And The Definitive Answer To "What's That Old Drunk Been Up To Lately"...

Is at long last revealed...

Better Read Than Ted

Yesterday's Boston Globe featured an op-ed by Sen. Ted Kennedy* in which he huffs and puffs about jackbooted government thugs:

"Just this past week there were public reports that a college student in Massachusetts had two government agents show up at his house because he had gone to the library and asked for the official Chinese version of Mao Tse-tung's Communist Manifesto. Following his professor's instructions to use original source material, this young man discovered that he, too, was on the government's watch list.
Think of the chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom when a government agent shows up at your home--after you request a book from the library."

First of all, "The Communist Manifesto" was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1848, not by Mao, who wasn't born until 1893. More important, this story appears to be a hoax. Here's the American Library Association's statement:

Click the headline to be whisked away to the fantasyland otherwise known as Teddyville (as seen through the eyes of Best of the Web) and learn more about "chilling effects".

Although certainly nothing remotely as chilling as poor Mary Jo must have felt after he swam away, leaving her to drown.