As a Marine sergeant currently on inactive status, (meaning that if they ever call me up again, the feces has truly hit the rotary air mover) I know a little bit about inspections. I've been inspected a thousand times, and have conducted a few myself.

When you check into a unit, they issue you a weapon, currently, an M-16 for most Marines. You sign a pice of paper saying that you got it. It's kept in the armory when you don't need it, like when you're on leave.

On a compleatly unrelated note, it'd be a truly cool policy if upon arrival at boot camp, you'd be issued your very own brand-new personal M-16, one that would be yours to have and hold during your entire career as a Marine. The way it is now, when you transfer units, you leave your weapon behind. While Marines do take excellent care of their rifles, there is still an unconscious tendency to treat your weapon like a rented car.

To make it even better, upon satisfactory completion of your enlistment, you should be allowed to take your M-16 home with you as a going-away present. I know that this would give gun control freaks immediate cases of myocardial infarction, but we could make some concessions to them:

1. The weapon remains the property of the Corps, and cannot be sold, given away, or otherwise transferred.

2. The weapon will have the authorized Marine's name and SSN indelibly engraved on several prominent and important spots, such as the receiver, barrel, etc.

3. It will be converted, via a sear change, to semi-auto fire only.

4. Use of the weapon in any crime would be punished by severe mandatory prison terms in a military prison, such as Leavenworth. That ain't your pimpdaddy's stockade. If it is a violent crime, it becomes a capital crime, such sentence being carried out by military firing squad.

5. The rifle would be kept under lock and key. Imbed some sort of tracking device in the weapon that would allow it to be located in case of theft. I honestly don't know the best way to implement this, but I cannot help but think it can be done.

6. The former Marine and his weapon would be subject to periodic inspections.

This proposal will sound outlandish to many of you, but it is not far off from the Swiss policy, in which all able-bodied males ae members of the militia, and are required to maintain even full-auto assault rifles at home.

Now, consider this case:

The Marine inspector arrives at the home of a former Marine, and says, "I'm here to inspect your weapon."

Said Marine says, "What weapon?"

"The weapon we know you have. The M-16. You signed for it here. Here are the documents."

"I don't have this rifle. It was destroyed."

"Destroyed? Where is the documentation for that?"

"I don't have any. It's just gone."

"What happened to it?"

"I don't have it. The dog ate it."

"That's not what our records say."

"Hey, search my house. I'm telling you I don't have it. Look all you want."

"The law says that the rifle should be kept under lock and key, at this address, and be available for our inspection. We are not required to be detectives looking for this, the law says that you must present the weapon to us upon our demand."

"Hey. I'm co-operating, am I not? I said you can look anywhere you want for it."

"Don't be ridiculous. We can't go around digging up your yard, searching every possible place you could have hidden it. Present the weapon as you agreed to. We're inspectors, not detectives."

"Maybe you need more inspectors. I have no such weapon, and furthermore, just yesterday I made it a rule in our house that we cannot have any such weapons."

I'm guessing by now that you get my point. Saddam agreed to present his WMD programs to the UN inspectors. UNSC Res. 1441 promised dire consequences if he did not. He's refused to cooperate in the inspection. That in and of itself is a material breach, "smoking guns" be damned.

It now seems that certain members of the UN are determined to destroy that body itself, by making it's clear declarations meaningless. Furthermore, these same members seem to be focused on destroying NATO as a viable body.

Both NATO and the UN are largely US creations, and the US certainly has borne the lion's share of the military and economic effort to keep them strong.

We should let them go and spiral down the drain. We are strong and smart and honorable enough to design new organizations, new alliances, new treaties, with new and willing partners. We will share with these partners a common cause. These partners will all be more fitted to pursuing international freedom, progress, and growth than our current appeasing "allies."

They now seek to protect a vile regime for sordid, self-serving reasons. It should make us shudder that we ever called them friend.

As a final gesture of that friendship, a parting gift, as it were, we should give them their wish, and leave them to their own devices, their own fates, with their futures unshadowed by the bulk of American hegemony. Then, when they call once again for help in cleaning up the mess they've made with themselves, we will, as always answer.

