And another thing …

Several readers have called in recent days to ask why an ordinary Maine citizen planning to protest at the trade conference in Quebec was stopped at the Canadian border because of a decades-old drunken driving conviction while President Bush, who has a similar blot on his record, was allowed entry. We checked into it and learned that the reason has nothing to do with the rich and powerful getting special treatment, but because, as a head of state, Mr. Bush enjoys diplomatic immunity. Now, the numerous times Mr. Bush went to baseball games in Toronto when he was general manager of the Texas Rangers – there’s your rich and powerful angle.

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General Dynamics – the parent company of Bath Iron Works – announced this week it is buying Newport News Shipbuilding of Virginia for $2.1 billion. Before you start calling to ask about the $60 million the Maine Legislature gave the struggling corporation just a couple of years ago, we’ve already checked – it’ll just about cover the sales tax.

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Davenport, Iowa, is getting a lot of criticism these days for being the only city on the upper Mississippi to refuse to protect itself with a permanent flood wall. City leaders say an unsightly wall would damage their $100 million-a-year tourism industry – based largely upon floating casinos – and that the $1.5 billion in federal aid for flood recovery in the last 10 years is a fair price for American taxpayers to pay. And we always thought those national educational assessments showed Iowans were pretty good at math.

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Another Midwestern city in the spotlight is Terre Haute, Ind., site of the federal prison where Timothy McVeigh will be executed next month. Tens of thousands of visitors are expected and already local profiteers are cranking out commemorative T-shirts – a particularly popular one shows a dripping syringe and the words, “Hoosier Hospitality.” Remind us again, exactly why is this region called the Heartland?

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In the latest in a series of decisions that seem from another century, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that a Nevada woman who was demoted and moved from the central office to a small trailer because she complained about a dirty remark her male boss and co-worker made about her was not entitled to federal sexual harassment protection because the dirty remark was a one-time occurrence. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg were going to offer a dissenting opinion, but the other justices told them to quiet down and go make some sandwiches or something.