Senators' slumber party redefines 'playing fair'

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

"We'll never finish this game," said an exasperated Harry Reid. "I say we quit now."

"No way!" exclaimed Johnny Kyl. "Our position is just starting to get better."

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"I'm with Harry," said Dicky Durbin.

"Me too," chimed Jacky Reed.

"And me," said Carl Levin.

"Well, I'm not," said Trent Lott.

"Me either," said Jimmy Bunning. "Besides, you agreed we wouldn't stop the game unless five of us agreed. You only have four."

"I'm sleepy, it's my house and I say we quit now," shouted Harry.

"What's the point of a sleepover if you go to sleep?" asked Johnny. "Your mom said we could stay up as long as we want."

"But she didn't roll out all these sleeping bags for us to say awake all night," said Carl. "We should sleep now. Let's take a vote."

"No vote on sleeping unless five of us agree to stop the game," said Trent.

"Mom!" yelled Harry.

"What is it dear," his mother answered from the door of the family room.

"Jimmy and Trent and Johnny won't agree to go to sleep unless we finish the game first," he said.

"Didn't you set up rules before you started?" she asked.

"We did," said Dicky, pouting, "but why do we have to use them when a majority of us want to quit?"

"Now, dears," said Harry's mom, addressing the four who wanted to quit, " didn't you boys know this is how the vote would come out before you asked for it?"

Four tousled heads nodded reluctantly.

"Then you'll just have to live with that," she said, leaving the room.

When he was sure his mother was out of earshot, Harry said, "OK, we won't go to sleep, but we won't finish the game, either. It's my game, and I'm putting it away."

"Yeah!" cheered Carl and Jacky and Dicky.

"Boo!" jeered Jimmy and Trent and Johnny.

Any nobody got to Candyland that night.

Yes, that was Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-California, carrying the ball last week in the drive to free U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. After she presided over a hearing on the case, Feinstein had her office announce she would ask President Bush to commute the sentences of the two, who are serving 11 and 12-year terms for shooting a fleeing drug smuggler and conspiring to cover up the matter.

Feinstein asked, logically, if they should have been charged with using firearms in the commission of a crime when no underlying crime was involved. Further, she said she would consider seeking an amendment to the firearms statute.

Perhaps the law should be amended to instruct border patrol agents to shoot to kill when dealing with drug smugglers. It would eliminate smuggling – and prosecutions based on the testimony of immunized smugglers.

Yours truly received a curious packet in the mail from the National Abortion Rights Action League or NARAL. It asked me to petition my government to protect "a woman's right to choose" abortion.

On the day this arrived, I noticed the following digest item in our daily newspaper: "New Delhi – Indian women would be required to register their pregnancies and seek government permission for abortions under a proposal intended to curb abortions of female fetuses in a country were boys are traditionally preferred."

One assumes NARAL soon will be drafting a petition supporting Indian women's right to choose selectively to abort baby girls. I look forward to the league's next missive in this regard.

The NARAL packet also declared that "anti-choice" lawmakers had "replaced honest, medically accurate sex education with misleading and disproven 'abstinence only' programs. ..." One must wonder, however, if these "disproven" programs might be responsible for the report this month that fewer teens are engaging in sex and that the teen birth rate "has hit a record low." But that might confuse the issue with inconvenient facts.

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