While the President’s Billionaire tax cuts helped grease Warren Buffet’s transfer of thirty large to Bill Gates, they have forced the federal government into some convoluted choices when it comes to domestic spending. Despite a foiled plot to blow up the Lincoln Tunnel, the Department of Homeland Security pinched $83 million from Gotham’s anti-terrorist coffer because the risks of an attack on New York (or D.C.) apparently pale in comparison to the peril of losing Conrad Burns’ (R-MT) Senate seat. Yet fiscal constraints demanded that immediately after DHS pumped $4.5 million into Montana’s budgetary hole, the Justice Department scrunch up its nose and feltch back a full third of the gloppy load. In the sticky aftermath, Flathead County Sheriff James DuPont was left to complain that federal anti-drug money has dwindled from $2.5 million to $958,000, and that local governments can no longer absorb further cuts.

What, then, could provoke Bozeman authorities to arrest two former Montana State University athletes, Branden Miller (basketball) and John LeBrum (football), for merely supplementing law enforcements flagging efforts? So they shot a cocaine dealer and dumped his remains in the school’s agronomy farm; they should not be condemned, but rather commended for providing 175 lbs. of fertilizer along with a valuable community service. And the same goes for Kim Jong Il. I see no problem in lobbing a couple of missiles towards Tokyo, now that Japan has resumed hunting whales. In fact, why don’t we drop a couple of bombs on Norway while we’re at it? Hunting, like chewing tobacco, is pointless and barbaric, though I must admit it would be far more interesting if the animals had equivalent means to defend themselves.

Just ask Harry Whittington who mistook Dick Cheney for a quail, or was it, perhaps, the other way around? And then there’s Qwest executive Jeffrey Garret, killed by Oscar DeLaCruz during a turkey hunt. And although the Vice President was visibly drunk at the time of his mishap, he wasn’t even questioned by the local sheriff. DeLaCruz, on the other hand, is rotting away in some Mexican jail. In the final analysis, the lesson here is more about immigration than animal rights: even though the right wing can steal presidential elections in Mexico just as effectively as here in the U.S., we still consider our southern neighbors a lesser caste. In fact, Republicans (even those who may soon face criminal prosecution) have rebounded sharply in the polls by fomenting xenophobia. Foreign-born Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), who publicly stated, “Securing our borders is a law enforcement function, and what we need are more Border Patrol agents, not SS, er, I mean National Guard troops who are neither trained nor suited for this purpose,” is up ten points after sending 1500 Guardsmen to Tijuana.

It’s true; our government has developed an unhealthy penchant for using the National Guard to remedy the unsolvable. Filling sandbags against a rising tide or quelling a forest fire are noble, if pedestrian endeavors. So why is it exactly that we deploy into cities where rival factions of swarthy non-English speakers kill each other across rubble hewn streets, while corrupt politicians siphon away reconstruction subsidies? Why do we deploy to Kandahar, to Fallujah, to New Orleans?

All these poor slobs wanted to do was supplement their income a couple of weekends a year but now, because of stop loss orders, they find themselves trapped indefinitely in forlorn combat zones where they readily lose limbs, spouses and jobs. Not to mention their sanity. They fight against, in Mr. Bush’s own vernacular, a “shadowy” adversary that “does not wear a uniform or [sic] represent a nation state.” Yet they are expected to discern friend from foe, find non-existent weapons of mass destruction, and subsist on Halliburton’s rancid meat and polluted water. It’s no wonder that there have been episodes of abuse and “conduct unbecoming.” There are currently five investigations into civilian deaths in Iraq, none more sensational than the case of former Pfc. Steven D. Green, who allegedly raped a Mahmudiya woman before killing her and three other family members. Green, baptized as a born-again Christian before shipping out to Iraq from Texas, was subsequently discharged from the military for anti-personality disorder. Though it’s fair to ask: when you spend your days shooting at people (including five-year-olds), how chummy can they expect you to be?

