Some days the news is just weird....

Some days the news is just weird - Alice-in-Wonderland weird. Today, for example:

North Korea, who from the assembled evidence (including fragments of the torpedo with North Korean markings on it) apparently fired a homing torpedo at the South Korean warship that blew up and sank in late March, has threatened all-out war if South Korea retaliates in any way. It's the same threat they made in 1987 after they shot down a South Korean airliner, killing all 115 people on board. Perhaps we will retaliate by once again providing them food and fuel - a tactic that has worked so well in the past.

The Senate, that staunch defender of the people's rights, just overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the banking bill that would largely prevent states from writing new laws to protect consumers from questionable financial products even if no federal law exists. It also blocked a proposal to ban banks from making the kind of proprietary trades in high-risk securities that helped fuel the financial crisis. (so what, exactly, IS being reformed in this bank reform bill?)

The UK has discovered that it can't deport two suspected al Qaida operatives, Abid Naseer and Ahmad Faraz Khan, to Pakistan, where they come from. This is because Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights states that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment". The fact that no one thinks these people will be tortured in Pakistan (in fact they will probably be welcomed as heroes) doesn't matter. EU rules prohibit the UK from deporting them.

Some days ........