By Steve Fey

Okay, I didn’t really have anything to do with the week. I mean, it wasn’t a week "by Steve Fey." I meant that I wrote this, not the week. I mean, come on, I’ve never made a week in all the weeks of my life. Honest. Anyway,

This has been one heck of a week in the news. Congress can’t get it together to do anything about the largest deficit in history, or about a perceived failure of Medicare and later Social Security, but Congress has been able, in the past week or so, to address the two issues of greatest concern to all us all: Baseball and Catholic Church doctrine being imposed by law.

Baseball? Yes, there is actually a possibility that players in the sacred game of baseball have been taking performance enhancing drugs! This shocking revelation, in the face of the fact that thirty times more batters are hitting balls out of Cleveland Stadium, from Detroit, has given our representatives something to do to take their minds off of the fact that they’re steering the American economy down one steep toilet drain. And boy, what a show! Barry Bonds weeping; Mark MacGuire taking the fifth. It was almost like Enron, but without the earthshaking financial consequences for small investors. How do they do it? Congress, my hat’s off to you all for such first-rate entertainment.

Then there’s a poor woman in Florida, or rather her poor relatives, and I mean all of them. Her parents don’t want to lose their daughter, and who can blame them? I try to think of something worse and I simply can’t. Her husband says she never wanted to be kept alive by artificial means. The Pope says that suffering is a good thing. Wow. What a trio, huh? The case has been going through the Florida court system for a decade, but none of the decisions has been favorable to the parents, or to the Pope. So, Congress, ever eager to please small foreign principalities, intervened, but again it didn’t work. Here’s a hint to Congress in case this ever comes up again:

The courts don’t have to do what you tell them, okay? That’s called separation of powers. It’s a constitutional thing, so maybe you wouldn’t understand. But, my advice is that, if it comes up again, don’t say in a press conference that the courts "don’t understand that we were telling them to rule . . ." in any way. You see, the courts have this silly idea that they have the same power as you guys, and they’re not going to take kindly to you trying to change that. Okay? Just a little advice from an observer here.

That said, it’s been hugely entertaining to watch and again, Congress, thanks so much for the show! You’ve been great, really.

Hey, have your people call my people. We’ll do lunch!

Ciao!