Regardless, the victim, unlike Ann Coulter, did not in any way deserve to be raped and murdered. Outraged Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Malaki: “We do not accept the violation of the Iraqi people’s honor as happened in this case. We believe that the immunity [from local prosecution] granted to international forces has emboldened them to commit such crimes in cold blood. There must be a review of this immunity.” Which sounds good until you consider that, as of last month, three of Saddam’s defense attorneys had been gunned down in broad daylight. In other words, the prospect of obtaining a fair trial in Baghdad rivals the odds of Rush Limbaugh attaining his own erection in Santo Domingo.

The President, by way of contrast, displays far more tumidity when exercising his executive privilege. In fact, his “signing statements” appear downright steroidal when compared to those of his predecessors. While putting his John Hancock on the McCain anti-torture amendment, Mr. Bush stipulated he would “construe [the law] in a manner consistent with… protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.” Or to paraphrase, “it’s okay to wire the balls of detainees if I feel like it.” Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) grumbled that such a contrivance affords “the power to nullify all or part of a statute… [by] unilateral action.” Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) is holding hearings on the subject because “It’s a challenge to the plain language of the Constitution.” Well, so is the illegal wiretapping of domestic telecommunications and warrantless interception of banking transactions, but no one’s holding hearings over those. Be that as it may, the administration, when it comes to every facet of its contentious behavior, categorically points to 9/11 as the animus.

How then to explain the fact that the National Security Agency asked AT&T to help implement domestic call monitoring seven months before the 2001 attacks? This inconvenient tidbit surfaced in New York federal court pursuant to a breach of privacy case filed against Verizon, BellSouth and AT&T. The suit alleges that the telcos conspired with the NSA and the White House to violate the Telecommunications Act of 1934. And while the last six years have seen the federal courts packed with reactionary zealots, the administration shouldn’t blithely count on wining every time out. Why just the other week, the Supreme Court held that so-called “enemy combatants” could not be incarcerated without due process and that the government could not adjudicate them by means of military tribunals. Curiously, this comes in the wake of a non-ruling on the more fundamental issue of torture. It is a small leap to conclude that the savage treatment of Pfcs. Thomas Lowell Tucker and Kristian Menchaca, who were kidnapped and painstakingly butchered in Iraq by al Qaeda operatives, was a direct consequence of our despicable treatment of Muslim prisoners. Yet despite such high stakes, the black robes seem to be saying, “Torture the bastards all you want, just make damn sure, once the blood is mopped up, that they have unfettered access to Alan Dershowitz.”

A few scant weeks ago, the Democrats, still searching for a charismatic avatar amid the many briny heads bobbing across a sea of feckless ineptitude, seemed nonetheless poised to take back Congress. Homeland Security’s equivocal D.C. budget cuts notwithstanding, the White House, citing the imminent threat posed by the three Is — not Iraq, Iran and irradiation but rather investigations, impeachment and incarceration — went on red alert. In hindsight, yellow would have been the more apt choice as Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald dragged Karl Rove through five arduous grand jury appearances for nothing more than a hall pass and a cup of coffee. Emboldened by Fitz’s trepidation and the inexplicable Republican victory secured by petroleum lobbyist Brian Bilbray in California’s special election, Rove tore a few pages out of Chairman Mao’s little book and whipped up his own cultural revolution.

Stanchioned by a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, rows of banners snapped over Pennsylvania Avenue denouncing gay marriage as a threat commensurate with terrorism or bird flu. But those, like cancer, are not rendered by choice. If the idea of same-sex marriage makes you queasy, don’t have one. And the same goes for abortion — no one’s going to force you into it, unless, of course, you live in China or happen to be married to Charlie Sheen. Look, different cultures have different rules (pigeon feet are to the Iron Chef what chocolate chips are to Rachael Ray) — which is precisely why the immigration issue is so controversial. Are we willing to trade Christmas for Ramadan or the Fourth of July for Cinco de Mayo? House Republicans say no and are pressing to criminalize the 12 million illegal aliens already here. Although the logistical hurdles of rounding up so many offenders is somewhat mitigated by the fact that most of these immigrants live in the same East Los Angeles apartment, the question remains: how can the government forcibly deport millions upon millions of uncooperative interlopers when it couldn’t evacuate 300,000 willing inhabitants of New Orleans?

