Where have you gone, hefty PB cups?

In the 1942 movie “Kings Row,” a newly legless Ronald Reagan famously asks, "Where's the rest of me?" That was sort of the feeling I had today when I bought a two-pack of the Reese's dark chocolate peanut butter cups. The package was so light that I thought they might have to tie the candy bars to the rack so a light breeze doesn't blow them away. Folks of my generation have memories, which we're only too glad to share, about the days when a kid could take a dime into a store and come out with a Hershey bar and a Coke. And in those days, a Reese's peanut butter cup was a good-sized piece of candy. Maybe I'm overdoing it a bit, but it seems like a single Reese's cup from my youth weighed more than the two in the pack I bought today. Food producers are a pretty tricky bunch. We all remember how the coffee cans started shrinking so we paid the same price for less coffee. It's been the same deal with ice cream containers. And I even noticed that a package of hash browns, which used to weigh 2 pounds, now comes in at around 34.5 ounces. On the good side of food news, we are now able to buy "throwback" Pepsi and Mountain Dew, which means they are produced with real sugar rather than the corn syrup that has been used, as far as I can recall, since the 1980s. The difference in taste is remarkable. The bad news is that Pepsi says the "throwback" versions – also known as “Mexican,” because sodas in that country still are produced with real sugar – will be available for a "limited time only." Let's see if I have this right. Pepsi puts out a product that is clearly preferable to the one that had been available, and then plans to take it back off the market. In other words, they're screwing with us. It's like McDonald's and the McRib sandwich. I rarely eat at McDonald's, but I will stop by if I see that the McRib is making one of its occasional "limited-time-only" appearances. And then, just as quickly as the McRib reappears, it is gone again. Why do they do this?

Height of irresponsibility

There was sad news out of Spain this week. Two children were orphaned at the age of 3, and the biggest shame is that it wouldn’t have happened if anyone involved had shown a shred of responsibility. Maria del Carmen Bousada died Saturday at the age of 69. You’re probably never heard of her. I hadn’t. What made her death newsworthy was that three years ago, Bousada, with the help of a fertility clinic in Los Angeles (Where else?), gave birth to twins. First, one would expect a woman in her mid-60s who was thinking about undergoing in vitro fertilization to have had enough sense to say no. But the Earth is chock full of stupid, self-centered people. At that point, it should have been up to the fertility clinic to display some ethical standards and employ some safeguards against this sort of thing happening. But Bousada said she told Pacific Fertility Center that she was 55, which apparently was the clinic’s maximum age for treating single women. And she said the clinic never asked for identification. You can see Bousada’s photo here. Ray Charles could have recognized that she was over 55 just by feeling her face. But this really shouldn’t surprise us. Look at the Octomom, a clearly deranged woman who was able to find professional help to increase her brood by eight. And will anyone among us be shocked when it comes out that Michael Jackson’s home was a virtual pharmacy, stocked with the help of doctors only too glad to look the other way? It seems the almighty dollar speaks very loudly, easily drowning out the ancient voice of Hippocrates. The central question in Bousada’s case might be, why did she do it? And the answer is: because she wanted to. “I think everyone should become a mother at the right time for them,” the woman said in a 2007 interview. “That was the only way to achieve the thing I had always dreamed of, and I did it.” I, I, I. It was all about her, of course. Now she’s dead, and the children will have little or no recollection of their mother. What about the father? Well, good luck throwing catch in the backyard with a test tube.

