"Bits & Pieces" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Bits & Pieces

Bits and pieces from this reporter’s notebook.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet.....In Honduras is a gang called the Mara Salvatrucha. Numbering in the tens of thousands, with affiliates ranging across Central America, they are made up of members of Los Angeles gangs who were deported from the U.S. Last week they forced a bus off the road and opened fire on it, killing 28 civilians, including 18 women and six children. They left a note saying it was a demonstration against a plan to bring back capital punishment.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....A Kentucky teenager is suing her school district for defamation, false imprisonment and assault because she wasn’t allowed into her prom last spring because, in violation of the rules, and warned in advance against such behavior, she wore a dress made out of a confederate flag. She said she’d been working on the design for four years. Embedded in the CNN report on the event were four ads for confederate memorabilia.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....In yet another court hearing over the rights of people to marry, a lawyer for the Campaign for California Families claimed homosexuals should not be allowed nuptials because, she said, they can't "procreate and, therefore, insure the existence and survival of our species." What about adoption? And does that mean that marriage couples who don’t have children should have to separate?

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....A group of Hungarian Jews in Miami sued the U.S. government and won. They claimed that in 1945 the U.S. Army seized a train of 24 boxcars filled with up to $200 million worth of art and household goods stolen by the Nazis from the homes of Jews sent to concentration camps. The Army claimed that they couldn’t identify the rightful owners so the goods were "requisitioned by U.S. military officers to furnish homes and offices, sold in army commissaries or kept by military personnel as trinkets." Now they have to figure out how to repay the survivors.

Da-deet-da-deet-deet....Finally, more proof that the smaller the brain, the more the gums flap. In an annual gripe, the California Highway Patrol is despairing that a huge number of people who get cellphones under the tree will dial 9-1-1 to try them out. No, it’s not an emergency; the people who call are just remarkably dense. By the way, the number of calls to the CHP’s Bay Area dispatch center over the past twenty years has risen from nine thousand annually to eight million. Remember when silence was golden?

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.