An abrupt segue, or better yet a turning point; that’s how President Bush characterized the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Though in some ways unique (the bombing, for example, derived from three similar plans by the CIA & Pentagon targeting his training camp in the Kurdish no-fly zone between 2002 and 2004 that were nixed by the administration), Mr. Bush failed to distinguish Zarqawi’s death from the cornucopia of other such Iraqi turning points. Remember, Iraq had already served up the capture of Saddam, the death of his sons, voters with stained fingers and finally, after much wrangling, a prime minister. Not a single one of these milestones, mind you, has done anything to alter conditions on the ground, where roadside bombs and sectarian violence push the death toll higher by the day. Since Zarqawi was quashed under 1000 lbs. of ordinance, a dozen car bombs have killed well over 100 people. And that’s just in Baghdad. Countrywide, terrorist activity continues unabated; the discovery of boxfuls of severed heads punctuated a week in which the brother of a provincial governor was assassinated and a senior member of the oil ministry was kidnapped. Unless you work for Halliburton, Exxon or a handful of private military contractors, this occupation gives little cause for celebration.

Infusing the Middle East with democracy was supposed to make the world a better place (and, tangentially, to line the coffers of the Carlyle Group) but so far the strategy, at least when measured in the metrics of the primary objective, has backfired. Despite multiple votes and a constitutional government, Iraq has been tipped into chaos by civil war. The Taliban are reclaiming large swaths of Afghanistan, while in Palestine, free elections have done little more than validate the terrorist group Hamas, which prefers cleaning out remnants of Yasser Arafat’s ruling Fatah party over such mundane chores as paving roads and generating electricity. With international sanctions squeezing the Palestinian treasury, unpaid workers have made habit of shooting up newly occupied government offices. After Fatah police caught a Hamas official crossing the Egyptian border with 639,000 euros sewn into his jacket, the militant group responded by killing a senior security officer. Reprisals then bounced back and forth peppered by the odd Israeli air strike (imagine a hockey referee getting in a couple of punches during a brawl). With the bodies piling up, One Fatah security officer declared, “Every time they touch one of ours in Gaza, we will get ten of theirs in the West Bank.” So is was no surprise that after a security commander was shot seven times, Fatah loyalists stormed parliament and burned down a Cabinet building. Standing before the flames, Hamas leader Farhat Assad lamented, “[This] is uglier that the practices of the Israeli occupation.”

In an attempt to avoid future conflagrations, Hamas has sworn off smuggling as a means to circumvent the Western boycott. With protesters chanting “We are hungry. We are hungry,” Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar returned from Egypt, Iran, Pakistan and several other Muslim countries with $20 million in his suitcase. One government spokesman noted that Zahar’s diplomatic status made the transfer “perfectly kosher.”

Americans can only conclude given recent events that democracy has twisted Palestine into another Northern Ireland. In both regions, freedom means blaming all your problems on so-called oppressors, while citizens kill their neighbors despite the fact that they possess the same skin color, speak the same gibberish, worship the same god, and display a similar flair with homemade bombs. For all our faults, Americans, at the least, have the courtesy to focus our hatred on people that are palpably different.

The other thing we do, apparently, is invade third world countries and kill gobs of innocent civilians. Viet Nam is the obvious example, but there are many others (e.g. Panama 1925 & 1989, Lebanon 1958 & 1982, Detroit 1967). And now Iraq. The Haditha massacre of 24 civilians (six of whom were children, aged 2 to 11) recalls the ghosts of My Lai. And while military investigators absolved participants in a similar spree in Ishaqi, the jury is still out on another incident in Hamandiyah where a bystander was dragged into the street, executed and then “dressed” with an AK-47 to make him look like and insurgent. As for Haditha, the real trouble started when a second wave of Marines converged on the scene and, forgetting the lessons of Abu Ghraib, began taking photographs. Reportedly, two of the assailants have confessed, which may explain the sacking of both Company commander Capt. Luke McConnell and Battalion commander Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani.