Overkill

Did you ever say something critical about someone who had just died, and another person told you that you should be more respectful because the person "wasn't even in the ground yet"? Well, now that Michael Jackson is presumably in the ground or headed there very shortly (unless his head is being frozen somewhere, a la Ted Williams), I'd like to say that the amount of attention paid to his death by the media was beyond ridiculous. I do understand that he "did Thriller" and was a music icon. But the level of fawning and hyperbole at Jackson's memorial service boggled the mind. Magic Johnson, who has never been the sharpest tool in the shed, said that watching Michael Jackson made him a better basketball player. Huh? And then there was this from the Rev. Al Sharpton: "Those young kids grew up from being teenage, comfortable fans of Michael’s to being 40 years old and being comfortable to vote for a person of color to be president of the United States. Michael did that. Michael made us love each other." Now, Sharpton is an idiot of epic proportion, and he and the truth have not always been on the best of terms, but really? A co-worker heard someone else say - and they weren't kidding - that Jackson was "the greatest figure of love and peace in the history of the world." Sorry, Jesus. You're No. 2 now. But I saved the best for last, and it's once again from Sharpton, who told Jackson's three children that "your daddy wasn't strange." OK, I have to call "shenanigans" on that one. What we had with Jackson was one of THE strangest people to inhabit the Earth during my lifetime. We can debate all day whether he was a child molester. But it's pretty clear that he was a druggie who probably took so much "legal" dope that he killed himself. He also was a guy who was once good-looking and black, and at the end of his life, he was a circus freak who made Clay Aiken look like 50 Cent. And while I give the guy his props as a onetime "King of Pop," those days were long gone. Jackson hadn't been a major player on the music scene for close to 20 years, during which time he became a public joke. Some called him the greatest and most influential artist in the history of popular music, but wouldn't you think the greatest artist ever would have continued to be productive and relevant past the age of 35? And there are plenty of other people - Lennon and McCartney, Buddy Holly, Kurt Cobain, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Brian Wilson, to name a few - who were every bit as influential. It's sad that Michael Jackson is dead, and that his life since the mid-90s had been a downward spiral. But there's really no one to blame for that but Michael Jackson, and maybe those who raised him and enabled him. Just a sad story with a final act that was way too loud and long.

Stupid, stupid, stupid

I'm guessing that I'm not the only one who has noticed that some crazy, imbecilic stuff goes down in the state of California. Here's the latest: Two elementary schools in Chino had class schedules on Fridays during the past school year that were five to 10 minutes short of what is required under state law. School administrators, afraid they would lose $7 million in attendance funds, had to come up with a plan to make up for the time lost on those 34 short days. Their solution: Spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to reopen the schools this summer and require students to spend 34 more days in classes. Said Amy Nguyen-Hernandez, principal of one of the elementary schools, "We try to be rule followers here, so we'll try to do whatever needs to be done." What needs to be done is for somebody to go to the common sense store and buy some for these idiots. I did a little math (not one of my strong points) and determined that, based on each of the original days in question being, on average, 7.5 minutes short, the youngsters in the two elementary schools missed a total of 4 hours and 15 minutes of required schooling. A person with any grasp on reality would see that the obvious solution (aside from just forgetting about it, for gawd's sake) is to have the kids come in for another half day of classes, feed them lunch and send them on their way. But it seems that didn't occur to anyone in La-La Land. Their solution has proven to be an exercise in futility. One of the schools has a student population of 280, but just 40 to 60 are showing up for the make-up classes. The reason: Final report cards were issued June 7, so there's no way to enforce attendance. Also, the kids aren't exactly digging deeply into their textbooks. One kid told the AP that her class spent a whole week crafting paper airplanes in a study of aerodynamics. And now, state school officials, because of the lack of real classwork and the paltry attendance, are saying that the make-up days might not even count. But there is a lesson here for the kids: Whatever you do, don't grow up to be as stupid as the adults involved in this mess.

Orange you glad they're not doing this here?

Sometimes our government officials go a bit too far in trying to micromanage the protection of the populace. The crackdown on cigarettes is one example. Who doesn't know that sucking hot, chemical-laden smoke into your lungs is bad for you? Do we really need larger warnings on cigarette packs? But there's a town in central Pennsylvania that is really going overboard. At two busy intersections, the borough of Lemoyne has installed bins filled with bright orange flags, according to the AP and The Patriot-News of Harrisburg. Pedestrians are instructed to pick up a flag and carry it with them as they cross the street. There is no indication as to whether they should wave it vigorously as they do so, but Councilman John Judson says it's a way to make pedestrians stand out and to remind motorists that those on foot have the right of way. Police officers will make sure the supply of flags is maintained, presumably so interest in the program doesn't, um, flag. The effort reminds me of the time W&J wanted to close a city street to vehicular traffic because its sheep - I mean, students - seem to have difficulty getting from Point A to Point B without wandering out in front of passing cars. Wouldn't it be simpler, and cheaper, if everybody's Mom just issued them a reminder to look both ways before crossing?

