion. (For safety reasons Korean Airlines has banned passengers from bringing Dell laptops on board.) And then there’s the pesky matter of “information relating to revenue recognition” (read: cooking the books) currently being scrutinized by the SEC. Short of Michael Dell confessing to the JonBenet Ramsey killing, things could hardly deteriorate further.

With several H-P honchos facing criminal prosecution for illegally obtaining journalists’ phone records during a leak inquiry (attorneys for the defendants are planning to implement the if-the-President-can-do-it-why-can’t-we? defense), some proponents criticize the singling out of Dell; Apple, too, is under investigation (for back-dating stock options) and is burdened by the same (Sony produced) battery issue. As Conan O’Brien quipped, “A Mac fire is just like a PC fire, except it’s more hip and condescending.” And, traditionally, significantly more expensive. But even given Apple’s design and interface superiority, a low-end Mac Pro is now 30% cheaper than a comparable Dell Precision Workstation 490. How then to turn things around? Perhaps Dell could snare a multi-billion dollar no-bid contract to stuff those 4 million discarded batteries into Lt. Payton’s rucksack so that our soldiers, in a radical turn of the tables, could actually blow up the other guys.

Evidence that the move from protractors to supercomputers has imbued the scientific community with untoward hubris manifested in Prague last week, when a conclave of thuggish astronomers knocked the scrawniest planet out of our solar system. In a matter of nanoseconds, Pluto was dispatched as if sucked into a black hole. Shock waves were felt as far away as Hollywood where Paramount Studios declared that Tom Cruise is no longer a star. Pluto’s swift demise gave third grade teachers mere days to rip offending pages out science books before their students returned from summer vacation. Of course if the Bush administration had its way, our kids wouldn’t have any science books to begin with. The White House believes that thinking and knowledge are the Devil’s handmaidens and instead relies on gut instincts and profiteering when deciding what The Decider will decide. Needless to say, this methodology hasn’t played out so well in places like Baghdad or New Orleans. Nevertheless, the President, by under-funding his own education program, seems to be saying, “Who needs all that learnin’ stuff when our great nation can bask in the glory of unwanted pregnancies and potentially curable diseases?”

Our exalted administration, via the puppetry of Fox News, reminds us hourly of the threats posed by Middle Eastern religious fanatics, pausing only catch its breath and to foment equally pernicious religious fanaticism here at home. It was bad enough that these School Prayer-Terri Schiavo-Ten Commandment-Mt. Soledad Cross-loving zealots attacked gay marriage, evolution, stem cell research and reproductive rights but now, now they have gone way too fucking far. A coalition of 13 conservative groups – the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America among them – are petitioning the FBI and Justice Department to remove adult movies from hotels’ pay-per-view menus. Jesus Christ, do you think businessmen want to burn their expense accounts on little bottles of shampoo and lice-ridden linens? Hell, no. It’s all about the porn. Which by the way brings the lodging industry several hundred million dollars a year in high-margin revenue. For Phil Burress, leader of Citizens for Community Values and recovering (so he claims) sex addict, copious sums of money fail to outweigh the hazards of a single Marriot with Jenna Jameson lurking on channel 69: “We’re going to have sexual abuse cases coming out of these hotels… [they] are just as dangerous as environments around strip joints and porn stores.”

What’s next – banning thong underwear or do we move directly to forcing women to wear burqas in public? It’s guys like Phil and recently captured polygamist Warren Jeffs who lend credence to the otherwise ironic notion that a Bible thumper is far more likely than a sex-trade habitué to regard a woman as little more than that bit of wrinkled skin surrounding a vagina. Consider Watertown, N.Y. First Baptist Church Pastor Tim LaBouf who fired an 81-year old female Sunday school teacher, citing First Timothy Two, 11-14:

A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, she must be silent.

So imagine the consternation among White House born-agains when U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled that Bush’s domestic spying program is unconstitutional and must be shut down. While the Vice President stomped away mumbling something through clenched teeth about Al Qaeda and stupid cunts, official spokesman Tony Snow took the podium and stiffly told reporters the administration “couldn’t disagree more with this ruling.” Which is probably what Scott Peterson said when convicted of chopping up his wife and dumping her body in the San Francisco Bay. The good news, however, for Dick Cheney and his merchants of doom is that shortly before the CIA was required to unplug their eavesdropping equipment they overheard John Mark Karr confess to the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey. American authorities were thus able to locate and arrest Mr. Karr in Thailand, during his final chapter as a pedophile prior to upcoming sexual reassignment surgery. In other words, he wanted to reenact Rush Limbaugh’s underage prostitute soirée one last time before his frank and beans wound up in a dumpster.

