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And one more thing ...

Bill Swaim

Daily Press Managing Editor

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There have been a lot of bucks stopping lately, in fact, two in the last month.

First, it was House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) using the common phrase after taking heat over then Rep. Mark Foley's page scandal involving sexually explicit Internet messages sent to a young male page.

"I'm deeply sorry that this has happened. And the bottom line is that we're taking responsibility because ultimately, as someone has said in Washington before, the buck stops here.''

A lot of people in Washington have said it before and of course the clich/ started with 33rd President Harry Truman, who kept a sign with the phrase inscribed on his desk. The media interpreted the sign as Truman accepting responsibility and it’s been the meaning ever since.

The origin of the term actually comes from some card games that use a marker called a buck. When the buck is passed to the next player, the responsibility for dealing is passed. Stopping the buck is to accept responsibility for dealing.

But the buck just didn't stop with Hastert, it also stopped with University of Miami President Donna Shalala last week after the team got into a brawl during a game.

"I want to start by saying that the buck stops here… We have set new standards. That standard being that we will eliminate from our team students that get into fights … That means we have zero tolerance for this kind of behavior."

Is it me or does it seem that this is just a clever way to pass the buck? Or maybe the buck should have stopped long before it got to this point.

It's been said that Hastert was alerted to what was going on long before the cat was let out of the bag. In the case of Shalala, the Miami brawl had been escalating since last year when some players got into fights after the Peach Bowl and earlier this season when players stomped on the Louisville logo at midfield, egging the other players on.

Why wasn't the buck stopped then?

The phrase has almost come to mean: it's too late for me to do anything now, but maybe next time. Or I'm taking a firm stand from now on because I wasn't doing it before. You know you have no idea what to say when you revert to using clich/s.

There's no doubt that what the Miami players did was over the top, but they were just trying to prove that the "U" was still king of the hill. But this incident wasn't just another flash in the pan and created a dicey situation. Shalala has been under the gun ever since, but when the chips were down; she just lived off a wing and a prayer. She's toeing the line and not holding these players feet to the fire.

It's obvious in the Hastert case that loose lips sink ships. It's just too bad he couldn't bite the bullet and take one for the team. But despite being stuck with not enough room to swing a cat, Hastert has rolled with the punches and everything seems to now be hunky dory on Capitol Hill.

Of course he'll just take my message with a grain of salt because he just can't see the writing on the wall.

But hey, that's just my two cents and the weather’s getting cold enough around here to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

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And One More Thing …

Here’s a great story (joke) sent to me by one of our readers:

Teacher Arrested

TEXAS - A public school teacher was arrested today at Bergstrom International Airport as he attempted to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said he believes the man is a member of the notorious Al-gebra movement. He did not identify the man, who has been charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-gebra is a problem for us," Rumsfeld said. "They desire solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like x and y and refer to themselves as unknowns, but we have determined they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval with coordinates in every country. As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are three sides to every triangle."

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would have given us more fingers and toes."

White House aides told reporters they could not recall a more intelligent or profound statement by the president.

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