"No."

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I laughed til I cried when I saw this...

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"...pick a seat, we gotta go."

Two years ago, so said one 22 year old Southwest Airlines stewardess flight attendant, as the plane was about to depart, as she tried to chivvy the still unseated passengers into grabbing a seat.

So what, you ask?

Two of the unseated passengers were black females, and they are now suing Southwest for the stew's "racist" remark.

I shit you not.

Read the story here.

Perhaps an explanation is in order.

Back in the old, unenlightened days, there was a nursery rhyme that went like this:

"Eenie-Meenie-Minie-Mo, Catch a nigger by his toe, If he hollers make him pay, fifty dollars every day."

It was used like the old "hot potato, cold potato" counting out rhyme to attempt to randomly choose something as important as who got to bat first at the local sandlot ballgame.

Later, (about the time my fortysomething self started wearing long pants) the offending second line was changed to:

"Catch a tiger by his toe."

Most kids nowadays have never even heard the original version, which dates back to before the Civil War.

After I read about this, I asked a few of the black people I ran into today for their reaction. None of them had heard the story in the news. I repeated the "Eenie-meenie..." phrase to them, and asked if they found it offensive. To a (wo)man, they looked at me as if I was a brother from another planet.

After I explained why I had asked, they were, hmm, unsupportive, to say the least, of the lawsuit.

One woman, working the counter at a fast-food franchise, (and incidentally, about my age, and so, old enough to be cognizant of the original version of the rhyme) replied, "You are kiddin' me."

I opened the paper and showed her the article.

She shook her head and said:

"Some people will try any kind of way to get some money that don't belong to them."

Couldn't have said it better my own damn self.

UPDATE - 2004-01-23: In a burst of common sense I've come to think of as rare in our increasingly litiginous society, a jury found for the defendants, that is, the airline. The full story is here, but in case it falls off into the you-gotta-pay to read archives of what we residents of the Houston area call The Comical, here's a snippet or two...

...by the toe." They testified at the two-day trial that they were embarrassed, humiliated and frustrated. Fuller said she suffered a small seizure on the flight home, which said was triggered by the remark. Later at home, she said she had a grand mal seizure and was bedridden for three days."

Is that hilarous, or what? Who knew that a nursery rhyme had such deadly power? I cannot help but think of the old TV Show "Sanford & Son," when old Fred would fake heart attacks to try and get his way. Life imitates Art. I wonder if Fuller used to watch the show. "Scott A. Wissel, appointed to represent the women after they filed a handwritten complaint, declined comment about the verdict. In his closing argument he said Cundiff's use of the rhyme was tantamount to a racial slur."

Does this shyste..., err, ambulance chas, err, lawyer's name strike you as oddly fitting? If there is a god, please tell me Scott pronounces it to rhyme with "easel."

Finally, Fuller protests... "It's a shame that the jury pool we had to draw from did not have one black and not one minority," she said." Well, there were seven men on the jury, but wait, oh yes, even though that men are in fact a minority, they don't count as such in Bizarro PC world.

But if what you really meant, Ms. Fuller, was that you shoulda had some more (presumably more sympathetic to your whack-ass attempt to extort money from a big company) blacks on the jury, I have a few points.

First, your attorney had every chance to get some blacks on the jury during the voir dire phase of the trial. But I'm guessing that any lawyer capital S Stoopid enough to take this case on a contingency basis is maybe not the star of the local bar, so to speak.

Second, who the fuck is the racist here? The jury would have had to be composed of morons for you to wins this case. Seems you don't have a very high opinion of your ethnic group.

Finally, the poor, put upon, downtrodden, held down by the White Man, Ms. Fuller, who was, by the way, going to Las Vegas on vacation, (Ain't it great that we live in a country when even the oppressed can afford such a lifestyle?), laments... "Something has to be done to make sure there is justice in America for blacks." Hon, you just got a heapin' helpin' :-).

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