Why not waterboard them?

A bunch of seniors at a high school in eastern Pennsylvania were suspended for five days by the school district. Were they smoking dope on school grounds? Brawling, maybe? Peeking through a hole into the girls' locker room? No. They climbed over an outer wall at Southern Lehigh High School and camped overnight in an enclosed courtyard. Yeah, they camped out. An Associated Press story gives no indication that the 17 kids caused any trouble. As best as I can tell, there was no drinking, no property damage. But the district saw fit to bar them from a week of classes, and three of the students involved in the harmless prank were stripped of their membership in the National Honor Society. Well, of course we can't have scofflaw campers in the NHS. The next thing you know, these kids might play their car radios too loud. And the next step is anarchy. The district also suspended two students who had the audacity to e-mail The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown to complain about the punishment. The district later thought better of its attempt to trample the two students' free-speech rights, and those suspensions were rescinded. Students were planning a protest outside the school following Friday classes, and I don't blame them. Our entire society seems to be losing what remains of our collective sense of humor and sense of proportion. This is like the district that suspended a grade-schooler for bringing nail clippers to school. In the old days, a janitor would have found the kids camping and told them to clean up their stuff and move on. But, sadly, those days - the ones when people in positions of authority had a little basic common sense - seem to be behind us.

When words kill

When people get riled up about something to the point of obsession, common sense and responsibility are often two of the early casualties. And when the level of their rhetoric escalates, the effects can be deadly. We've seen evidence of that in several recent cases. For years, protesters labeled abortion provider George Tiller as a murderer, despite the fact that his actions were lawful. A clearly mentally ill man who heard that message over and over and over again took matters into his own hands last weekend and allegedly gunned down Tiller in the doctor's church. Just this week, a Muslim convert named Abdulhakim Muhammed opened fire in Little Rock, killing a military recruiter. Authorities say he targeted soldiers "because of what they had done to Muslims in the past." A few weeks back, Richard Poplawski, who apparently believed the lunatics who claim the government is coming to take Americans' guns, killed three Pittsburgh police officers. Who bears the blame for these actions? Responsible abortion opponents didn't want Tiller murdered. The average Muslim would not support the random killing of innocent American soldiers. Reasonable gun-rights advocates don't support militia movements or the slayings of police officers. And yet, they are all to blame, in some measure. Why do we not hear the responsible abortion foes loudly denouncing the psychos at the fringes of their movement? Don't peace-loving Muslims have a duty to point out the hypocrisy and hatred of their brethren who believe in death to America and call for the murders of anyone guilty of the slightest insult against Islam? And why doesn't the NRA say, strongly and clearly, to the gun nuts, "Listen, we're going to fight to preserve your gun-ownership rights, but nobody is coming to take your rifles, shotguns and handguns"? Abortion opponents might claim that harsh rhetoric is justified because they're trying to save babies from being murdered, and gun-rights proponents might truly believe that they are fighting for the very survival of the Second Amendment, but would these groups also accept that radical Muslims might have some legitimacy when they say their people are dying because of U.S. actions in the Middle East? Probably not. But what they must realize is that words are powerful. And everyone, no matter their beliefs, bears responsibility when their words cause the most unhinged among their flocks to see murder as an acceptable, or even mandatory, course of action.

