The death sentence of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has been thrown out by District Court Judge William Yohn, supposedly because the jury had been given improper instructions. Perhaps if Judge Yohn had presided over the sentencing, he'd have instructed the jury to "fight the power!"

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has tried to cut a surrender deal, which would allow him to "live in dignity." Are Dinesh D'Souza and Bill Maher sure these people aren't cowards?

A company called Advanced Cell Technology reveals that it has succeeded in cloning a human embryo. An online report by CBS News Orwellianly adds, "However, the announcement drew immediate criticism from those fearing the step would lead to human cloning."

Squashing weeks of speculation that the U.S. and Britain would put the war on hold through the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, President Bush's national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, noted that our enemies have "never demonstrated that they were observant of any kind of rules of civilization before."

President Bush has agreed to adopt the new arsenic standard of 10 parts per billion, which had been signed into law by Bill Clinton, but put on hold by Bush when he took office in January, until further studies can be done. EPA administrator Christie Whitman wrote in a letter to Congress that, "a standard of 10 ppb protects public health based on the best available science and ensures that the cost of the standard is achievable." Achievable by whom, she didn't say, which is sure to leave state governments fearful that they will be left to foot the bill. Predictably, this leftward move by Bush is not winning him praise from his liberal critics. The Natural Resources Defense Council is now complaining that the standard should be lowered all the way to 3 ppb. If their rhetoric is to remain consistent, they will soon be accusing the president of "putting" in the other 7 ppb. For more, please see [Howard Hughes Would Be Proud: Arsenic scare is sheer madness (4/24/01)].

Having recently come under fire from left-wing media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting for its alleged conservative slant, the Fox News Channel has hired Geraldo Rivera as its new war correspondent. That ought to balance any perceived pro-Republican bias, as well as any pro-American one, for that matter.

Winnie Mandela, ex-wife of the former South African president, has been arrested in that country and charged with theft and fraud. She allegedly operated a scheme to obtain bank loans for nonexistent employees of the African National Congress Women's League, over which she presides. Sounds like another ex-president's wife could have given her a few pointers on how not to be indicted.

From an Oct. 18^th USA Today story on biological warfare, written by Steve Sternberg: "Ironically, beginning with Moscow's endorsement of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which outlawed biological weapons, the Soviet Union built 'the largest and most advanced biological warfare establishment in the world,' with 60,000 employees and 100 facilities in Russia and Kazakhstan." Leave it to the American press to find it ironic that the Soviet Union had no intention of abiding by one of its treaties.

Rodney King has been arrested yet again, this time in Pomona, California, for PCP intoxication, and for exposing himself. Thankfully, no camcorders were present.

Dr. Maynard Muntzing of Dayton, Ohio has been arrested for drugging his pregnant girlfriend with Misoprostol, a contraction-inducing drug which is often taken in conjunction with the abortion pill Mifepristone, or RU-486. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration pronounced the use of these drugs to be "safe and effective." Now we know for whom.

A meeting of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board has reached the conclusion that the United States should attack Iraq, as well as Osama bin Laden's base in Afghanistan, in response to the recent terrorist attacks. According to a recent Newsweek article, this determination was agreed to by a panel that included former vice president Dan Quayle and former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich. Secretary of State Colin Powell, on the other hand, worries that a strike against Iraq could break up a worldwide alliance against terrorism. Leave it to the administration's leading "moderate" to try to round up a posse by swearing in one of the villains.

Rep. Gary Condit (D, Calif.) has been named to a House subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security. Americans can rest assured, however, that absolutely no Afghan women have been allowed anywhere near him.

Newsweek reports that the FBI has in its possession a surveillance tape which may indicate that one of the hijackers who crashed into the Pentagon may also have been complicit in last October's bombing of the USS Cole. According to the report, Khalid Al-Midhar met with one of the Cole suspects in Malaysia. It appears to be this information which has led President Bush to name Osama bin Laden as a "prime suspect." The FBI has maintained since the Cole incident, which killed 17 American sailors in a Yemenese port, that bin Laden's terrorist organization was responsible.

New York City's public schools have announced a plan to bribe children with ice cream, to lure them away from playing hooky. From now on, ice cream and other selected goodies will be served in cafeterias on Mondays and Fridays, those being the two days of the week with the highest truancy rates. Inevitably, the students will recognize that they've been placed in a position to bargain, and begin demanding bigger and more valuable treats in exchange for their attendance. Before it's all over, principals are liable to find themselves roaming the halls dressed in Chuck E. Cheese outfits.

