LEAVE IT TO PEEVER

– Bumper sticker of the week: Bush + Dick = Screwed

– Quotes of the week: "The great thieves punish the little ones." Thomas Fuller

"The wheels of justice....they’re square." Barbara Corcoran

– What I’ve learned on the Internet:

• I apparently need a bigger penis.

• There are no rules. No one has figured out how to enforce any. There is no level of civility or etiquette.

• You can get the news instantly. This is both good and bad. Now I know every damn stupid thing that happens, like the guy over in Ohio who peed on a live power line.

• You no longer have to talk face to face with anyone. You can be anybody, or anything, anytime you want. Being anonymous doesn’t help truthfulness.

• I can borrow money in seconds, take out a loan in minutes, and buy anything imaginable, and charge it all to you.

– How different is my world from yours?:

• I don’t see color or ethnicity. My father had the decency to teach me this early on, even though he was far from being liberal. We are all human beings.

• I don’t care what religion a person practices, if any, so long as their lives represent good.

• I don’t believe you can kill your way to peace.

• Guns, for the most part, are instruments of destruction.

• I believe it is our patriotic duty, in a democracy, to protest wrongdoing by our leaders, and to see that they are removed from office.

• I’m not interested in flags or slogans. I’m interested in people and lives.

– Israel is wed to the United States, which creates a situation far worse than, say, gay marriages. It is a deadly combination, with the world’s first and fourth most powerful military establishments, both on an apocalyptic journey in the name of saving the world by destroying it. For the Jewish people, it is a particularly sad moment, when the victim becomes the perpetrator.

– So far, everyone who has stepped forward to run for the Presidency in 2004 is a better choice than Bush. And some of these folks are pretty marginal.

– Prisons continue to grow: 2002 saw a 2.6 percent growth in our inmate population, which now stands at 2.1 million. That represents one in every 143 U.S. residents. The major reason: mandatory drug sentences for relatively minor users and sellers. The "three strikes you’re out" law also contributes to this ever increasing burden on the taxpayer, now costing us roughly $40 billion per year. As the old saying goes, if it’s broken, why bother fixing it?

– Speaking of broken: If there’s a possibility that prisoners are being held who have been wrongly accused, and DNA testing would help resolve the issue, it should be mandatory that they receive a test. Many prosecutors and judges don’t like this idea. It could potentially ruin their political careers.

– "An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation." Mary McCarthy

– A partial list of the mistakes I’ve made:

• I shouldn’t have ate so many of those Whoppers.

• Trying to find God as if mystery were an object.

• Not calling my mother enough.

• Writing too much and doing too little.

• Forgetting birthdays.

• Not telling my wife I love her enough.

• Being afraid to take that leap.

• I should be able to listen better than I do, since I do it for a living.

• I have way too much and give way too little.

• However, I didn’t make the mistake of voting for Nixon, Reagan, or Bush (either of them).