Why? 'Cause Bracken says so

Think for a moment or two what you would do if you had $500,000 to spend on tourism promotion in Washington County. Did buying fake grass for a minor-league baseball team's sloppy field pop into your head? Probably not. But that's exactly what the Washington County Tourism Promotion Agency did on Thursday. Its members voted, 8-3, to plunk down half a million dollars in hotel tax proceeds over the next decade in order to finance the installation of artificial turf at Consol Energy Park, home of the Washington Wild Things. Another $500,000 for the project will come from your state tax dollars. There's no debating that the Wild Things are a major draw, second only to the Meadows in terms of attracting visitors to the county. And no one really debates the fact that the current grass field has significant drainage problems and should be replaced. The objections from those who opposed the tourism spending centered mainly on the use of that particular funding source and the way in which the proposal was handled. Observer-Reporter publisher Tom Northrop, who cast one of the dissenting votes, believed it would have been better to use the local share of slots proceeds from The Meadows casino. But the artificial turf project was not among those forwarded by the county commissioners for slots funding. And the reason is becoming clear. Why use the slots money, and possibly raise the ire of local communities vying for that funding, when you can just strong-arm the tourism panel into coughing up the cash? Northrop was told by county Commissioner Bracken Burns, who was pushing the Wild Things project, "We're the ones who gave you the hotel tax money, and we can take it away, too." If that's not a threat, I don't know what is. I'm pretty sure if you look up the word "arrogant" in the dictionary, you'll find a picture of Burns. But the attempted bullying didn't stop there. Jeff Kotula, the executive director of Washington County Chamber of Commerce, who just happens to be chairman of the commissioner-appointed panel that decided on the use of slots money, allegedly called tourism panel member Jamie Johns of The Meadows to "remind" her that the commissioners appointed her to the board. Supposedly, all the newer members of the board got these "friendly reminders." And there's more. A state-level official also got into the high-pressure act, and some board members were told that if they didn't vote the "right way," they could easily be replaced because they serve at the pleasure of the commissioners. One of the affirmative votes for the $500,000 outlay came from board member Bob Gregg, perhaps better known as the WJPA play-by-play announcer for Wild Things games. Gregg might not get paid by the Wild Things or Ballpark Scholarships Inc., which owns the park and is the entity getting the money, but the average third-grader could spot the conflict of interest in his vote. At least the tourism board representatives from the Wild Things and Cal U., which plays games on the field, had the good sense to abstain. One might also complain that the reason artificial turf is needed at this juncture is that the field was not constructed properly in the first place. Now they want public money to bail them out. As I said earlier, no one is denying that the Wild Things are an asset for the community, and no one is claiming that new turf is not needed. But should $1 million in tax money be used for this? It brought to mind the time when we citizens said we didn't want our state tax money to be used to build stadiums in Pittsburgh, and our so-called "leaders" in Harrisburg stuffed it down our throats anyway. It also makes one wonder why the county even has a tourism promotion panel. Why don't Burns and his equally shameless cronies just make the decisions themselves, in a back room somewhere, and eliminate this charade.

Why are they anonymous?

Washington police have arrested three 15-year-old boys and sent them to an Ohio juvenile facility on charges that they torched the former Salisbury Auto Body on Donnan Avenue? Who are these kids? Damned if I know. The identities of juveniles who are accused of criminal activity are typically shielded from public view by police and the courts. That might be fine for a shoplifter or a kid who smacks another teen in a street fight. But when a teenager is accused of setting a blaze that destroyed one building, threatened other people's homes and put the lives of firefighters and police officers at risk, the community deserves to know their names. What if they are released into the custody of their parents until their proceedings in juvenile court? Wouldn't it be good for people who live near these three to know that they're accused of this serious crime?

Bull@#*& alert!

Nobody every accused the NRA of being a thoughtful, deliberative, common-sense organization. Rigid, reactionary and retarded are three words that quickly spring to my mind. Offer up any gun-control proposal, no matter how mild or well-intentioned, and to the NRA, it's the first slippery step toward armed members of Barack Obama's national service corps bursting through people's doors to seize their squirrel rifles. I'm against most gun controls. Rather, I favor stiff penalties and enforcement against people who use them to commit crimes. But the NRA can be so laughable. Case in point: Pittsburgh city government enacted a law requiring gun owners to make a report when they lose a weapon or have one stolen. Now, the law was ill-conceived from the get-go, and it's totally unenforceable, because there's really no way to prove that someone knew one of their weapons had gone missing. But leave it to the NRA to employ maximum overkill. The organization has, of course, sued Pittsburgh City Council and the mayor in a bid to overturn the measure. The suit argues, probably correctly, that the city is overstepping its bounds when it gets into the area of regulating weapons. But the NRA then makes the asinine claim that the law "severely restricts and/or infringes" on citizens' constitutional right to keep firearms in their homes. What? I'm sure they would try to make some twisted argument about how this infringement supposedly occurs, but "severely"? That's just ludicrous. I'm going to say this one more time, though I'm not counting on getting through the thick skulls of people who believe otherwise: No one from the government is coming to your house to take your handguns and rifles. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not next month. Not next year. Never. Ever. Ever. But just keep paying those dues to the NRA so its well-paid leaders, lawyers and lobbyists can keep acting like horse's asses on your behalf.

