Queries on curiosities in the news....

-- In enthusiastically supporting the kooky health-care measure approved by Madame Pelosi's House Democrats, how can the gargantuan AARP - so often cited blandly as an advocate for senior citizens - be anything but a hard-left lobby?

-- Which does contemporary American culture value more - merit or celebrity?

-- Hugo Chavez' Venezuela has become a center for the transshipment of narcotics throughout the hemisphere. Is it any wonder Chavez seeks the re-installation of his disciple Manuel Zelaya, the ousted president of Honduras, to establish Honduras as Central America's leading narco-state?

-- So why does the Obama administration side with Fidel Castro, Chavez, and other Latin chavistas in backing Zelaya - camped out a la Cindy Sheehan in Nicaragua next to the Honduran border? And why do Obama and his Democrats refuse to approve the free trade agreement with Colombia - America's foremost friend south of the border, and an effective fighter of drug lords and chavista guerrillas?

-- DOES Michelle Obama truly need a record-setting 20 - that's twenty - taxpayer-funded staffers, facilitators, and ladies-in-waiting to serve her every social need?

-- And here's one: How is it that her husband could travel abroad apologizing for America, but - in the Gates-Crowley hoo-ha - not summon the moxie to apologize for unpresidential comments about a policeman (Obama said the Cambridge cop "acted stupidly") simply doing his job?

-- Given that higher minimum pay hurts younger and less-skilled workers most, how will the new minimum wage (raised in July to $7.25 per hour) help teenage unemployment - which in June had risen to 24 percent from 15 percent in July, 2007?

-- CHARLES Rangel, head of the House Ways and Means Committee, terms imposing a 5.4 percentage point income tax surcharge "the moral thing to do." But does Congressman Rangel fully understand what morality (let alone legality) is - given that the House Ethics Committee is investigating him on six separate instances of under-reporting his income, hence under-paying his taxes?

-- Is it possible to believe anything the Iranian government says about its nuclear ambitions, now that it has tortured anti-government protesters - some of them to death?

-- If insurance "exchanges" - government and non-profit consortiums - failed during a 1993-2006 California experiment, why is Congress now considering creating them for the nation? Continued...