While touring Rio De Janeiro, former president Bill Clinton went on a shopping trip with actor Anthony Hopkins, in a bikini shop. A Reuters account of Clinton's appearance there noted that he'd bought two bikinis and three sarongs, and added that, "It was not immediately clear who he was shopping for."

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 Remaining consistent with their belief that a woman has a fundamental constitutional right to dead children, the National Organization for Women has organized the Andrea Pia Yates Support Coalition, in defense of the Texas woman who drowned her five children in her bathtub this past June. Several other prominent organizations are lending the Yates Coalition their support, including the American Civil Liberties Union.

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A German smut magazine entitled O is suing Oprah Winfrey, in order to force her to change the title of her publication, which goes by the same name. The folks at the original O had better beware of a countersuit. If it's at all possible to take out a patent on hermaphroditic love triangles and similar topics, Oprah has surely done so.

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Ed Szymkowiak of the American Life League reminds The Shinbone that when President Bush pledged that taxpayers should not pay for the destruction of human embryos, he overlooked his own appropriation of $253.9 million in Title X funding. Title X encompasses federally funded birth control, which includes abortifacient pills that kill embryos by preventing their implantation.

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Fox News reports that four young firefighters were killed in Washington state's Okanogan National Forest, apparently due to a U.S. Forest Service policy regarding endangered species. In a reversal of previously followed procedures, delivery of a helicopter water drop was delayed for over two hours, until permission was obtained to remove water from the Chewuch River, which contains schools of several endangered species of fish. While awaiting the drop, firefighters Tom Craven, 30, Devin Weaver, 21, Jessica Johnson, 19, and Karen Fitzpatrick, 18, were surrounded by the blaze and burned to death. The Animal Liberation Front could not have done it better themselves.

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The Bush administration is reportedly upset with the Red Chinese government for editing a videotaped interview with Colin Powell, during which the Secretary of State criticized China's record on human rights. Powell had agreed to the interview with the understanding that it would be shown on Chinese television in its entirety, on tape delay. To the surprise of nobody -- except, perhaps, himself -- his critical remarks were deleted from the tape by the time it aired. When Ronald Reagan was negotiating with Mikhail Gorbachev, his fundamental rule was "trust, but verify." It seems that the Bush State Department has been reading the abridged version of the Gipper's playbook.

St. Louis alderwoman Irene Smith has been cited for urinating in public ... during a debate in City Hall, no less. Smith was filibustering a redistricting plan when she discovered that she needed to go to the bathroom, but she could not leave the hall chamber because that would have meant yielding the floor. So she had her aides construct a makeshift latrine by holding up sheets around her while she used a small garbage can. When issued the citation, Smith snapped, "What I did behind that tablecloth is my business." What? She thinks the government has no say in how she goes to the bathroom? She must be one of those right-wing extremists we've read so much about.

Fidel Castro, who helped "save" Elian Gonzalez from being exploited by America, opened the Museum to the Battle of Ideas in honor of the 7 year-old, who, with a roomful of other children, was forced to hear the aging dictator give a speech. One of the exhibits, entitled Dignity, is a statue of a young Cuban boy in his state-issued Pioneers uniform, throwing away a Superman action figure. Which of the two figures represents Elian is open to interpretation.

The California state legislature has begun debating a bill against gender discrimination in the workplace. The bill proposes to change the definition of "sex" to include appearance and behavior, so that a man in a dress will legally be a different "sex" than a man dressed like a man. Republican Assemblyman Ken Maddox warns that "this bill turns The Rocky Horror Picture Show into California labor law."

Sen. Jim Jeffords (I, Vt.) has signed a deal to write two books for the publishing house of Simon and Schuster. The working title of his first book, "My Declaration of Independence," drips with vanity, likening himself to Thomas Jefferson. Jeffords' delusions of grandeur are reinforced by Simon and Schuster vice president David Rosenthal, who gushes that, "Sen. Jeffords' decision constitutes one of the greatest acts of courage in political history." Another, no doubt, is his decision to sign a book deal with Rosenthal's company.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis has admitted that his "experiences" from the Vietnam War were fabricated, and that he'd instead been at Yale on a student deferment at the time. He hastened to add, however, that the Columbia Pictures films Hollow Man and Vertical Limit were "stupendous."

The American Medical Association is asking youth organizations like the Boy Scouts not to ban homosexuals. How is this relevant to the field of medicine? Why, it's a suicide prevention method, of course. You'd think the people at the AMA would be aware of the risk of injury involved in making a stretch like that.