Both the Sunni vs. Shia violence in Iraq and the internecine skirmishes in Palestine could be solved by methods developed in, of all places, Kansas where Governor Kathleen Sebelius has convinced former Republican Party chairman Mark Parkinson to switch sides. This may be the second time Sebelius has used the Lt. governorship to lure Republicans away from the state’s sinking ship of Christian Fundamentalism , but before the Arabs sign up for classes, a few words of caution regarding this switching business: it doesn’t always work out so well. First there was that awful business with Ben “Nighthorse” Campbell and now county health officials in Michigan have misidentified a comatose survivor of a fatal car accident.

Laura VanRyn actually died in the crash but was mistaken for another passenger, Whitney Cerak. Cerak’s family thought they had buried their daughter, but was elated a month later when she began to regain consciousness and establish her true identity. VanRyn’s relatives are, obviously, crestfallen to discover it was Laura and not the badly injured Whitney that lay under ground. Apparently the girls’ physical similarities, along with the survivor’s extensive facial trauma, contributed to the mixup. VanRyn’s longtime boyfriend, Aryn Lineger: “I saw her hands, her feet, her complexion, and I can’t believe that wasn’t her. Once, when her parents left the room, I even tasted her pussy. Even to this day, it’s amazing to me that with all that time we spent together, that I just didn’t know.” While the Ceracks wait for their daughter to come home from the hospital, the VanRyns’ suffering continues. Before holding a funeral for the departed Laura, the coffin thought to contain Whitney was exhumed and trucked to their hometown of Caledonia. When morticians opened the lid, they were stunned to discover not the corpse of Laura VanRyn, but that of deposed (decomposed?) Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. The dreaded double switch. Last seen, the VanRyn clan was headed east towards a Milford Township horse farm, shovels in hand. Perhaps if they come up empty handed, they can at least dig a space between their two last names.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the summer of 2006 will usher another devastating storm season, with at least dozen named disturbances headed our way. And while the Army Corps of Engineers feverishly completes levee repairs before the Mississippi River and Lake Ponachartrain endeavor to commingle their fluids like, say, Jesus and Mary Magdalene, President Bush has begun his own emergency preparations by stocking the White House pantry with canned goods and filling sand bags with soil federal agents have excavated from Jimmy Hoffa’s burial site. One can only imagine what awaits New Orleans, which nearly a year later has yet to recover from Katrina. Though the confluence of nature and man is always hard to predict (some scientists are claiming the ozone hole is actually shrinking), recently re-elected Mayor Ray Nagin seems to have the benefit of a crystal ball. Months before his run-off victory over white Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu, Nagin prophesized that New Orleans “will be chocolate at the end of the day.” And so it is, despite the fact that half of the city’s citizenry remains ex-situ.

A goodly number of the other half, it comes to light, are simply rotting away in local jails. The diaspora of witnesses, jurors and other statutory accoutrements has exacerbated a situation already plagued by a dearth of habitable courtrooms and able defense attorneys. Ironically, many inmates arrested for petty crimes and misdemeanors (such as violating curfew or listening to the Dixie Chicks below the Mason-Dixon line) would by now have completed their sentences. Unperturbed, Nagin has vowed to reconstruct “a majority African-American city… the way God wants it.” Omaha, on the other hand, is having second thoughts.

Either way, the story is just delicious; if ABC’s version holds true, Hastert gets raped in jail, if not he gets raped by the administration.  One thing’s for sure, The FBI won’t find any hard evidence in Denny’s fridge; his corpulence betrays the fact he’s eaten allthe contents, including, no doubt, the light bulb and lettuce crisper.  Yet there’s more.  A FBI linguist turned whistleblower swears that transcripts she was hired to translate show that Hastert received tens of thousands of dollars from Turkish officials in return for political favors such as scuppering a 2000 House resolution acknowledging the Armenian genocide of 1915. 

