While the world burned...

Let me see:
- There is genocide in Darfur.
- AIDS continues to ravage Africa.
- Europe is turning into Eur-Arabia before our eyes.
- Hugo Chaves is intent on spreading anti-US Marxism throughout South America.
- North Korean nut job and Dear Leader Kim Jung Il, or is Il Jung - who really knows or cares - says he’s ready to test a nuke.
- Iranian nut job Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking nukes to blast Israel off the face of the earth.
- If they get them, both are certain to provide nukes to terrorists to attack America.
- We are actively engaged in a war on terror on two fronts - Afghanistan and Iraq.

Which of those stories do you suppose is the lead in most newspapers today? Well it turns out that none of those stories with dire consequences for the world in general and the US in particular are interesting or compelling enough to knock the Mark Foley scandal off the front page just 33 days before an election. Now were it early spring, this thing would have died down after a day or two and our alert media would have turned its attention to the other big story that has captured the nation's attention - who is the real father of Anna Nichol Smith’s baby.

But what can we expect? Public schools have turned out a couple of generations of students who couldn’t find the Korean peninsula, Iran, Iraq or Afghanistan, any of the continents – hell even the state that they live in - on map let alone much care about the geopolitics of those regions and how they might affect life in the US. We pretty much get we what deserve.

So, the house has convened its ethics panel to look into the Foley situation. Remember the house also had Foley sitting on the panel for missing and exploited children. Having a house panel on ethics is like a whore house having a panel on virtue.

Speaker Hastert saw the irony. He proposed appointing former Clinton FBI director Louis Fhree as an independent council to look into the matter. Nance Pelosi nixed the idea because Fhree exposed Democrat hero, terror fighter extraordinaire, and protector of women - when he isn't groping or raping them, Bill Clinton as the feckless craven politico that he is in Fhree’s book My FBI.

So for now we’re stuck with a house panel on ethics looking into the rules that led to the misconduct of one of their own. In what political experts have called a stroke of genius, Nance Pelosi has recommended that Jack Kavorkian head up the house panel on suicide prevention.