STRAIGHT DOPE: LOOKOUT FOR BIG NARC

If you thought the Fourth Amendment was endangered by things like drug-
courier profiles, no-knock raids and bogus drug searches, get ready for
something worse.

As reported in the Sept. 22 Orange County Register, local government
has approved a plan to aerially map every property in Orange County.
And we're not talking a few snappy Polaroids either. "The county
government will soon have at its disposal a digital database containing
three-dimensional images of every square foot of Orange County."

Roll over George Orwell, tell Aldous Huxley the news.

The New York firm which will do the mapping promises for a mere
$184,000 to deliver hi-res, 3-D shots of all visible exterior angles on
homes, apartments, businesses, tool sheds and chicken coops.

The reason the authorities are trying on their Big Brother costume is
to keep tighter tabs on their less-than-law-abiding siblings -- like
building-code violators and narco-nudniks -- to determine, as the
Register later editorialized, "whether you're growing hemp alongside
the cherry tomatoes." Don't want any cannabis growing near the
cucumbers.

"The question," as the Register pins it, "is whether we want to create
this sort of society, in which -- in the name of fighting crime, drugs,
terrorism or whatnot -- the authorities are empowered to use every
conceivable technology to monitor individuals, law abiding or
otherwise."

The Streets of San Francisco:

Amazingly enough, if the Fourth Amendment means little-to-nothing in
Orange County, it still means something in San Francisco -- at least
for the moment.

Recall Supervisor Amos Brown's proposed measure that would have allowed
cops to seize the cars of drug suspects, as they do across the bay in
Oakland, even if no criminal charges are ever substantiated. On Monday,
in a rare bout of sensibility, the Board of Supervisors hammered
Brown's proposal, voting to send it to the place where bad ideas go
when they die (probably to prepare for reincarnation in some other
hapless town).

"In this ordinance," said Supervisor Leslie Katz, "the forfeiting of
vehicles runs the risk of forfeiting those rights we must hold dear,
and that is my primary concern. The presumption of innocence is one of
the primary tenets of American jurisprudence."

Brown, of course, was bummed. "We've listened to the people who
conveyed their fear, their trauma and their personal pain," he offered
in justification for the measure, as quoted in the Sept. 26 San
Francisco Examiner.

Apparently, however, he never listened to someone who has had his
property wrongfully filched by authorities and had to sue the city to
get it back even though charges were either not filed or substantiated.


Olympic Stupidity:

Call your office, Ben Johnson. In its rabid attempt to purge the games
of any drug stiffer than aspirin, the International Olympic Committee
decided yesterday to strip Romanian gymnast Andreea Raducan's gold
medal from the women's all-around.

Was the 4-foot-10, 82-pound, 16-year-old pumping herself full of human
growth hormone and 'roids? Uh, no. She was suffering a few sniffles and
her team doctor gave her an over-the-counter cold-and-flu med. After
taking the medicine, she tested positive for pseudoephedrine.

"We feel we have no choice," said IOC Director General Francois
Carrard. "It's tough, but that's what it's all about. In the fight
against doping, we have to be tough and be blind to emotions and
feelings." He should have added, "and brains, too."

Pseudoephedrine does not happen to be a performance-enhancing drug;
it's the same decongestant used in Sudafed. Bet you didn't know that
stuff could improve your softball game, did you?

While the IOC will hear an appeal on the matter today, as it stands
now, one protest poster summed the situation perfectly: "Thrown out for
having a cold."

A Bug's Life:

Believe it or not, bees are the latest buzz in the treatment of
America's drug of choice, booze. As Danny M. Boyd reported Sept. 21 for
the Associated Press, honeybees and humans both share a taste for
alcohol. In fact, bees hit the sauce so hard that, other than perhaps
Boris Yeltsin, they are the only known organisms that drink straight
ethanol -- a form of alcohol typically reserved for things like
cleaning solutions, solvents, rocket fuel and college fraternity
stunts.

Given their naturally dipsomaniacal ways, researchers are attempting to
use bees in alcohol-abuse testing instead of the usual vertebrates,
like rats and monkeys -- tossing, I suppose, a bone to the frothy-mouth
animal-rights protestors marching outside the lab with gigantic posters
of vivisected kitties and Frankenbunnies. While bees are tremendously
helpful in this area, the jury is still, unfortunately, out as to
whether other invertebrates, such as congressional Republicans for
instance, would serve well in other research testing situations.

Thus far, the bees have been given Antabuse, a drug which makes boozers
sick when they tip the elbow. Oklahoma State University comparative
psychologist Charles Abramson, who published his buzzed bees findings
in the August issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research,
says the drug testing has shown positive results.

Interestingly, Boyd's story also touches on the 1888 experiments of
naturalist John Lubbock who noted that drunken ants were often carried
home by fellow nest mates. As my WND compatriot Ron Strom observed,
friends don't let friends drink and crawl. But how about non-nest
mates? A stranger ant would be dropped in a ditch to sleep it off.

Reminds me of the words of King Solomon: "Go to the ant, thou sluggard;
learn her ways and be wise."

Notice how he didn't say, "Go to the IOC. ..."