The Turks, nee Ottomans, adamantly disclaim involvement in the death of hundreds of thousands of Armenians, and would rather blame the Spaniards and their despicable flu. To be fair, there are indications of contagion; denial, nowadays, is everywhere — even the phone companies are getting into the act. With lawsuits piling up and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) threatening hearings, Bell South brazenly contradicted USA Today by saying, “We have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA.”  The chorus then joined: “Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records.”  What with all the lying and weaseling going around, you’ve got to admire the Border Patrol.  These guys are men of action. Undeterred by the arrival of 6,000 National Guardsmen or the construction of a privately funded fence, authorities approached a car that was picking up illegal aliens on the U.S. side of the border. Sensing pursuit, the driver made a sharp turn and sped towards Mexico, but was shot multiple times before he could reach Tijuana.  As all 16 occupants were being taken into custody, one agent glared contemptuously at the bullet-riddled coyote who lay dying in the street.  His partner then spat a brown rivulet of coffee and tobacco into the gathering puddle of blood and declared, “Badges — we don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”

A new law proposed by Nebraska’s only African-American state senator, Ernie Chambers, has divided Omaha’s schools along racial lines — black, white and Hispanic. “Black people, whose children make up the majority of the student population,” argued Chambers, are merely “establishing a district over which we would have control.” Yeah, except that old Ernie also wants control over expanded tax revenues that accrued when wealthy white schools were forcibly annexed into the Omaha system. Tensions are high on both sides; yet white parent Darold Bauer blithely dismissed one major regional employer’s concern that the program would “increase racial tensions and segregation.” “I’m fine with that,” sniffed Bauer, “because my kids won’t be bused.”

Yet, Nebraska is by no means out of the woods. As Attorney General Jon Bruning notes: “the state may face serious risk due the potential constitutional problems.” Just last year, for example, the Supreme Court struck down California’s policy of segregating prisons. In the majority opinion Justice O’Connor wrote that the specter of interracial violence notwithstanding, “We rejected the notion that separate can ever be equal . . . 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, and we refuse to resurrect it today.”

Perhaps in Ernie Chambers’ cogency or Ray Nagin’s prescience one could find a golden ticket to the Willy Wonka factory, but Congressman William Jefferson (D-LA) wasn’t taking any chances. Jefferson struck his own deal with an African member of the International Cocoa cartel. According to the FBI, the Congressman was caught on tape accepting a $100,000 bribe in connection with a Nigerian investment scheme. The cash was later recovered in Jefferson’s freezer, stuffed into an empty box of Fudgesicles. Despite a plethora of evidence (and the fact that an aide has already pled guilty and promised to testify), the New Orleans legislator professes his innocence and clings fast to his post on the House Ways and Means Committee. Though asked by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to resign, Willy declared, “I will not give up a committee assignment that is so vital to New Orleans at this crucial time.” Maybe Pelosi’s failed choreography would have won over accompanied by the Grateful Dead’s Peggy-O:

Sweet William he is dead, pretty Peggy-O

Sweet William he is dead, and he died for a maid

And buried in the Louisiana country-O

Given that Jerry Garcia, lest one forgets, is unquestionably dead, Pelosi instead attacked the Justice Department for overstepping the bounds of executive privilege by raiding Jefferson’s Congressional office in the Rayburn Building. These limits, she opined, “were designed to protect the Congress and the American people from abuses of power, and those principles deserve to be vigorously defended.” Oddly, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) joined the rebuke, and assured, “These constitutional principles were not designed by the founding fathers to place anyone above the law.” While Republicans would be expected to relish an ethics crisis finally cropping up on the other side of the aisle, Hastert personally complained to the President and demanded the FBI return all seized materials.

So the question begs: why would Hastert voice such a strenuous objection? Senator David Vitter (R-LA) offers a plausible answer: “These [are] self-serving separation of power arguments… congressional leaders are trying to protect their own from valid investigations.” Heady words indeed, yet they ring true to a polity subjected to years of warrantless domestic spying and for whom the capricious designation of “enemy combatant” renders moot the rule of habeas corpus. Well, as fate would have it, ABC is reporting that sources in the Justice Department say they are investigating Hastert in connection with the ever-widening Jack Abramoff scandal. Hastert has issued a categorical denial the while his deputy chief of staff, Mike Stokke, characterized the “leak” as retribution for the Speaker’s harsh criticism of the FBI. “ABC News got this from somewhere,” Stokke averred, “I don’t think they made this up.”

