Wonderful Matters

The feature front page story in the Los Angeles Times today was "States Acting to Protect Private Property." Ever since the Supreme Court ruled last year that eminent domain, the power of government to take property for public use, could extend into allowing developers to take such property if it increases a community's tax revenue, many have been concerned that this could be an undue extension of government power. Thank goodness government is now boldly stepping up to use its power to, um, well um, ahem, fix the problem of too much power . How insidiously clever for government to hock such a ruse upon us, but it is nothing new in a heavily Catholicized nation. They've been doing it for centuries and centuries, convincing the people that the management of their sin requires such activity. And regrettably, they're right. If you're a sinner, you need it. In fact, the very writers of the Constitution must've known this fact, because it's all written in t

Today a top news story (note: news , not sports) on my drive-time radio was essentially this: "Yesterday Barry Bonds started the season with the Giants on the road and he really, really got booed." Thuh end. Nothing about how he did, what the final score was, or even really what he got booed for . I presume by now we're all supposed to know what an ugly stinking Nazi Communist bunny-licker baby-rapist Satan-worshipper he is. Since the release of the tell-all tome "Game of Shadows," describing every private injectatory moment of the greatest ballplayer of our day, Bonds has been excoriated, and if I'm to believe the reasons why this is the case, they are far from compelling. Oh, but he clearly used steroids . Now I'll say right up front that I don't necessarily condone the use of steroids. But then I don't condone drinking alcohol or coffee. So on my take all athletes who get juiced in any of these ways should get whupped, too. But they don't.