Detroit Free Press

Getting kicked out of kindergarten isn't easy. A child would have to do something truly awful, right?Not necessarily. A 5-year-old girl last week didn't have to do a thing. Her mother did it for her.Or rather, her mother's job did it. Christina Silvas, a 24-year-old single mom, works as an adult dancer in Sacramento, Calif. She does it for the money.She takes a chunk of that money and pays the $400-a-month tuition for her daughter, Abigail, to attend the Capital Christian School.

Remember that kid in "The Sixth Sense"? He saw dead people? America, based on the election, has become that kid. Only we see enemies. Wherever we look.And they frighten us.Straight people see gays and fear they will turn their boys into sissies and their girls into Ellen DeGeneres.Gay people see straights and fear they want to "change them back" or legislate them out of existence.The religious fear those less faithful will smash the Ten Commandments.The nonreligious fear those more faithful want to shove the Ten Commandments down their throats.

He saw the planes coming and he thought they were ours. He saw them drop torpedoes and he thought they were dummies. He saw the explosions and still he thought, at first, even as the fires rose, that this was some kind of drill, some kind of exercise, and that someone had made a really dumb mistake and was using live ammunition."Then this tremendous explosion blew us across the ship," he recalls. "We were covered in oil and soaking wet. I said to my buddy, 'Oh, boy, somebody's going to catch heck for this.' "

You know White Castle, right? The hamburger place? Sells those good, greasy "sliders," which are really mini-burgers, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand?Does anyone eat just one of those? No. People buy four. Six. Twelve. Whatever. They eat until they're beyond full. In some cases, they eat more than they would if the burgers were large, because it feels as if you're eating less when the portions are shrunk.

I just heard some news that hardly seems fair. President George W. Bush is going to get slammed in a new "documentary" that is little more than a propaganda film.Apparently, this documentary takes a one-sided view of his National Guard service and his later years as a party boy. There are "interviews" -- if you can call them that -- with angry National Guardsmen who never saw him show up for duty. There are "interviews" with people who claim they drank and did cocaine with him.

We tried. We truly did. As is tradition at this newspaper, before certain championship series, we host a friendly debate with a journalist from the competing city.So, for these Stanley Cup finals between the Red Wings and the Hurricanes, we wanted to joust with a writer from Raleigh, N.C.Alas, we could not find one. Not a single columnist. Not a single beat writer. No one was available in the entire state of North Carolina. Perhaps they were too busy studying the Tar Heels' practice schedule.