WITH JOHN MERLA, IT'S ONE GOOFY THING AFTER ANOTHER

'Merla Blames Outburst on Mother Insult, Split Pants." Unless you get
the Indepen-dent, the Greater Media newspaper that covers the Monmouth
County Bayshore towns that include Keyport, you likely would have
missed that headline in last week's edition of the paper.

But for those of you who haven't made his acquaintance, Keyport Mayor
John Merla is one of the politicians caught up in Operation Bid Rig by
the U.S. Attorney's Office, and he is currently facing an 18-page,
eight-count federal indictment for corruption that could cost him a
maximum of $2 million in fines and 120 years in prison upon conviction.

Currently free on $50,000 bail, he is scheduled to go to trial this
October, just about the time his campaign for another term as mayor
(as an independent, since he quit the Republican Party in a snit) will
be coming to a close.

In the meantime, Merla's behavior seems to be spinning out of
control.

Last month, during a hearing by the Borough Council to consider a
liquor license issue regarding another member of the Merla family at
the Uptown Bar & Grille, Keyport Detective Lt. Thomas Mitchell was
giving testimony in regard to the matter, and somehow the nature of
that testimony set Merla off (at the time, the mayor was sitting in
the audience and not even taking an official part in the hearing).

After Mitchell finished testifying that several investigations into
the Uptown Bar & Grille might be sufficient cause not to extend the
establishment's liquor license, Merla began heckling Mitchell, saying,
among other things, "You ain't got nothing!" "Go ahead and laugh!" and
for some inexplicable reason, "Cinco de Mayo!"

The weird outburst was over the top, even for Merla, and has become a
hot topic of conversation in the community - so hot that on May 2,
Merla had to offer some explanation for his zany behavior. The reason
he went off the deep end, he told a standing-room-only crowd, was
because he thought he saw a smirk on Mitchell's face that he
interpreted as an insult to his mother. "No one insults my mother," he
said. And criticized for using an expletive while haranguing Mitchell,
Merla said he wasn't cussing at the cop, he was cussing because he
just realized he had accidentally split his pants.

"I stood up and ripped my pants and said, 'Oh sh-,' " Merla
said.

Thus, the bizarre headline in the Independent, and the even stranger
story it accompanied. Nobody believed Merla of course, since his
explanation is the political equivalent of blaming that bad smell on
the dog - but you've got to give him points for creativity.

He's certainly gonna need that kind of creativity when he has to
explain himself at his corruption trial this October. I just hope U.S.
Attorney Christopher J. Christie, the judge and the jury all have a
wacky sense of humor.

As the child of parents who both died painful deaths from lung cancer
and suffered the excruciating effects of harsh chemotherapy, I was
happy to read in a story by The Associated Press last week that next
month state lawmakers will consider a bill to legalize marijuana for
people with debilitating medical conditions. Those conditions would
include cancer, chronic pain, severe nausea, seizures, glaucoma, HIV
and AIDS, and persistent muscle spasms.

The bill, proposed by Sen. Nicholas Scutari, will come up for
discussion be-fore a Senate health panel June 8 and, if passed, would
make New Jersey the 12th state to legalize marijuana for medicinal
use, even though the federal government does not recognize those laws.
And although the measure is opposed by the usual gang who say it's a
smoke screen for generalized legalization, the notion is supported by
many experts, including the National Academy of Sciences, which says
pot can help people suffering chemotherapy-induced nausea and AIDS
wasting.

If you have supported a loved one with terminal cancer through
chemotherapy, you well know the treatment commonly reduces the
patient's appetite to the point of staggering weight loss (my father
weighed 115 pounds when he died, my mother 90). You know that the
currently available and legalized form of medical marijuana (an
adulterated version of THC that seeks to stimulate the munchies) does
not work.

And you know, from experience, that it is nonsensical, and even cruel,
to deny terminal patients anything that might make their lives easier,
might make them more comfortable in their last months.

The argument that allowing those patients access to marijuana might
lead them to use harder drugs is specious to the point of insanity,
since most of those patients are already receiving massive doses of
addictive medication to alleviate pain. To suggest that a patient
already receiving huge doses of morphine, OxyContin, oxycodone, Xanax
or the like to manage pain will be threatened by a few tokes of
marijuana to stimulate appetite is ludicrous.

Carefully supervised, marijuana could be another important tool in the
physician's box, and a meaningful comfort to patients suffering
certain diseases. And if enough states legalize it for those humane
uses, the federal government will eventually have to come around.
That's why I support passage of this bill in New Jersey. I just wish
marijuana had been more readily available to my mom and dad.

According to a Reuters news service story last week, a new study from
the National Education Association shows half of new teachers in the
U.S. are likely to quit within the first five years because of working
conditions and low salaries. The study raises a couple of questions:

First, why didn't those teachers go to work in a community like
Middletown, Monmouth County, where many teacher salaries can make your
eyeballs actually bug out of the sockets? And second, how many young
teachers simply left the profession in disgust after being denied
tenure after three years on the job? Guess we'll have to wait for the
next study to find out.