
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 2, 1991                   TAG: 9102040255
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BRIEFLY PUT . . .

EVER NOTICE how much Saddam Hussein resembles Josef Stalin? It's the peg for a story in the Soviet magazine Sobesednik that Stalin's son Jakob - taken prisoner by the Nazis in World War II - escaped and made his way to the Mideast, married a peasant woman and had a son who rose to lead Iraq.

Imaginative, but our tabloids could have done better. Maybe the Soviet publication missed the real story: that the peasant woman was Anastasia, missing daughter of the slain Russian czar, and that Saddam is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, who once was kidnapped by Martians.

TIN-EARED legislators have been breaking into song with disturbing regularity this session.

First, on the House floor, all 100 delegates join a sing-along to try out proposed new words to "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia." (One delegate suggests the House adopt the Kingsmen's "Louie, Louie" as its own official anthem.)

Then, at a Capitol rally in support of U. S. troops, Republican lawmakers lead the singing of "God Bless America." We're all for harmony in the General Assembly, but this is a trend we view with alarm.

THE LEGISLATURE is considering a bill aimed at stopping "junk phone calls" - those annoying sales solicitations that usually come at dinner time. The bill sets up a system under which Virginians could pay a fee to register with the Consumer Affairs Division. The register would inform solicitors that listees don't want to hear from them.

Maybe such a system would be helpful, but the state shouldn't have to establish bureaucracies to deal with all of life's nuisances. Couldn't citizens just say no and hang up?

SALEM POLICE slowed speeders along Bowman Avenue by putting a uniform-clad dummy behind the wheel of a parked patrol car Thursday night. No, he didn't write any tickets. But he didn't have to listen to a lot of lame excuses, either.

by CNB