The recent spate of corporate mergers has given us a new AT&T, and with it a new slogan: Your world. Delivered. What the telcom honchos forgot to mention is that your world is being delivered directly to the National Security Agency. Contrary to administration claims that its spy program is “targeted and focused” on “a limited number of people,” the communications of tens of millions of ordinary Americans, according to USA TODAY, are routinely intercepted and analyzed each day. While most Republicans are content to skirt the issue, the President remains less than oblique: “We’re not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans,” insisted a furtive Mr. Bush, “Our efforts are focused on links to Al-Qaeda and their known affiliates.” The only way, unfortunately, to square W’s account with the facts is to accept that Al-Qaeda has stationed millions of operatives here in America. So it might be a good idea to keep an eye on that dark-haired woman at the grocery store and to torture your son’s soccer coach with the funny last name.

When the domestic spying scandal first broke late last year, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) called the government’s activities “inappropriate” and vowed to hold hearings. Which, in truth, he never did. One should be guarded, therefore, despite mounting evidence that the government’s endeavors are significantly wider and deeper than previously thought (or acknowledged), regarding Specter’s new threats to cut funding for illegal surveillance. Though the Senator declared: “What’s the use of passing another statute if the president won’t pay any attention to it? When you talk about withholding funds, there you’re talking about a real authority,” it’s probably safer to assume your calls and emails will continue to be monitored, unless, by good fortune, your phone lines belong to Qwest. Because the White House had not obtained warrants or, for that matter, followed “any legal process,” company CEO Joseph Nacchio denied the government’s request to tap his customers’ calls. Any reluctance to help the feds, according to a spokesman, was governed solely by privacy issues. No currency whatsoever was given to the 42 counts of insider trading Nacchio faces for dumping $100 million of company stock into the well of Qwest’s puffed up financial statements.

In attempting to elevate trusted cronies, Mr. Bush may well be orchestrating a vast cover up, but nominating Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden to run the CIA conjures the not so distant Harriet Miers debacle. With any hope at all, this folly signals that Karl Rove is otherwise occupied — indictments, etc., etc., because in addition to dragging the President’s approval rating below 30%, reports of warrantless spying have saddled Hayden with controversy and contention (he was NSA director when the domestic surveillance program was initiated and expanded). Hayden’s confirmation, therefore, will be little more than a proxy referendum on abolishing the Fourth Amendment. Despite the opinion expressed by Fox News’ Neil Cavuto: “Collecting our phone records… [is] a heck of a lot better than collecting our remains,” most citizens are appalled. In an effort to deflect the public’s ire, the President has rekindled the immigration issue, which, in his words, “stirs intense emotions.” But it also forces Mr. Bush to walk an impossibly thin line between appeasing wealthy Republicans whose businesses rely on cheap labor and redneck, Bible-Belt Republicans who wish to remain in the cultural vanguard. The latter, in fact, have their own color-coded alert system that ascends from White to Yellow, Red, Black, and, finally, Brown. Jews, of course, present the kind of problems that transcend pigmentation, but those, God willing, will get worked out during the Rapture.

Mr. Bush thus took to the airways and danced around any workable solution. He did reject criminalizing illegal aliens and those (nurses, clergy, teachers) who abet them, but stopped far short from offering amnesty. The precarious balancing act necessitated adopting Democrat proposals to increase the number of border agents and detention facilities. Mr. Bush also requested termination of a “catch and release program” which has for decades hampered the apprehension of Mexicans and trout in equal measure. (Point in case: Attorney Alberto Gonzales admitted to Wolf Blitzer he could offer NO PROOF his grandparents entered the U.S. legally) Still, Mr. Bush pledged not to discriminate against Gonzales… or Lopez, Sanchez or Cruz, for that matter, as long as they show “respect for the flag that we fly, and an ability to speak and write the English language.” Nonetheless, W. ordered 6,000 National Guardsman to take up positions on our lower boundary, despite the contumacious assertion that: “The United States is not going to militarize our southern border. Mexico is our neighbor and our friend.”