MLK rolling in his grave?

If you were the children of a famous, widely beloved person, and a group wanted to raise $120 million to build a memorial in their honor, how would you react? I don't know about you, but I'd be greatly honored and would ask how I could help. But the children of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a different reaction. They wanted money, and lots of it, in order to allow the use of their father's words and image. The cost of a proposed King monument, which is to be constructed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is being financed almost entirely by donations that, so far, have added up to about $104 million. That includes $10 million in taxpayers' money. And the tribute payment to the King family: $800,000. I think that's disgusting, and so does Cambridge University historian David Garrow, winner of a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of King. "I don't think the Jefferson family, the Lincoln family ... I don't think any other group of family ancestors has been paid a licensing fee for a memorial in Washington," Garrow told the AP. "One would think any family would be so thrilled to have their forefather celebrated and memorialized in D.C. that it would never dawn on them to ask for a penny." Clearly, Garrow hasn't spent much time around the King children. They've become a running joke over the years, squabbling among themselves, hiring locksmiths to keep one another out of the King Center in Atlanta and suing one another over the money they've accumulated by feasting on their father's good name. A few years back, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ran a series of articles about the King Center finances, reporting that even though the center was in need of repairs, cut back its civil rights programming and spent more money than it took in most years, MLK son Dexter King was paid a salary of $180,000, and his brother, Martin III, took in $150,000. That doesn't count millions the center gave to a for-profit company run by Dexter King, according to the paper. It's all an unseemly mess, made worse by the appearance that the King children are willing to do anything for the almighty dollar. I hesitate to suggest this, mainly out of fear that they'll act on it, but I wonder how much the King kids would charge to have a set of Golden Arches erected over their parent's graves? It's all about the Benjamins, right?

Grab some pitchforks and torches

If anyone wants to have another tea party, boy do I have a great target: the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. That Pennsylvania's wine and liquor stores should have been privatized years ago is obvious. But the evidence keeps mounting that the politically protected PLCB is the gang that can't shoot straight, and it's costing you and me a boatload of money. The Post-Gazette had a great story the other day by Steve Twedt that outlined the latest shenanigans at the agency. The centerpiece of the story was that the PLCB, despite the protestations of Gov. Ed Rendell, is thinking about changing the name of its Wine and Spirits stores. It may not be necessary, but I'll point out here that the PLCB has a virtual monopoly on wine and liquor sales in Pennsylvania and really doesn't need to "sell itself" to customers. Also, it seems as if calling the retail locations "Wine and Spirits" stores is pretty darned descriptive. The P-G reports that last week, PLCB chief executive Joe Conti called the possible name change just a small part of a move to "rebrand" state stores under a $3.7 million consulting contract with a San Francisco firm. Conti, who got his job in a purely political move by Rendell that forced out board Chairman Jonathan Newman (no relation), the only person at the PLCB who seemed to have any idea what he was doing, refused to offer up any potential names for the stores, but sources within the PLCB told Twedt that one name had been under serious consideration until it was leaked and criticized. Actually, I'm guessing the name was mocked. Any guess as to what it was? Never mind. You couldn't possibly guess, because you're not mentally retarded. The proposed name was ... drum roll, please ... "Table Leaf." Sadly, I'm not joking. It was "Table Leaf." As I recall, a table leaf was something my grandmother put in the middle of her dining room table to expand its size for Thanksgiving dinner. What it has to do with selling wine and booze is anybody's guess. The stupidity over the renaming of the liquor stores follows closely behind the revelation that the PLCB was spending just short of $175,000 to hire a company to train workers on how to play nice with customers. The contract, which went to a company whose president is married to a PLCB regional manager, led to a manual for agency trainers that, according to the P-G, offered the following nuggets of genius in the way of objectives: "To gain knowledge of self, others and develop techniques to utilize during facilitation"; "to enable trainers to use various skills and techniques designed to enhance effective communication and transfer of knowledge"; and "to practice and apply adult facilitation skills." In other words, you give us about $175,000, and we'll tell you how to tell your employees how to talk to customers. Brilliant. And Conti tells the P-G that even if no name change comes to pass, the PLCB is about ready to launch a really sweet Web site and is focusing on such areas as store shelving, layouts and category management. Does anyone else think this sounds a lot like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? Enough is enough. We, the people, should demand an end to this anti-consumer joke of a government agency.

