New Courthouse? Ha!

The Sun-Sentinel is trying to make idiots of us all. As I write this, the lead story on the newspaper's website is about American Idol. But let's give the newspaper a break. Presidential election, recession, war, Simon Cowell ... the Sentinel had a tough choice for its top story of the day.

There are, however, a few recent local news that I feel compelled to discuss here:

1. Scott Travis informs us of big cuts at Florida Atlantic University that could mean 2,000 students won't get a college education. In another impressive display of news judgment, that story is placed on 4B while a Help Team special with little to no news about the flu makes it to the front page. Hey, why inform people when you can just scare them instead?

2. Scott Wyman wrote about the plan to build a new courthouse yesterday, saying the project was still "alive." What he didn't say was that it was on artificial life support on its death bed. Why? There is no money. We are heading into a recession and there's no way in hell taxpayers are going to volunteer to pay for new digs for our dubious judges when they can't pay for their own homes (or their kids' college tuitions).

2. Sun-Sentinel reporter Linda Trischitta, who is growing on the Pulp, reports on prayers at Deerfield's city hall, quoting Mayor Al Capellini: "This commission needs whatever divine inspiration it can get." True. Capellini should be praying every day that State Attorney Michael Satz doesn't charge his ass with a slew of felonies. Other than that, who needs prayer at commission meetings? Doesn't God have enough problems without being dragged into Broward's pit of petty politics?

4. Take the Michael Mayo ethics test, which for me was a trip down memory lane.

5. Oh yeah, on that note, Keith Wasserstrom was sentenced to 60 days in jail last week. I actually wrote on this blog after his conviction that 60 days would be just about right. Now I think I should have doubled it.

6. We're loving us some basketball Canes this morning. Miami beat Duke last night, proving to us all that we can prevail against evildoers everywhere.