Even though crime scene DNA (love spunk?) exonerated Mr. Karr, the sordid episode shows – in sharp contrast to the military debacle in Iraq – that catching bad guys is a function best left to law enforcement. To wit: U.K. authorities arrested 25 suspects who (allegedly) conspired to simultaneously blow up several transatlantic airliners. Needless to say, if our intelligence services were half this competent, 9/11 would have never occurred. Imagine, then, the National Guard actually available to evacuate victims of hurricane Katrina, or Halliburton without all those no-bid government contracts. Oliver Stone might rather be talking about his new flop, Snakes on a Plane. But no. What we have instead are even longer lines at the airport, as security agents have been ordered, after x-raying our shoes, to confiscate all our liquids. But not everyone has embraced the new carry-on fluid ban: As if to say, hey, infidels, we refuse to be confined to solids and gases, the Iranians heedlessly fired up a heavy water reactor and defiantly threatened to bring several bottles of the stuff on board. Thankfully, the Japanese were impeccably complicit. Immediately after the new regulations took effect, a Mitsui Lines tanker heading out from Saudi Arabia dropped anchor and obediently dumped 4,500 tons of crude oil into the Indian Ocean before completing its journey.

In the wake of the British arrests, a tsunami of hypervigilance overtook the aviation industry. United Flight 923 en route from Heathrow to Washington Dulles was redirected by two fighter jets to Boston following “an altercation with at least one female passenger.” Early reports indicated that the woman was carrying matches, Vaseline and a screwdriver, though no mention was made of her access to in-flight porn. Days later, two “rather swarthy chaps” were forcibly removed from a Monarch Airlines flight bound for Manchester “because they were acting suspiciously.” Not to be outdone, the Dutch scrambled a couple of F-16s to head off a Northwest Airlines flight destined for Bombay when 12 men unfastened their seatbelts and began passing cell phones around, activity deemed by the flight crew to be “behavior of concern.” Understandably, Bombay authorities have a penchant for caution given July’s train bombing which killed 200 commuters. Yet one observer took umbrage at the manner in which the dirty dozen were taken into custody. Upon the plane’s return to Amsterdam, he railed, law enforcement engaged in an “offensive against Arabic people.” He continued indignantly: “The way they got arrested inside the plane with everybody seeing how they got treated, I thought it was inhumane… they were treated like dogs. They did not hit them (the suspects) but they pushed them. They let them feel that they have no power, that the people who arrested them had all the power.” Well, yes, Abdul, that would be the point.

So with a keen eye, TSA screeners set out to ensure our safety; passengers can no longer travel with beverages, toiletries or towels on their head. Not even NASA is immune to the new restrictions. The August 27 launch of the space shuttle Atlantis was scrubbed when Commander Brent Jett was apprehended trying to smuggle mouthwash through a security checkpoint. Unfortunately for ComAir flight 5191, and the rest of the traveling public, one thing that cannot be filtered out is stupidity. In an effort to save a few bucks, the FAA purposely understaffed the Lexington control tower and turned off the airfield lights. When the copilot then attempted to takeoff on the wrong runway – far too short at 3,500 feet for the Bombardier CRJ-100 – the results were tragic.

The White House spends billions of dollars in Iraq, ostensibly to make Americans safer. In reality, the attendant budgetary cutbacks at home only leave us more vulnerable. I don’t think family members who lost loved ones in Kentucky this week take any solace in the fact that the crash was not caused by terrorists, but rather by Republicans.

I sure hope Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig sobers up enough to follow the Tour de France doping scandal. With odds on favorites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich tossed out before the race began, the road was neatly paved for American Floyd Landis to secure the yellow jersey. But a mysteriously high testosterone level may cost Landis his title. After European riders spent years bitching that Lance Armstrong had an unfair ergonomic advantage because a surgically removed testicle better accommodated the contours of a bicycle seat, they now complain that Landis was able to zoom through the Alps like Superman because his ball sack was toting an extra passenger. What precisely, then, is their objection – Yanks with too many nuggets or too few? In any event, the point for Mr. Selig is to show his own cojones and eject Barry Bonds and his souped-up home runs from baseball. With madness and chaos abounding, we need men in leadership positions to stand up and showed us their brass. Goodness knows I’m all for castigating Don Rumsfeld, but what does it tell the world when Hillary Clinton sports the biggest set in Washington?

Thankfully, Senator Arlen Specter’s (R-PA) oysters weigh in a close second, as evidenced by his lawsuit against George Bush over the use of executive signing statements. These exclusionary clauses allow the President, with a mere wave of the hand, to circumvent the very laws he consecrates. Like, for example, the McCain anti-torture amendment, which now reads like the Geneva Convention scribbled on slices of Swiss cheese. Though the President was forced last month to renew the Voting Rights Act of 1965, he did manage to insert the proviso that the right to vote does not extend to Asians, Blacks, Latinos or Jews.

Such a disclaimer surely brought hosannas from Mel Gibson who was arrested in California for drunk driving. After trying to escape, the actor was handcuffed and stuffed in the back of a quad car, at which point he shouted. “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.” Which, for those that saw The Passion of the Christ, comes as no surprise whatsoever. While some nitpickers may point to Northern Ireland or the Sudan as evidence to the contrary, the Lebanese believe Mel just might be onto something.

And it’s not just Middle Easterners held in Mel’s sway. Here at home incumbent Democrats Cynthia McKinney and Joe Lieberman lost in primary elections, a turn of events mistakenly attributed to an anti-incumbent tidal wave. In actually, the duo was done in by Mel’s diatribe in which kikes and niggers are blamed for, well, just about everything. Of course, McKinney didn’t do herself any favors going Rodney King on the Capitol Police while Lieberman, once the party’s vice-presidential nominee, never missed a high profile opportunity to snake his tongue up the President’s ass. After his stunning loss to neophyte millionaire Ned Lamont, Lieberman vowed to run in November as an independent, declaring, “I don’t want these [anti-war bloggers] taking over my party or American politics.” No worries there as Joe’s nascent party has but one member, and, sadly, a single philosophy on the war: a quick redeployment “would be a disaster for the Iraqis and for us.” As if it’s not an unmitigated disaster already.

Why is it that the more things deteriorate, the more Karl Rove’s minions are apt to sweep unpleasant realities into the future? Perhaps that is where solid facts can be atomized by conjecture and probability. Perhaps it will give Mel Gibson enough time to get Baby Jesus back down here before the shit really hits the fan. Who knows? But for those of us cursed with paying attention IN THE MOMENT, this Rovian reflex was recently displayed by Gen. John Abizaid, the head of the US central command, as he offered a rather glum narrative of Iraq’s security situation to a gaggle of US Senators: “Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I’ve seen it… If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war.” Note his use of code words “if,” “possible,” “could,” and “toward” despite the universal assessment from those in the field that the civil war is well into the second inning. Lawmakers became increasingly disturbed when the General added that his deeper fear was that Iraqi insurgents (as well as Hezbollah and the Taliban) would grow even stronger if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his band of Iranian extremists somehow manage to overthrow the Shaw.

What is no longer a subject for speculation is whether the Federal Reserve will once again raise interest rates. Unbowed by the fact that the European Central Bank, as well as the Banks of England and Japan just tightened the screws, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke insists that the impending recession, after 17 consecutive quarter-point rate hikes, will be far more efficacious in tempering inflationary pressures than would a continuation of Mr. Greenspan’s piecemeal monetary tightening. To wit: GDP grew in the second quarter at less than half the pace seen in the beginning of the year as 4 months of anemic payroll numbers pushed the unemployment rate up to 4.8%. Five years of declining real household income finally choked off the real estate market, where housing starts are collapsing almost as fast as the unsold inventory piles up. But these are just statistics. What does any of this mean for you and that medical savings account the President shoved down your throat when you lost your health insurance?

Well, if you invested in, say, the S&P 500 you would have likely lost money (the index is down 6% since Mr. Bush first took office) whereas during the tenure of President Clinton, who by the way endeavored to get you MORE health insurance, the index tripled in value. But if you were cynical (or lucky) enough to see the writing on the wall after 2000’s stolen election and had bought shares of Halliburton or Exxon Mobil, you would have doubled your money. Those with the keenest of foresight might have anticipated a replay of the 1970’s (unpopular / unwinnable war, unfettered domestic spying, high oil prices, bell-bottomed jeans) and deduced that last generation’s dope smoking hippies would give way to this generation’s dope smoking bloggers. Those that invested in Apple Computer on that sickening inaugural day (I for one flashed back to the Kennedy funeral procession) would be up 550%. Not bad for a counterculture company about to be delisted from the stock exchange.

So unless you had a crystal ball or a no-bid government contract, it’s a sure bet you’re noticeably worse off than you were six years ago. No wonder everyone is hitting the bottle. Christ, even sharp-witted comedians like Robin Williams and George Carlin are booking the Whitney Houston suite at Hazleton. What is truly appalling is that if anyone could take our nation’s sagging fortunes as grist for the mill, it would be these guys. The rest of us, that is to say had better get on the Prozac, and soon. As Williams and Carlin turned themselves in, we will never be privy to their inebriated pontifications, but according to Mr. Gibson’s many acolytes, booze does have a inherenttendency to precipitate anti-Semitic behavior. In other words, Mel’s a swell guy and it was only the alcohol talking. Looking at it this way, I can only conclude that Adolph Hitler must have been on one doozie of a bender.