Mum's the word

Would you like to know what members of the Washington County Authority board really think about the plan to build an upscale Wal-Mart at Southpointe II? Good luck with that. Wednesday night, members of the politically appointed panel did their best impressions of attendees at a convention of deaf-mutes. Asked to approve a property sale needed to clear the way for the Wal-Mart project, the members of the authority board – Bill Burt, John Rheel, Scott Frederick, Suzanne Ewing, Lawrence Miller and Dennis Dutton - didn't utter a peep when board chairman Alan Veliky asked twice for a motion on the matter. If they wanted to vote against the plan, that's fine. But these people didn't have the guts to even put the matter up for a vote or to take a public stand one way or the other. We could assume, I guess, that they all bowed to pressure from project opponents, or maybe from the politicians who appointed them to the board. Rod Piatt, president of developer Horizon Properties, said the authority never had the right to "pick and choose" what businesses locate in Southpointe II, but the panel essentially did just that by refusing to act on the property deal. Mike Swisher, a principal with Horizon Properties, said $200 million worth of construction and 3,000 jobs were at stake. Chris West of Cullinan Properties said the apparent demise of the Wal-Mart store will have a negative trickle-down effect. "We don't have the critical mass. It's going to kill our (movie) theater deal and other associated restaurants that were going to come along with it," he said. So now, the developers are back to square one, and in the current economic climate, most other major retailers are not expanding to new sites. The opponents can talk all they want about things such as traffic concerns. I think the real reason this project drew so much opposition is that the snooty suburbanites in that area were deathly afraid that a Wal-Mart might attract "the wrong kind of people." You can bet there would have been a lot less discontent if a Macy's had been slated for the site.

Striking out at some easy targets

New Jersey has become the first state in the nation to require drivers 21 and younger to put a decal on their cars noting that a young driver is behind the wheel. Will that improve highway safety? Probably not one lick. Pam Fischer of the New Jersey Division of Highway Safety says the move will help police to determine whether young people are complying with other elements of the new law, which include a rollback of the driving curfew from midnight to 11 p.m. and banning teens from having more than one other young person in their cars. Also, the state is considering decals that would attach with Velcro so they could be removed when an older person is driving the vehicle. Is it just me, or do you think a young person who is violating one or more of the new restrictions just might pull off the decal? And if you have four teens who are going on a double date, and can no longer travel in one car, you're now putting two teenage drivers on the road instead of one. Is that a positive? And what is the state of New Jersey doing about dangerous drivers at the other end of the age spectrum? Not a damn thing. We just had more evidence of the dangers posed by elderly drivers last week, when a retired priest mowed down people outside a Pittsburgh-area church, killing one of them. His explanation? The accelerator pedal had a mind of its own. Isn't it funny that gas pedals seem to stick only on elderly people's cars? But our government leaders will continue to ignore this threat because old people vote. For the most part, kids don't, so they get the shaft.

This is not too much to ask

A proposal under consideration by the Georgia legislature would demand that new drivers take a written license test in English. Does anyone see a problem with this? Of course they do. According to an AP story, some employers and immigrant advocates fear it would keep people unfamiliar with the English language from being able to work. Well, boo hoo. If someone wants to drive in this country, they should be able to read signs that are printed, primarily, in English. I'd prefer to share the road with folks who understand such instructions and warnings as "Dangerous Curve Ahead," "Men Working" and "Children Playing." If I moved to Brazil, I wouldn't expect to be granted a driver's license until I knew enough Portuguese to understand roadside instructions. People who move here should have the same expectations.

