Joe Bob's Week in Review

Charles Laverne Singleton, who sits on Death Row in Arkansas, will be given an anti-psychotic drug until he's sane enough to execute, thanks to a ruling by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled against the execution of stark raving mad lunatics, Singleton will be gradually brought through stages, from raving to clinically deranged to psychotically depressed to mad simple to mildly crazy to severely confused to merely disoriented. At that point he can be safely disposed of as a man who should have known better.

Several thousand anti-war protesters turned out in Munich as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told France, Germany and Belgium that they were being WIMPS on Iraq and threatening the long-term viability of NATO. Of course, all three countries are well known for never being involved in any wars.

The lower house of the Russian Parliament passed a law banning obscene language. Yes, we said Russian.

Melissa Trinidad spanked her 7-year-old son in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, after he threw a temper tantrum over a toy he wasn't allowed to have. Busybodies reported the woman, resulting in charges of domestic assault and battery and the temporary loss of custody of her child. The next time he does something like that, Trinidad told the court, she promises to read him his Miranda rights and summon a lawyer to represent him before a toy-purchase arbitration panel.

Scientists in Boston successfully grew live teeth in the laboratory, raising the possibility that in the future dentures will be replaced by implants. As news of the discovery spread, legal experts quickly filed lawsuits to exhume the bodies of Morton Downey Jr. and Liberace.

Two scientists estimated that human activities will soon wipe out anywhere from 22 percent to 47 percent of all known plant species in the world. Nigel C.A. Pitman of Duke University and Peter M. Jorgensen of the Missouri Botanical Garden reported in Science magazine that most of the soon-to-be-dead species will be in the tropics, where global warming and the destruction of the rainforest for farming aggravate the loss. In Ecuador, fully 83 percent of all species are threatened. The figures are a little misleading because they include plant species that we could do without, including crabgrass, poison ivy and arugula.

Aubrey and Kathleen McClendon donated $5.5 million for a new dormitory at Duke University, but were not amused at the Gothic-style building's dedication when they discovered two gargoyles in their likenesses staring down at them. They demanded that the gargoyles be removed, and Duke quickly complied. The university will now presumably shelve its plans for a tower featuring a hunchback bell-ringer named after the McClendons.

Edward J.K. Johnston, a lieutenant in the Confederate Navy, was dug up and moved from Ayer, Massachusetts, to Fernandina, Florida, 139 years after he died in captivity at Fort Warren in Boston Harbor. Johnston had been taken captive on June 17, 1863, after his ironclad blockade runner, the CSS Atlanta, was captured off Savannah, Georgia, by the USS Weehawken and USS Nahant. He'll be reburied next to his wife Virginia and two of their five children, after which there will be no more Confederate soldiers or sailors known to be buried in New England. Massachusetts residents are grateful to the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who made the reburial possible, because those Salem witch ghosts are bad enough, but those rebels were HELL.

Kudzu, the creeping plant that has devoured much of the South, has turned up on a Chicago Transit Authority parking lot in Evanston, Illinois -- farthest north it's ever been found. The vine-bearing plant, which kills other plants and trees by blocking sunlight, will be attacked by the Chicago Botanic Garden with exterminating chemicals in an effort to drub the shrub and keep the north safe for gardenias.

Picasso's "Monkey and Her Child," a sculpture of a bronze baboon holding her baby, was auctioned in New York for $6.7 million, a record even for Picasso. The buyer wished to remain anonymous, because simian-loving millionaires can't be too careful.

Amnesty International reported that two-thirds of all minors in the world executed by the death penalty are from the United States. Only two countries have refused to sign the United Nations convention on the rights of children --the U.S. and Somalia -- which bans executing children under the age of 18. In the past decade, the only other countries to execute children are the Congo, Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan and Iran have since abolished the execution of minors. President Bush said the report made him grouchy, and called for the execution of its author.

Scenes from our secure republic:

- Antiwar demonstrators were denied a parade permit to march past the United Nations. Federal Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that the protesters weren't really being discriminated against because the city provided them with a place to hold a demonstration, five blocks north of the U.N., and besides, we don't really pay attention to all that stuff about public streets and sidewalks anymore. J. Edgar Hoover LONGED for these kinds of judges.

(Joe Bob Briggs writes several columns for UPI. Contact him

at joebob@upi.com or through his Web site, joebobbriggs.com. Snail mail: P.O. Box 2002, Dallas, Texas 75221)