OBVIOUSLY BILL BENNETT THOUGHT THIS UP

You miss so much these days, even when you take just one day off (I was gonna blog yesterday, but I got caught up).

Pentagon cooks up idea of starting a "terrorism futures market", amounting essentially to gambling on events in the Middle East . . . Democratic Senators alert the world to the idea . . . Pentagon says, "oh, nevermind!"

"My understanding is it's going to be terminated," Wolfowitz told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He added that while the Defense Department was supposed to be imaginative, "it sounds like maybe they got too imaginative" with the online futures market plan.

When I saw the headline yesterday morning as I strolled by the newspaper stands across the street from Strada, I was struck with dual thoughts of "how cute" and "how callous". That is to say, on one hand, "this is creative, outside-the-box thinking from Rip Van Rummy's people", but on the other hand, "can't they stick to more traditional means of making money off death and destruction? you know, like no-bid contracts and campaign contributions by tobacco companies?"

Certainly, the idea of gambling on what religious fundamentalists do isn't without its perverse charm. But imagine if a member of the SF Fog had struck up a conversation with someone who had "hit the jackpot" on that fateful September morning a couple of years ago.

Of course, perhaps the Pentagon was planning to shift resources into this program, and away from the air marshal program... Joshua has more.