Guardsmen will not be engaged in “military” operations, reasoned the White House, because they will be unarmed and bereft of any mechanized equipment (think: beach chairs and binoculars). Didn’t we already try this in Iraq? Besides, trying to have it both ways (soldiers not acting as such) is kind of like Clinton smoking pot without inhaling. But coolness can accrue without illegality — getting high in Amsterdam, for example– and in the same vein, the border can be secured without troops. Donate bazookas to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps or lay down a swath of all those perfectly good land mines we are spending millions to remove from Cambodia and Mozambique. How about a trench filled with man-eating Florida alligators?

It may be unfair, but the animus wears a sombrero. No one seems to be complaining about an influx of Indian software engineers or Taiwanese biochemists. Somehow, we adopted the notion that allowing in a bunch of Mexicans will denigrate our society. Well, maybe we should consider that it might be an improvement. To wit: A Wisconsin man, Danny (last name withheld), was taken into custody after trying to sell his 18-month-old daughter for $7,000. Grand Chute police Chief Ed Kopp noted the father “wanted to use the money for some home remodeling,” namely building a nursery. O. Henry aside, the transaction had the all the earmarks of the last century, with back alley meetings and demands for cash. Real horse-and-buggy stuff. Meanwhile, Mexican authorities arrested Ana Luisa Hidalgo Rivera and Alex Hernandez for trying to sell a baby over the Internet. The sophisticated Mexican duo had effortlessly identified a buyer in Dallas, arranged for a courier, obtained an international letter of credit and hedged the transaction (swapping dollars for pesos) on London’s foreign exchange market. Now, who would you rather have as your neighbor?

My analyst has been scratching his head (at $125 an hour, mind you), trying to figure out exactly why I am so exercised over the prospect of Barry Bonds surpassing Babe Ruth. True, Bonds is a self-focused, condescending athlete who cheats by using steroids, but then again so are countless others. According to my Oxy dealer (read: Palm Beach M.D.), what particularly irks me is that Bonds is an allegory for George Bush. He lies, cheats and flagrantly disregards the rules that govern the rest of us. And continually gets away with it! Major League Baseball, in contrast to my neuroses, refuses to elevate the occasion above the customary din and clamor of the early season. Home run 715 (unlike, one presumes, 756, which will eclipse Hank Aaron’s mark) will not engender any stoppage of play or on-field ceremony. In fact, the baseballs pitched to the Giants’ slugger will carry no certifying marks (as they did when Mark McGwire broke the single-season record) — which means fans and collectors will be hard pressed to identify the “real” ball. “We don’t ever celebrate second or third place in anything,” explained a surprisingly sober commissioner Bud Selig. “We don’t… until the record is broken.”

Word Association (category: sports) Hole-in-one? Golf. Ten-four split? Bowling. Duke and Prostitutes? Lacrosse. Well, technically they were strippers. The hookers, in point of fact, were tooling around D.C. with then Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham and, apparently, several of his colleagues. Cunningham is pulling an eight-year stretch for taking over $2 million in bribes from Defense contractor Mitchell Wade and lobbyist Brent Wilkes whose largesse, it is beginning to emerge, was not so narrowly focused. Inchoate sex-for-votes allegations have investigators combing the records of Shirlington Limousine and the Watergate Hotel (would that Nixon’s eavesdropping devices were still operative) as well as interviewing scores of call girls who ostensibly rendered services therein. And the noose seems to be tightening; only days before CIA director Porter Goss unexpectedly (and, for the nonce, inexplicably) resigned, Harper’s journalist Ken Silverstein disclosed, “Those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.” Before the party was so rudely interrupted, festivities were arranged through Shirlington, which somehow garnered a $25 million contract from Homeland Security despite the fact that the company’s CEO is a convicted felon. According to HS spokesman Larry Orluskie, only drivers were subject to criminal background checks. As for the government spending more on blowjobs than Charlie Sheen, Orluskie bristled, “We have not had any problems with this service — we don’t question whether they can deliver because they are delivering.” Indeed.