The Aurora, a seagoing Dutch abortion clinic operated by a group called "Women on the Waves," has run into some choppy legal waters along the way to international waters off the coast of Ireland. The crew of the ship, which sails under the flag of the Netherlands, has been informed that they risk arrest upon their return home, if they proceed to give doses of RU-486 to Irish women. The reasons for this are that the Aurora is not a licensed abortion clinic, and it has not been inspected for possible safety violations. There are also women's health concerns involved, due to the fact that RU-486, whose use is supposed to require four doctor's visits over the course of 14 days, is going to be distributed like aspirin from a clinic which could pull out of port at any time. You know the tide is turning when even the Dutch have discovered an abortion they don't like.

Rep. Pete Stark (D, Calif.) caused a stir during a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, when he made an insulting remark about Rep. J.C. Watts (R, Okla). During a hearing on the impact of marriage on welfare policy, Stark suggested that it was hypocritical of the Republicans to raise the issue in the presence of a "current House Republican conference chairman (Watts) whose children were all born out of wedlock." Some Republicans complained that the statement had racist overtones, since Watts is black, and the charge, which is untrue, reinforced a stereotype. Congressman Watts has fathered six children, only the first of which was born out of wedlock. For a politician to have five consecutive children by the same wife has got to be a modern record, but it didn't spare him a taunt from Mister Maturity, Sen. John McCain (R, Ariz.). The former presidential candidate, who has acknowledged that it was his own philandering that broke up his first marriage, and who married a much younger woman almost immediately after his divorce, needled the Oklahoma congressman as they passed in the hallway, saying, "There's a good family man." Thank you, Mr. Straight Talk.

Timothy McVeigh's last meal reportedly consisted of two pints of ice cream. Assuming that the flavor was something other than Ben & Jerry's Mutton Crunch, this means that, despite his previous denials, the mad bomber acquiesced to the demands of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA had suggested that McVeigh eat a vegetarian last meal -- because, well, hadn't he caused enough bloodshed already? So although he didn't get the stay of execution he wanted, some pig, cow or chicken did. Perhaps if it were Saint PETA who guarded the gates of heaven, those 168 murders would be forgiven.

Paralyzed Superman star Christopher Reeve has announced that his foundation is suing the Bush administration in an effort to force it to renew federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Arguing the case for cannibalizing human embryos in the name of science, Reeve charged that the president's policy is doing "irreparable harm."

The Supreme Court has ruled 7-2 in favor of handicapped golfer Casey Martin in his case against the PGA. The pro golf tour is now forced to bend its rules, in accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, to allow Martin to ride in a golf cart instead of walking the course like everyone else. The impact this ruling might have on other sports is unclear, but the PGA might as well resign itself to throwing out its rulebook right now. As broadly as the courts have defined the term "disability," most golfers are bound to have one. In fact, John Daly's probably got at least nine of them by now.

Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D, S.D.) is reported to have played a key role in persuading Sen. James Jeffords (I, Vt.) to switch his party affiliation from Republican to Independent, by offering him the chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee. But Rush Limbaugh points out that Daschle was critical of a similar decision by Colorado Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, who switched from Democrat to Republican in 1995. "His term is up in 1998," he complained. "Perhaps he should resign and run as a Republican and let the voters make up their minds whether they want him back in that capacity." If Jeffords were to take Daschle's advice to Campbell, he could not run again for his current seat until 2006.

Rep. Gary Ackerman (D, N.Y.) and Sen. Jon Corzine (D, N.J.) have introduced bills into their respective houses of Congress to ban the use of cell phones while driving. Next on the docket: The Running With Scissors Prevention Act.

Fifties movie star Brigitte Bardot has lost the appeal of her conviction for "inciting racial hatred," for which the French government had fined her 30,000 francs. The "hate speech" conviction, for criticizing the high number of Muslim immigrants into France, was Bardot's third in four years. In a tragically related story, Texas governor Rick Perry has signed his state's "hate crimes" bill into law. The idea is to create a double-standard in criminal sentencing, depending on whether the crime is said to have been motivated by hate. A "hate crime" conviction will then punish the criminal twice -- once for the crime, and once for the hate (however that is defined). It logically follows that, if hate is deserving of punishment apart from the crime, then a crime is no longer necessary to make the hate punishable. The next thing you know, every Texan who has ever complained about U.S. immigration laws will be very Frenchly dragged into court and ordered to pay up.

