Congressmen no longer read the bills they vote on and thus do not require them to make sense. (The latest example is the passage of a bill by the House of Representatives making “price gouging” illegal while leaving it undefined.) They leave it to the President and the Supreme Court to sort things out.

Unfortunately, the present President sometimes gives the impression of being unable to read.

I loved my cat. Probably as much as my cousin, Malcolm, who owed me fifty bucks. So when she died — my cat, not Malcolm — I was unhappy. I remembered the words of Genesis. “Dust thou art and to dust returneth.” How depressing. But I cheered up a little when I reread that big, black book and noticed that the author didn’t specifically mention my cat, Queenie.

I’m trying to order a hamburger, medium well, but the cook was involved in heated argument with the customer who was insisting that DSL is better and faster than cable for a home internet connection.

‘Man, DSL rocks!’

‘You are crazy. DSL ain’t nothing. Cable’s bandwidth rocks!’

‘You are paying for nothing. You can’t download nothing on cable!’

And so on.

A friend in Cambodia alerted me to this story, about the Cambodian Prime Minister’s ban on 3G phones to prevent the spread of porn. Said the PM:

Hold it. Do not yet start the mobile phone services through which the callers can see each others’ images. Maybe we can wait for another 10 years or so until we have done enough to strengthen the morality of our society.

As my friend (not a libertarian) explained,

We tend to assume that without an interventionist government, life would fall into chaos. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

And the US Army Corps of Engineers is really sorry about destroying New Orleans. Now get over it and send them more money!