They're at it again

Spring is a time of crocuses and robins. It's the time when a young man’s fancy is said to lightly turn to thoughts of love or, if you're my age, baseball. It's also the time when some formerly hibernating senior citizens who have no business driving get back on the road and create a menace to all of us. There were two examples of this over the weekend in the Pittsburgh area (just imagine how many occurred nationwide). A contributor to the O-R daily poll noted that on Saturday, an older driver slammed his car into a house in Penn Hills, damaging the home and rupturing a gas line. Then, on Sunday, we saw just how deadly some of these over-the-hill drivers can be. An 82-year-old woman ran over and killed an 80-year-old man who was standing in the parking lot of the DeLallo Italian Marketplace in Hempfield, Westmoreland County. The woman, who was backing up her car to leave the lot, told police she saw the man in her rear-view mirror and initially hit the brakes, but then put her foot back on the gas when she could no longer see him. In short order, the old guy was dead. And we're not talking about someone briefly hitting the accelerator, backing up a few feet and striking a pedestrian. The elderly lady must've really jammed on the gas pedal, because police say she plowed over three concrete planters before taking out the poles holding up an entranceway awning at the business. Sometime during the demolition derby, the old man was trapped under her car. My question is this: How many times does this kind of thing have to happen before those with the power to do something (your state legislators) require that drivers over a certain age must be subjected to new physicals and driving tests? As it stands now, only a couple of states require that the elderly pass new road tests to renew a license. In most states, senior citizens of any age can renew their licenses just by cutting a check and sending in a form. No questions asked. We hear people make the excuse that young drivers are dangerous, too, but that's a red herring. Young drivers, provided they survive those dangerous early years behind the wheel, will go on, on average, to become better drivers. For many elderly drivers, it's a one-way trip toward becoming a hazard to themselves and others who have the misfortune to share the roads with them. A USA Today story from 2007 cites a Carnegie Mellon University study that found the fatality rate for drivers aged 75 to 84 was equal to the rate of teens, but drivers 85 and older had a fatality rate four times that level. The story also cited a prediction by road-safety analysts who say that by 2030, when all of the baby boomers are at least 64 years old, they will account for a full quarter of all fatal crashes. That figure was 11 percent in 2005. The threat is clear. When is somebody going to do something about it? I know our state lawmakers are generally the worst kind of cowards when it comes to offending constituents (especially those who vote in large numbers), but enough is enough.

A man of peace dissed by peace conference

There aren't too many greater symbols of peace in our world than the Dalai Lama, but he's not welcome at this week's international peace conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. The conference has been called to highlight the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament, which is to be hosted by South Africa. Its aim is to gather Nobel peace laureates such as the Dalai Lama, as well as Hollywood celebrities and others for a discussion of issues including racism and how sports can serve to bring people together. Retired Cape Town Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former South African presidents F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, acting on behalf of South African soccer officials who organized the event, invited the Dalai Lama to take part. It sure seems like a perfect fit. But wait. The South African government stepped in and rescinded the invitation. Thabo Masebe, speaking for President Kgalema Motlanthe, said the Tibetan spiritual leader isn't welcome because South Africa wants to avoid being "the source of negative publicity about China." Well, of course. What sort of peace conference would it be if they somehow offended the murderous regime in Beijing? I'm sure it's just a coincidence that South Africa is China's largest trading partner on the African continent. Tutu and members of the Nobel Committee are, correctly, backing out of the conference. But the Dalai Lama hasn't been banned from South Africa for life. In fact, Masebe told the Associated Press that the Tibetan leader has been welcomed twice before in South Africa and will be invited again in the future - just not now, "when the whole world is looking at South Africa." Sure, maybe they can spirit him in sometime under cover of darkness and get him out again before daybreak. Masebe is right about one thing. The whole world is looking at South Africa, and it's disgusted by what it's seeing.