Pope John Paul II has formally apologized to Greece for the sacking of Constantinople in the year 1204. He's well preserved for his age, isn't he?

For the first time in its 54-year existence, the Untied Nations Commission on Human Rights has voted to kick the United States off its international panel. One country, however, which did meet the U.N.'s lofty human rights standards was Sudan, famous for its tolerance of slavery, and for its government's systematic persecution of Christians and animists. The obvious hypocrisy of the vote has led to speculation that the U.N. is attempting to punish the U.S.A. for the Bush administration's rejection of the Kyoto Protocol, and/or its proposal for a strategic missile defense system. U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde (R, Ill.) says that "the decision may have the unfortunate result of turning the human rights commission into just another irrelevant international organization." We can only hope.

The Justice Department has indicated that it will likely have to drop the government's lawsuit against the tobacco industry. An intradepartmental memo to Attorney General John Ashcroft informed him that "we cannot maintain the action," and that "there are no realistic prospects for a settlement." Federal lawyers estimate that they would need $57.6 million dollars to continue the action -- far less than President Bush is willing to allot the department in his budget. Big government may still be far from dead, but it's sure nice to hear it let out an occasional wheeze.

British grocer Steven Thoburn has been convicted of violating a European Union regulation requiring the use of metric measurements. The perpetrator, who was caught pricing his fruits and vegetables in measurements of pounds and ounces, has been sentenced to 6 months probation, and could be fined as much as the equivalent of $3,000. Thoburn protested that he was only trying to meet the demands of his customers, not realizing that he was confessing to what, in the EU's eyes, must be his most serious offense.

Proving that there is no offense too small, Bill Clinton has resorted to stealing jokes. At a celebrity gathering in Los Angeles, when he said in reference to the Bush administration, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and that's what they're concentrating on." The funnier and more original joke told by President Bush a week earlier at the Gridiron dinner was that former Democratic Party chairman Robert Strauss had advised him, "Just remember, Mr. President. You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the people you need to concentrate on." We can guess which version received a heartier laugh from reporters.

From the With Enemies Like These Department: An open letter to President Bush, printed in Time magazine, criticizes him for refusing to support the Kyoto Treaty, while insisting that, "There are many strategies for curbing greenhouse gas emissions without slowing economic growth." Among those signing the letter were energy crunching, malaise-mongering President Jimmy Carter, pretend president Harrison Ford, former astronaut, U.S. senator, and campaign fundraising scandal stonewaller John Glenn, ape-lady Jane Goodall, liberal media bias pioneer Walter Cronkite, and the former president of the Misunderstood Empire, Mikhail Gorbachev.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D, N.Y.) has decided to co-sponsor a bill authored by Arlen Specter (R, Pa.), which would require those appealing to the president for pardons and commutations to register as lobbyists. It would also establish a regulation for disclosure of donations to presidential libraries. See? It's not the Clintons who were at fault, it was the absence of pardon and presidential library reform.

The Bush administration has placed a moratorium on the implementation of an obscure executive order signed by Bill Clinton shortly before he left office, which would have redefined the terms "fetus" and "child" in the vocabulary used by the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS is where Clinton had established his National Bioethics Advisory Commission [see Celling Out: The tainted ethics of the NBAC (7/24/99)]. According to the Clinton definitions, a "fetus," even after it is born, does not become a "child" until it can survive while "independently maintaining a heartbeat and respiration." As a result, when the NBAC would make future recommendations regarding tissue research, cloning, etc., it would consider premature babies on respirators, as well as hydrocephalic babies and those with other serious medical conditions, to be "fetuses," and therefore, according to its current "ethics," expendable. Memo to Catholic Clinton supporters: Are you starting to see the importance of understanding "is" yet?

Pop singer Michael Jackson gave a speech on child welfare at Oxford University, during which he unveiled his vision of a children's bill of rights. Handily included was "the right to be listened to without having to be interesting."

The European Court of Justice (chilling already, isn't it?) has ruled that it may be legal for the European Union to punish criticism of itself. The case involves British economist Bernard Connolly, who was fired from the European Commission in 1995 for criticizing proposed plans to bring the entire union under a single currency. In a book entitled The Rotten Heart of Europe, Connolly wrote that, "A single currency will reduce the perceived legitimacy of governments everywhere, by reducing their ability to make their own decisions in their own interests." As if to deliberately confirm this, the Euro Court's decision overrules English Common Law, which EU advocate-general Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer says has "no foundation or relevance" where EU law is concerned.

