While the Nation Mourned, Their Trip Continued

Washington Post
While the subject of this story is reasonably relevant, the tone of it is unnecessarily snarky.

The fixation we have on mandatory mourning in this country is exceptionally stupid, and the idea that anyone other than a family member or other close associate needs to cancel a trip involving this amount of planning and coordination by government employees, and also involving this amount of interaction with foreign governments, is ludicrous. If a sitting President dies, that's one thing. The man was 93 years old, for goodness sakes.

I have great respect for President Ford and also mourn his passing, but only in the passive sense.
There is nothing in the world to be gained by me or anyone else changing even a whit of daily routine in observance of it - and the fact that it was turned into a federal holiday is equally ludicrous. If you have a problem with junkets in general, then write about every one that happens and make sure to include the costs as well. But to imply that this one is worse because they didn't instead take a funeral junket is hypocritical and annoying.

Illegal Drug Use Among Teenagers Continues to Fall

Washington Post
I don't understand why there is any difference between abuse of illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin and prescription drugs like OxyContin and Vicodin.

If the Office of National Drug Control Policy truly believes the usual source of those drugs is a parent's medicine cabinet, then we may as well have no such office. Most of those drugs get into users' hands by way of robberies, burglaries, and organized forgery -- all of which are just as serious crimes as any of the smuggling and so forth that brings illegal drugs across our borders from overseas.

Perhaps the fact that the prescription drugs aren't produced by subsistence farmers in faraway countries, and have their own rather well-funded lobby in Washington, has something to do with it?

It's the print version, too, not just the website!

Star News Forums
The ineptitude ends up on paper as well. Either that or the Currents staff is speaking Welsh, Martian or Basque, or some combination thereof.

I was just looking at Thursday's Currents, and found a page head that says [I EVO [MER] and another one that says [TRI] M[RO]. They are complemented by subheads on the pages which say SNTOR, GI RGN HGOG, HDNGI, and my favorite by far: SI GTUYI SAYI DHRNNS.

Something is very strange over there....

Please just kill the polls

Star News Forums
As with the rest of the website, they are haphazard, halfhearted and less than fully literate. There is no "daily" poll - the questions seem to linger for weeks on end, and on the news page the poll has been known to be several months old. There is no reason for a different poll to appear there anyway, just more of the bad management of the site.