Only then did the monkey under his hat grow bold enough to come out, perch on his ponytail, and ask his fellow passengers for something to eat. (The marmoset eats bugs and fruit and "normally lives in forests," the always useful Associated Press informs us. I would have gotten that question right if they'd given me a little more time.)

LaGuardia International Airport police met the marmoset and his pet Peruvian upon their arrival in New York. Though federal officials seem to have no interest in asking half a million illegal aliens here in Nevada whether they've "had their shots," odds are that's what the marmoset and his coyote will go down for.

If they'd been smart, the pair of them would have simply gotten in line at the nearest U.S. post office to send home a "remittance" through that new "Dinero Seguro" program that our Postal Service recently introduced with a $400,000 advertising buy in America's Spanish-language media ("Uncle Sam is Top Spanish Media Buyer," www.marketingymedios.com). When our undocumented Lamont Cranstons do this, it's apparently like pulling on Harry Potter's "cloak of invisibility" as far as the Mister Magoos at Homeland Security are concerned. I wait in line behind these people every Monday at the post office, but ICE says it wouldn't know where to start looking for them.

Congress, finally waking up and sensing voters seem to care about seeing some laws enforced that actually protect us (as opposed to the kind that merely hold us upside down and shake well), is threatening to enact laws to bust anyone who encourages invading aliens to come here and take American jobs from American workers.

Go back and read it again. Four hundred thousand dollars extorted from you and me by an official government monopoly and expended to promote illegals taking $20 billion per year (soon to be $25 billion), that would otherwise be spent in American retail stores, and shipping it to Mexico.

And it wasn't even a clever trap. When they come in to use this service, no one busts them.

When the board of governors of the Postal Service themselves get busted as accessories under those new laws, will the cops do a perp walk? Will the postal chiefs try to pull their suit jackets up over their heads? Do they get to frank their own mail from prison?

-- -- --

Speaking of our always insightful friends at The Associated Press, I see where a good-sized story out of Boise, Idaho, played in the Aug. 2 newspapers about "four Western governors declaring war on cheatgrass, a nonnative weed grass they blame for filling the West's open spaces with flammable fuels feeding this summer's massive wildfires."

Well, that it does. Now, given the relative dearth of big buffalo and antelope herds around these parts of late, it's too bad there's no other known way to get some kind of good-sized creatures out on those scrub lands to graze down that plant life and trample the grass seeds into the soil real good -- given that that's what the wild herds used to do, creating an ecosystem in which that's just what our native grasses need to come back strong.

Oh. Wait a minute. Down in the last paragraph -- that's right, in the final paragraph of that 15-paragraph story, come to learn Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter "and U.S. Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo last week also chastised environmental groups such as the Hailey, Idaho-based Western Watersheds Project for filing (and winning) lawsuits in U.S. District Court that reduced cattle grazing. That increased dry fuels, adding to the fires, the Idaho Republicans contend."

"Contend"? The Idaho delegates "contend" that taking cattle off the land reduced grazing, thus allowing dry grasses to build up and feed this summer's wildfires?

What the heck is the alternative theory? That the gray aliens used to graze these lands at night, but this summer they've been stuck inside the hollow earth due to all the polar ice caps melting?

-- -- --

Finally, let's check in and see how that triumph of federal common sense, the "war on drugs," is faring.

"We're going to focus less on a hard number and more on a whole-person approach," explains Jeffrey Berkin, deputy assistant director of the FBI's security division. "The new policy just allows us a little more flexibility than the old policy."

What the Man in Black was explaining to The Washington Post last Tuesday was the FBI's new hiring policy as it relates to applicant drug use.

Since the FBI shows no sign of being dominated either by powderheads or by people who grew up in isolated rural church communities, I believe I'll go out on a limb here and say their previous hiring policy was that applicants who wanted to become FBI flatfoots were expected to lie and say they'd tried marijuana no more than 15 times in their lives, and other types of illegal drugs no more than five times. Now they'll just have to swear they haven't smoked pot in three years or tried any other kinds of drugs in a decade.

At which point this new crop of hypocrite former stoners will proceed to help enforce Uncle Sam's "zero tolerance" drug policy, throwing tens of thousands of non-violent offenders into federal pens for most of the rest of their lives.

Meantime, the U.S. government claims we have conquered and now control the nation of Afghanistan, where our policy is to forbid the people to grow their traditional cash crop, the opium poppy.

As a result of which, The AP reports, this year's Afghan poppy crop is ... the largest in history, exceeding a 407,000-acre 2006 crop that already provided 92 percent of the world's commercial opium.

We try to eradicate the most lucrative crops in Latin America -- coca and marijuana -- and pretty much the only cash crops in Afghanistan -- poppies and hashish. We fail utterly. And then we wonder why these people a) hate us, b) go communist, and c) think we're clowns.

The opiates have legitimate medical uses. The plant is one of God's great gifts to man, and is in high demand everywhere. The only reason the trade is dominated by criminals is that we enforce a system in which no one but criminals are allowed to take part in the trade.

Don't eradicate the opium. Outbid the Taliban for it. Put them out of business. Buy it, stockpile it, corner the market, sell it on streetcorners in Baghdad to calm those people down, earn the U.S. taxpayer some return on all this loot you've been frittering away over there.

Idiots.

-- -- --

I'll be taking a little time off during the next seven weeks -- something I try to do every 15 years or so whether I need it or not -- touring some mining properties from Elko up to Coeur D'Alene.

Off and on, you may see Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens, Walter Williams or Thomas Sowell dropping by this space to feed the livestock, clean the carbine and keep the wolves at bay. Treat them neighborlike.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal and author of the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?vci=51238921.