Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher has told actress and animal-rights activist Pamela Anderson that he's sticking with Colonel Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken. She says KFC et al. subject chickens to cruel and unusual punishment, and so the governor should remove the bronze bust of the colonel in Kentucky's capitol. Fletcher says nope, the colonel "is a Kentucky icon" and the bust will stay. Maybe, in a peace overture, he could ask KFC to send the intellectually endowed Ms. Anderson a party bucket bearing a smiley face.

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The Mexican government's National Human Rights Commission is aiding the cause of out-migration by distributing maps of Arizona - showing highways, water tanks and rescue beacons - to Mexicans seeking to cross the border illegally. The maps are to enhance border-crossers' safety and to curb their death toll (an estimated 500 last year). The commission's explanation makes about as much sense as saying the half-mile drug-trafficking tunnel from a warehouse in Tijuana to an abandoned warehouse in the U.S. west of the Otay Mesa port of entry was actually for expediting the passage of Americans under the border into Mexico.

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Oh, and Saddam Hussein ("Of course I'm not guilty, but I know they want me dead") has declared his preference for the firing squad instead of the noose. Winston Churchill might have disagreed. Recently declassified documents show Churchill recommending the electric chair for Hitler: "Contemplate (that) if Hitler falls into our hands, we shall certainly put him to death. . . . This man is the mainspring of evil. Instrument - electric chair, for gangsters." As Hitler's latter-day rival in gangsterism, Saddam surely does not deserve to choose.