The International Crime Victims Survey, newly released by Leiden University in the Netherlands, found that the five highest violent crime rates in the developed world belong to nations often lauded for their strict gun control laws: Australia, England, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada. The United States finished out of the top ten.

The following e-mail message, from Marc Rich Foundation chairman Avner Azulay to one of Rich's lawyers, Robert Fink has been received through subpoena by the House Government Reform Committee: "We are reverting to the idea discussed with Abe [identity unknown] -- which is to send DR [Denise Rich] on a 'personal mission' to NO1 [Bill Clinton] with a well-prepared script. Considering the way most of Clinton's personal missions go, she might have taken with her the script from Barbarella.

Colombian officials are reportedly angered and perplexed by Bill Clinton's decision to commute the sentence of Harvey Weinig, a lawyer who had been convicted of laundering money for drug traffickers in Colombia. The commutation, which has cut Weinig's sentence from eleven years to just three years and 95 days, has strained the Colombians' confidence in their alliance with the U.S. against the drug trade. That'll all be cleared up, though, once Clinton explains to them what were "the merits of the case."

An independent recount conducted by the USA Today, the Miami Herald, and Knight Ridder has determined that George W. Bush would have gained 30 votes in Miami-Dade County if only clean-punched ballots or those with hanging chads (i.e., those ballots with actual votes on them) were counted. If they were to count ballots with pinpricks, dimples, warts, bunions, and a variety of other dermatological phenomena, Al Gore would gain a total of 49 votes, in which case Bush would still hold a 488 vote lead in the state.

Hugh Rodham, former Florida senate candidate and brother of Hillary!, claims to have returned about $400,000 in lobbying fees he collected for the pardon of tax evader Almon Braswell, and the commutation for drug dealer Carlos Vignali. Rodham's brother-in-law, former president Bill Clinton, insists that he did not know about Rodham's activities, and that both the pardon and the commutation were granted -- all together now -- based on the merits.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, Calif.) has become the early frontrunner for this year's Orwell Award, for the bill she has introduced to reestablish taxpayer funding for organizations which perform or promote abortions overseas. The bill's title: "The Global Democracy Promotion Act of 2001."

Florida abortionist James Pendergraft, and his real estate adviser, Michel Spielvogel, have been convicted of crimes which could result in sentences of up to 30 and 40 years, respectively. The two of them were found guilty of conspiracy, attempted extortion, and mail fraud, in connection with an attempt to shake down government officials in Marion County, Fla. The defendants had threatened to move one of Pendergraft's abortion clinics into the town of Ocala, but indicated that they could be dissuaded for a price. Their defense -- that they were victims of persecution by overzealous anti-abortion politicians -- was shattered when Spielvogel admitted on the stand that he had fabricated a discussion between himself and County Commissioner Larry Cretul, during which Cretul was supposed to have threatened that the clinic would be a target of violence. Spielvogel was subsequently found guilty of making false statements to the FBI.

A man armed with a machete and a baseball bat attacked an elementary school in Felton, Pennsylvania, injuring the principal, two teachers, and five kindergarten students. But of course, people don't attack people, machetes and baseball bats do.

After weeks of debate, during which he was slandered as a racist and criticized for his religious beliefs, Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft was confirmed by a narrow 58-42 margin. Among the forty-two Democrats who voted against the former Missouri senator was that hero of religious expression in public life, Sen. Joseph Lieberman. The former vice presidential hopeful said that his "no" vote was related not to Ashcroft's Christianity, but to his political views, which are, of course, "considerably outside the mainstream of American thinking." The mainstream Connecticut senator, who respects Louis Farrakhan and voted in defense of partial-birth abortion, has wrestled with his conscience once again, and whooped the snot out of it, as usual.

 The judge in the 25 year-old case of the murder of Martha Moxley has said that the suspect, Michael Skakel, will be tried as an adult ... despite the fact that he is a member of the Kennedy family.

A 13 year-old Connecticut boy has been hospitalized with second and third-degree burns, sustained when he had a friend light his legs on fire, imitating a stunt on the MTV show, Jackass. The cable network is denying any responsibility, on the grounds that the aptly named program is intended "for mature audiences only."

The Washington Post reports that outgoing Clinton staffers left behind dozens, if not hundreds, of damaged computer keyboards, as part of what the Post termed a practical joke. When members of the Bush staff arrived, they found that the "W" keys had been systematically removed and damaged from the keyboards in the Old Executive Office Building, across the street from the White House. When asked for an explanation, Gore press secretary Chris Lehane sniffed, "I think the missing W's can be explained by the vast left-wing conspiracy now at work." It was nothing that complicated, actually, just a collective hissy-fit thrown by a bunch of petty liberal nitwits with no respect for taxpayer property.

