Candidates suffer many reversals

News Item: John McCain reverses positions on torture, tax cuts, rightwing evangelicals, immigration, offshore drilling. . . .

News Item: Barack Obama reverses positions on campaign financing, free trade, gun control, the death penalty, telecom immunity. . . .

One request for both candidates:

In the interest of public safety, could you please make a beeping sound when you back up?

News Item: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his majority opinion upholding 14 of the 27 words of the Second Amendment, defends the ownership of handguns because they “can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.”

Too few jurists until now have defended our right to talk on the phone while shooting people.

News Item: Michael Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, reassures public that the chances of the new European Large Hadron collider creating a black hole or quantum vacuum collapse that would destroy Earth are only 1 in 50 million.

Or isn’t this another way of saying it could happen?

QT Trickle-On Economics Update:

The CEO of American Axle, which is cutting half its American work force to increase profits, was given an $8.5 million bonus, which, together with his $5.5 million regular compensation, amounts to a third of the company’s profits from last year.

Jim Blomquist, a Chicago reader, regarding QT’s search for words to adequately describe Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens of the Swift Boat Veterans for Peace reneging on his offer of $1 million to anyone who could disprove any of the group’s claims, writes:

“It seems to me the perfect phrase to describe this would be ‘cut and run.’ ”

Or. . . .

Former Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin Madden regarding John Mc-Cain’s possible choices for vice president:

“John McCain has a lot of people on his short list.”

Add short lists to the list of things that aren’t what they used to be.

QT News Presented Without Comment:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is a cosponsor of the Marriage Protection Amendment.

The Not Me Decade, in Which Everybody Else Is Responsible for Everything, Continues:

A worker who was injured when he fell from a stepladder in Romsey, England, sued his employer because the employer had not offered extensive enough training on how to climb a stepladder.

News Item: Muslims on British trains object to police dogs sniffing near them and other passengers for explosives, saying it is insensitive to their religious beliefs.

Isn’t it a measure of ecumenical progress to see Muslims capable of chutzpah?

M.P., a Chicago reader, regarding a news item about a Virginia man charged with assault using a fish, says the man should be thankful that Homeland Security didn’t go after him as anemone combatant.

In other news, a man in Ypsilanti, Mich., has been accused of assault with a frozen chicken. . . .

QT What Passes for Miracles These Days Update:

An image of Jesus has been found in a stain on an umbrella in Akron, Ohio.

QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language (cont’d):

Alice Copeland, a Willowbrook reader, writes:

“When did it become permissible to pronounce ‘route’ to rhyme with ‘hoot’? I rarely hear this word pronounced the way I learned it.”

Now that you mention it, you will find, according to one university study, that: