No movement on immigration reform

It looks like another session of Congress will end Saturday without any substantial movement on immigration reform. The House last week passed a bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security to construct 700 miles of border fencing in Texas and Arizona by 2008. That would be a colossal waste of money. Fortunately, the Senate won't go along with it. But it also won't approve anything that will help stop illegal immigration, despite the clamor by the American public to do so.
If Congress was serious about staunching the flow across the Mexican border it would deny taxpayer-supported services - education, health care, welfare, etc. - to anyone who could not prove they were in this country legally and impose stiff penalties on employers who hired illegal immigrants. Thanks to Congress' continued inaction, more than 1 million illegal immigrants will continue to pour over the border each year. When will it end?

Avoid the lines, eat a cockroach

Great Adventure's promotion department has given new meaning to the term "bad taste - literally.

In keeping with the Jackson amusement park's FrightFest theme, leading up to Halloween, it is offering patrons a spot at the front of the line for the most popular rides if they swallow a live cockroach.

If you are grossed out, avoid this link: http://www.sixflags.com/parks/greatadventure/ParkPress/CockroachFF06.html. If you aren't, it offers some lip-smacking recipes, including one for a Crispy Cajun Cockroach. It also should offer a list of psychiatrists for people who take Great Adventure up on its offer - and for the people in the promotion department who concocted the idea.

Falling gas prices: Politics at work?

Gasoline prices continue to fall. They have dipped to $2.30 a gallon for unleaded - 50 cents less than a month ago. In the southern part of the state, they are as low as $1.87, according to the newjerseygasprices Web site. http://newjerseygasprices.com/ The price is down to $2.16 at the Costco in Seaview Mall in Ocean.
The conspiracy theorists say Bush and Cheney have managed to get their oil friends to manipulate prices in time for the congressional elections. Do you buy that? I don't. Last year, after prices topped out at $3.23 a gallon post-Katrina, they fell below $2 by November, then shot back up to about $3 by this July.
Does anyone have any theories as to why gasoline prices are so much cheaper in south Jersey these days?

No sympathy for McGreevey

I made a point of catching Gov. McGreevey on Oprah yesterday. The question that kept coming to mind while I was watching was how could he do this to his wife, his ex-wife and his two young daughters?

How could he humiliate them by going public with the sordid details of his perverted sex life? How could Dina Matos McGreevey ever forgive him for marrying her when he knew he was gay or for having sex with his gay lover while she was in a hospital bed after having given birth to a baby daughter? How could McGreevey compound his sins by exposing them to the world?

McGreevey said his mother and father, his ex-wife and his 13-year-old daughter have been fully accepting of his decision to go public with his story. Dina, he says, "is still in transition."
Let's see how accepting his daughters are years down the road, when they are better able to understand what a complete lowlife he was.

Anthrax attacks, five years later

The fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks received well-deserved saturation coverage. But little attention has been paid to the fifth anniversary of the anthrax scare. The first wave of anthrax letters was mailed out five years ago yesterday, to the newsrooms of NBC, ABC, CBS and the New York Post in New York City, and to the National Inquirer in Boca Raton, Fla.

I recall that period vividly, more so than 9/11, when I was vacationing in Australia. I only learned of the 9/11 attacks when the waitress at the resort in Port Douglas where my wife and I were staying - who knew we were Americans - greeted us at breakfast by saying, "I'm so sorry." We had no idea what she was talking about. It was shocking, almost surreal. But it wasn't the same as being there.

It wasn't long after I returned to the U.S., and my job as a national editor at The Associated Press in New York City, that the anthrax scare surfaced. Initially, most people believed Muslim terrorists were behind it. The anxiety in the streets of New York City was palpable. I was pretty well convinced we were doomed - a view that was reinforced by reading New York Times' reporter Judith Miller's book on biological weapons, "Germs," which I knocked off in two days.

At the time, AP was located at 50 Rockefeller Plaza, one building over from NBC News at 30 Rock, where one of the anthrax letters was sent to then-news anchor Tom Brokaw. Security was tightened at AP, the building was searched for anthrax spores and we were assured, amid concerns about common ventilation systems and the adequacy of mailroom protocols, that there was no reason to be concerned. We quietly went about our work, with much of what we moved over the AP wire for the next five or six weeks relating to anthrax.

Today, the anthrax investigation is on the verge of being a cold case. Authorities have interviewed 8,000 people on four continents and issued more than 5,000 subpoenas. But they still don't know where the anthrax was produced or who produced it. For many people, the memories of that terrifying period have faded. For me, they have not. And I am convinced that the next successful terrorist attack on the United States will be biological.

Head south for cheap gasoline

Gasoline prices have dropped dramatically over the past few weeks, reaching a 5-month low. The average statewide is $2.47 for regular unleaded, according to the newjerseygasprices.com Web site, http://newjerseygasprices.com. But in deep South Jersey - Millville, Vineland, Turnersville - it can be had for as little as $2.11. That's $1.08 cents a gallon less than two gas stations in Summit, which always seem to be the highest in the state, and 78 cents less than the Exxon in Rumson at the corner of West River Road and Allen Street.
The moral of the story: Shop around.

The case for hardened dry casks

Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts held a press conference Thursday calling for the 32 nuclear plants that store excessive amounts of spent nuclear fuel in vulnerable elevated pools - one of which is Oyster Creek - to off-load it into hardened dry-storage casks. Doing so would dramatically reduce the risk of terrorist attack. Five members of Congress were present at the news conference, representing three states - New York, Nevada and Massachusetts. It's unfortunate no one was there from New Jersey.
The press conference included a Power Point presentation spelling out the case for taking action. View it here: http://www.nukebusters.org/uploads/media/Spent_Fuel_Presentation.pps

Nurses strike at Robert Wood Johnson

If the horror stories the striking nurses at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick are telling about their inadequate health insurance coverage are true, the nurses would seem to have a legitimate gripe. Health care workers, of all people, should be provided with health insurance that is at least as good as the patients they are caring for.
At the same time, it's hard to feel too sorry for nurses who are paid as well as those at Robert Wood Johnson. The starting salary there is $60,000 a year; the average salary, depending on which figure you believe, is either $78,000 (according to the union) or $90,000 (says hospital management). Neither is too shabby.
Given the huge sums spent on the salaries of the 1,300 nurses, you would think management would be able to offer reasonable health benefits. And given the salaries the nurses are making, they should be willing to make concessions in other areas - including salaries - to come up with a health plan they find acceptable.
It's amazing they haven't been able to find common ground by now, two weeks into the strike.

Shangri-Las concert no Shangri-La

I'm almost embarrassed to admit it, but I went to a concert at Ocean Grove Auditorium Saturday night to see the Shangri-Las, who, for some odd reason, were on the card with three Doo-Wop groups, the Platters, the Drifters and the Coasters.
During my adolescence, the Shangri-Las were my favorite girls' group. I had a mad crush on the lead singer, Mary Weiss. Two of the group members died long ago, and Weiss, who is now an interior decorator in Manhattan, hasn't performed for 20 years. Unfortunately, I didn't find that out until long after I bought my tickets.
The group that performed Saturday night was entertaining. They looked like the Shangri-Las, they dressed like the Shangri-Las (in leather) and they sang like the Shangri-Las. Trouble is, they only sang two Shangri-Las' songs - ''Leader of the Pack'' and ''Remember (Walking in the Sand).'' The rest of the abbreviated set included songs by the Ronettes, Shirelles and Little Eva. I think I was the only person in the audience who felt cheated. Most people were there to see the Platters and the Drifters, who also were essentially cover bands. Most of the group's members were young enough to be the grandchildren of the originals.
Nonetheless, all in all, it was a good show - worth the 20 bucks for the cheap seats.