Shortly before leaving the White House, Bill Clinton wrote another chapter of his legacy by adding one more to his list of presidential firsts, by pardoning his own brother, Roger, for his 1985 arrest on charges of cocaine distribution. Roger Clinton's pardon was one of 131 issued by the outgoing president in a last-minute flurry. The other recipients included Clinton Whitewater partner Susan McDougal, former housing secretary Henry Cisneros, and former CIA director John Deutch.

Former Carolina Panther wide receiver Rae Carruth has been convicted of conspiracy to commit murder, discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, and using an instrument with intent to harm an unborn child. He was somehow found not guilty of the most serious charge, first-degree murder, for the shooting death of his girlfriend, Cherica Adams. Less than a day before the verdict, the jurors were said to have been sharply divided. It seems they tried to remedy this by splitting their decision, convicting Carruth, but acquitting him of the one charge which could subject him to the death penalty. As a result, Carruth is planning an appeal, on the basis that he shouldn't have been found guilty of the other three crimes without being convicted of murder one -- an argument which, unfortunately, merits consideration. Since he can't be tried again on the murder charge, he stands only to gain from this point on. Justice would have been better served by a hung jury, and a new trial which might have yielded a more decisive result. If Adams' murder ultimately goes unpunished, it will prove a tragic, though instructive, demonstration of centrism in action.

One day before President Clinton was to leave office, he and independent counsel Robert Ray struck a deal, under which Ray agreed not to indict Clinton, in exchange for a five-year suspension of Clinton's law license, a $25,000 fine, and a written apology. In his statement, Clinton wrote that, "I tried to walk a fine line between acting lawfully and testifying falsely, but I now recognize that I did not fully accomplish this goal and that certain of my responses to questions about Ms. Lewinsky were false." His lawyer, David Kendall, insists that this does not amount to an admission that he lied.

In an op-ed piece commemorating MLK Day, President Clinton urged the incoming Bush administration to sign legislation restoring the right to vote to convicted felons, and easing criminal penalties for crack cocaine. Rather than taking offense to Clinton's equating black Americans with criminals and junkies, Jesse Jackson snorted that, "These gaps existed in 1992. He had eight years to work on them.

Las Vegas' annual Martin Luther King Day parade was cut short when a mob of about thirty men attacked and beat two others on a street corner. A very upset City Councilman Lawrence Weekley, who made the decision to end the parade, said, "This is very disturbing, not only because this is the biggest parade in the state and it's the 20th anniversary, but also because of what King was about. It just shows we still have a lot of education to do with young people." Weekley is right, of course, but that education can't begin until historians and media analysts stop drawing a moral equivalence between Dr. King and his ideological enemy, Malcolm X, or by granting people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton the title of "civil rights leaders."

The latest McDonald's lawsuit has been filed by Teresa Reed of Murphysboro, Illinois ... who, as you've probably guessed, spilled hot coffee on herself after picking up an order at a drive-through window. Reed is suing the owner of the McDonald's franchise which sold her the coffee, as well as Wal-Mart, which manufactured and sold the allegedly defective cup holder, and Reed's own mother, who, according to the lawsuit, "owed a duty of care for the safety of others riding in her vehicle."

MTV (formerly the Music Television Network) has decided that will not be throwing an inaugural party for George W. Bush, as it had done for Bill Clinton in 1992 and '96. The network's convincing reason is that it does not have enough time to organize the event, after the protracted election dispute. It's just as well ... nobody wants to see a grown man cry ... or even a veejay, for that matter.

Glenda Dowis of Fort Pierce, Florida reached a plea bargain which has spared her from having to do time in jail. She had been arrested for taking her pregnant 17 year-old daughter to an abortion clinic, at gunpoint. Good thing Mrs. Dowis is not an "extremist" or a "zealot," otherwise she could have been in real trouble.

Two weeks away from the end of Bill Clinton's presidency, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports that employees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service were ordered to destroy documents and e-mails pertaining to the Elian Gonzalez case. El Jefe couldn't have done it better himself.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D, Parts Unknown) was not present for the first vote taken in the Senate since her swearing in. If only we could rely on her current attendance record to hold up for the next six years.

A recent poll taken in Russia found President Clinton to be the second most popular man in that country, next to its own president, Vladmir Putin. So Clinton may not be a career KGB man, but he's the next best thing.

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