SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

WHY ARE WE STILL HERE? – FROM THE INDEPENDENT:  Our universe shouldn't exist, scientists say.  The most elite scientists in the world are still struggling to find why exactly our universe didn't destroy itself as soon as it came into existence. That's what science says should have happened – but it clearly hasn't, since you're here reading this, as far as we know.  At the beginning of the universe, according to the standard model, there were equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. The trouble with that is that they would each have annihilated each other, leaving none of the matter that surrounds us today.  But if our universe didn't exist, we wouldn't have CNN.  Hmm.  Okay, blow it up.

WILL WE EVER LEARN? – FROM THE WASHINGTON TIMES:  The illegal immigrant whose case turned Massachusetts into a “sanctuary” state is behind bars yet again.  Police say he committed a stunning daylight robbery by taking a wheelchair-bound woman, slapping her and stealing the $2,000 she had just carried out of the bank.  Sreynuon Lunn had been free on the streets of Boston because his home country won’t take him back, leaving immigration officers no choice but to release him under a 2001 U.S. Supreme Court ruling.  His case gained headlines over the summer when the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that state and local authorities could no longer legally hold immigrants for pickup by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  Now ICE is trying to decide whether to try again to pick up and deport Lunn, even as he faces local charges from the latest robbery.  I always thought that the federal government controlled immigration policy.  Maybe I'm just old-school. 

POISONOUS ATMOSPHERE – FROM AOL:  A principal in Massachusetts has issued an apology after a mock tombstone for President Trump was displayed at a school Halloween event. “Our school, and this includes school events sponsored by related groups, is not the place for politics,“ Dr. Telena Imel wrote in a letter sent to the parents of students at West Parish Elementary. "In planning future events, it will be made clear to organizers that school is not the place to engage in or to display political agendas or opinions.”  We are getting more and more reports of anti-Trump hatred that is so great that it spills over into suggestions that something awful should happen to the president. 

October 23,  2017