Waitresses at Hooters, according to a sexual harassment lawsuit, were encouraged to deliver more than just chicken wings and watery beer. Jarman Gray alleges he was fired from his assistant manager position for complaining to headquarters that a visiting training manager told his staff: you have “pussies and you are in control because of that. If you need the extra money, go ahead and suck a dick or fuck a customer if the money is right.” Not wishing to disrupt a successful marketing campaign, Auburn, Alabama franchise owner Darrell Spikes dismissed Gray while admonishing, “I’m top dog — you don’t call corporate.”

Spikes had no comment, however, on the prospect of offering deep fried afterbirth with the array genital warts. Not so for Tom Cruise. He vowed to don one of those flimsy seafood bibs with the lobster on it while girlfriend Katie Holmes silently delivered their child: “I’m gonna eat the placenta… that would be good. Very nutritious. I’m gonna eat the cord and placenta right there.” I’ve gotta chew softly though, added the M.i.III star, because “there are medical research papers that say when a woman’s giving birth everybody should be quiet. It is really about respecting the woman. It’s not about her screaming.” If you are of the opinion that lapping up fetal membranes should be confined to feral animals, consider that celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall served placenta on Britain’s Channel 4 to a new mother and 20 of her closest friends. It was “fried with shallots and garlic, flambéed, puréed and served… as pate on focaccia bread.” If Hugh F-W isn’t available, perhaps South Park Chef Issac Hayes could do the honors, now that he’s been released from the animated Comedy Central show. Though the series has repeatedly lampooned Blacks, Christians and Jews, a sudden distaste for “intolerance and bigotry” prompted Hayes to quit after an episode featuring cartoons of famous audit freaks Cruise and John Travolta satirizing his own religion, Scientology. A rebroadcast of the episode, Trapped in the Closet, which also alluded to Cruise’s sexual ambivalence, was hastily scrapped after Cruise reportedly threatened to boycott promoting his summer blockbuster. Both Paramount Studios and Comedy Central are members of the Viacom stable.

While critics have savagely assaulted the third installment of Mission: Impossible, the film’s sub par box office cannot be blamed on Tom’s hardcore fans. Perhaps the sorry turn of events mirrors another contemporary cinematic flop, the eminently missable Lindsey Lohan vehicle, Just My Luck, in which the fortunes of two characters are cosmically switched when their lives intertwine. Last year, you’ll recall, Cruise publicly slammed Brooke Shields’ use of Paxil to fend off post partum depression: “These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off… what you do is use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on — scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that.” And Tom is an expert on the subject — as he lectured Matt Lauer, “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.” Back to Brooke and serendipity: It turns out that Shields delivered her second child on the same day in the same hospital and on the same floor as did the soon-to-be Mrs. Lobster Bib. Could the children (or at least their umbilical cords) have been swapped in the nursery? Consider that shortly after Cruise sardonically asked where Brooke’s career had gone (FHI a hugely successful London revival of Chicago), he entered the slow and agonizing descent forged by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As for the baby, TomKat bestowed the name Suri, which their publicist claims means “princess” in Hebrew, although this is disputed by Semitic linguists. They note that “Suri” has but two meanings; one is “a Syrian” and the other is “Bitch, go away”. Speculation has raged over the genesis and purpose of the moniker, but after a little digging I found the truth. Lobsterette was named after Villanova University scientist Rominder Suri, who is studying endocrine disruption in polluted lakes and rivers around Philadelphia. He notes that chemicals flushed into the watershed — discarded medication, fertilizers and industrial waste (including that from a Merck pharmaceutical plant) — have triggered a startling population of dual-sex fish. The allure of eggs and sperm residing within one alien vessel was simply too much for Cruise to resist. And while Dr. Suri obtained a federal grant to develop systems harnessing sound waves to fragment (and render inert) these offending compounds, he also, ironically, received support from Effexor peddler Wyeth Labs to study SSRIs. Which turns out to be a blessing, because odds are, Suri will need psychiatric care as long as she lives.