GOP sure doesn't stand for Gay Old Party

Ask most people, and they'll tell you that everyone in our communities, our state and our country deserve to be treated with equality. So you might think it would be a slam-dunk when some of our state lawmakers put forward legislation to make a form of discrimination unlawful. You'd be wrong. You forgot about the Republicans in our Legislature. The State Government Committee of the Pennsylvania House approved a measure Wednesday that would extend anti-discrimination protections to include sexual orientation, particularly in the areas of housing, employment, credit and public accommodations. The shame of this is that the bill passed on only a 12-11 vote. All 12 Democrats on the panel voted in favor of treating people equally. All 11 Republican members voted to continue casting a blind eye toward discrimination. Supporters of the legislation say it has widespread support across the state, but the opponents fear it will infringe on the religious beliefs of others. Of course, we wouldn't want to infringe on anyone's right to treat someone else as a second-class citizen, based solely on the sexual orientation they were born with. But what kind of religion would favor discrimination against people who are different from what they perceive as the norm? Oh, I forgot. That would be most of them. It's sad that we're still living in a country where a significant segment of the population holds such feelings. In my book (not the Bible, thankfully), churches that preach this kind of hatred and discrimination are no better than the Ku Klux Klan. The good news is that among the younger generations, those feelings are much less prevalent. The old haters will eventually die off. Good riddance.

Eat at your own risk

In the wake of the peanut-related salmonella outbreak, a new Associated Press investigation finds that the federal government has been cutting back on food-safety inspections and leaving that work to the states. Just a few problems with that. The AP found that the state inspectors are overburdened, lacking in training and do shoddier work than the feds. This means you and I have a greater chance of getting sick from what we eat. In the case of the Peanut Corp. of America plant in Georgia, the AP found that a state inspection last fall turned up only a couple of minor violations. However, when the feds became concerned about a link between the plant and the recent salmonella outbreak, their own, more stringent examination found roaches, mold, a leaky roof and other sanitation failures. Just in recent memory, we’ve had major outbreaks of food-borne illnesses linked to tomatoes, bad beef, green onions and now peanuts. I’m sure there are more. Those are just the ones that come to mind. My guess is that no matter how much money we throw at the problem, these things are going to occur from time to time. Our food chain is just too unwieldy. Even if we could get a handle on the food-safety issues within our own borders, we get fruit from Chile, beef from Uruguay, fish from Vietnam, etc. It makes you want to go pick some berries off a bush in the backyard.

Safety first, fellas

American Airlines is caught up in litigation over an incident in 2007 in which the pilot of a flight from San Diego to Chicago decided not to take off, and instead taxied back to the gate, because of alleged suspicious behavior by five men of Iraqi descent who were on the plane. The men, of course, hired a lawyer and sued the airline, claiming they were the victims of discrimination. The airline says the way the men acted, not their nationality, was behind the captain’s decision. The five men had raised concerns among fellow passengers and flight attendants through behavior that included one man putting a blanket over his head, another taking off his shoes, another departing for the restroom and a fourth man glaring at a crew member during safety instructions. The pilot put all those concerns together and decided it was best not to take off. Police interviewed the Iraqi men, and everyone, including the Iraqis, left the next day on another flight. The Iraqi men’s lawyer, Lawrence Garcia, says his clients just wanted to be “treated like everyone else on the plane.” He added, “One took off his shoes. One went to the bathroom, and one put a blanket on his head … If a white or African-American person had done that on a plane, it would have aroused no suspicion.” Maybe Mr. Garcia has forgotten that on 9/11, it was people from the Middle East who hijacked four planes and killed thousands of Americans. And maybe Mr. Garcia has forgotten about the guy who was trying to blow up an airline with a SHOE BOMB. There are still plenty of Arab-looking people who would be tickled to death to do great harm to America and its people. I’m not for strip-searching every Arab-looking person before they get on a plane, but is it wrong to take a little extra caution when Middle Eastern-looking people start behaving strangely on a plane? A decision is pending on the airline’s attempt to have the lawsuit thrown out. Let’s hope the judge has the good sense to do so, and that the next time this particular group of Iraqi men decides to take a trip, they have the good sense not to act goofy and draw attention to themselves.