October 20, 2003 -

SERENDIPITOUS STUPIDITY!

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From Kobe to guns to Gitmo

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Now, the details...

TOW, Texas -- Okay, first let's say the standard thing. Kobe Bryant is innocent until proven guilty. But let's suppose a Colorado jury convicts Kobe of raping a 19-year-old hotel employee. What will that mean? For one, some Colorado prison will have one hell of a basketball team. (Is there a slammer-dunk contest for prison roundballers?) Of course, it's possible that Kobe could lose a little agility in prison, since rapists aren't all that popular. But the good news for Kobe is that he won't have to spend $4 million to buy his new "wife" a diamond. Of course, that assumes that Kobe won't *BE* somebody's new "wife."

It's only a brief trip from "Kobe" to "stupid" (remember that pro basketball players wear their IQs on their backs), so consider that the same purported intellectuals who dragooned one perfectly good word (gay) are now trying to steal another (bright). This time the atheists, who want greater influence, have decided they no longer want to be called atheists. Instead, they prefer to be called "brights." As in, "I'm a `bright' person." Yes, it does hit the ear as friendlier than "atheist," but some of us are still a tad surly over losing "gay" to those of non-standard sexual persuasion. We're the ones who remember being young and gay while enthusiastically dating someone of the opposite sex. Do we really want our children to snigger that we're endorsing atheism when we hit our bright lights?

WASHINGTON -- What large American city is the nation's most dangerous? What large American city has the toughest gun controls? The answer in both cases is "Washington," where the bad guys know for certain they're the only ones who are armed and dangerous. Rep. Mark Souder, an Indiana Republican, aims to change that. Souder has 22 Democrats and 40 Republicans as co-sponsors of legislation to guarantee residents of Washington their Second Amendment right to bear firearms in their homes and businesses. Souder, a man given to considerable understatement, notes that last year Washington had the "...highest per-capita crime rate of any city in the nation. This is not a coincidence. The simple fact is, when law-abiding citizens are forbidden by their government from protecting themselves, they become easy prey for those to whom a gun ban is just one more law to break."

NASHVILLE -- Let's break out the crying towels. Opponents of the death penalty have come out against using pancuronium bromide to give bad people their societal just desserts. Pancuronium bromide is a scum-clearing drug of a sort, often used in lethal injections. The bleeding hearts say that the drug might mask suffering. They say inmates receiving the ultimate penalty might be paralyzed, in intense distress and (EGAD!) suffering. All without witnesses being able to see their pain. The death-penalty nutcases say their strongest argument is a 2001 Tennessee law that made it a crime for veterinarians to use the chemical to euthanize pets. I am not persuaded. If a cat becomes a mass murderer or a terrorist, I don't care if he suffers.

And while we have the crying towels handy, let's shed a few tears for more than 600 "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. You haven't teared up yet? Well, Christophe Girod, a Red Cross official in Washington, said the fact that we're holding more than 600 enemy combatants at Gitmo is cruel and unusual punishment. The United States is holding more than 600 detainees at the Guant namo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. But maybe Christophe has a point about holding these guys for an indefinite period. Maybe we should consider a shipment of pancuronium bromide.

SACRAMENTO -- There are some news stories about stupid people that are better than Jay Leno on his best night. Take the one about bye-byed California Governor Gray (Blackout) Davis. Now Gray is the kind of Democrat who has to look up to see pond scum, but he figured signing a bill to allow illegal aliens to have drivers' licenses would be a big winner in the Latino community. Davis had vetoed a driving-for-illegals bill twice before but he was in trouble, so he signed this one. Were the Hispanics gratified? Nope. Exit polls showed that they opposed Gray by 51 percent to 45 percent and about half of them said the driving-while-illegal bill made them more likely to support kicking Davis's sorry butt out of office.

LONDON -- There can be humor in those boring "domain" names on the Internet. Take the one that emerged when the British electricity company Powergen bought a power company in Italy. People who see the acquired company's new web site might believe it belongs to one of those millions of places sending out junk e-mail promoting some form of Viagra. The new Brit-Italian company will peddle itself on the web under www.powergenitalia.com.

WASHINGTON -- I read in the Washington times that the International Union of Journeymen Horseshoers and Allied Trades endorsed Rep. Dick Gephardt for president. Rumor has it that the International Union of Journeymen Horsesbutts is debating whether to endorse Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich.

QUESTION FOR THE DAY: Why don't the union horseshoers call themselves "farriers?" Are they afraid of alienating the vast homosexual horse community?