This was a week of disasters.  The outstanding event has been the Algerian earthquake which killed close to 2,000 people and injured 8,000. A smaller earthquake occurred in Japan. In Manilla, two ferries collided killing 25, and in another ocean, in Miami, a cruise ship engine-room explosion killed 4. A Turkish airliner crashed killing 25 and a Ukrainian airliner went down. There were no survivors.

Will we ever be safe again? The third "orange alert" of the year was declared this week, while some local governments have cut back on their security measures because budget cuts and past alerts are exhausting their ability to pay for overtime policing.  I-95 between Baltimore and Washington is newly decorated with warning signs over the highway, "Report suspicious terrorist activity." Although hard to imagine what they, or you, can do while traveling at 65 mph, it is comforting to note that we are not called on to report nonsuspicious terrorist activities. Nevertheless you should be alert.  America needs more lerts.

In a media monopoly, the money is real: The FCC continues in its trajectory to remove serious restrictions on media monopolies, proposing among other things to allow newspapers to own 2 or 3 of the top TV stations in their area as long as they don't have more than 45% of the viewing audience. So, two corporations could control -- well, you do the arithmetic. At least there has been some coverage of this, finally, in the mainstream media.

Who's watching the watchers? Meanwhile, back on the farm, the Washington Post reports that FCC officials have taken 2,500 "business" trips, most of which were paid for by the companies they regulate. 330 trips to Las Vegas in the past 8 years...maybe they were meeting up with William Bennett.

Home sweet home: The Sentencing Project reported that this year 625,000 inmates will be released from prison. Most will be denied helping services and most will return to crimnogenic neighborhoods.

Come downtown, quietly: The Baltimore City Council introduced legislation this past week to ban the use of amplifiers for "commercial speech" in the Lexington Market area. With West Site redevelopment in progress, the city hopes to prevent the "noise pollution" chasing customers away from the shopping district.

Go to the suburbs, not so quietly: Meanwhile, the new sound barriers along sections of I-695 -- part of a $55 million renovation project -- have received mixed reviews from nearby residents, some of whom complained that the walls have had no effect on noise, and have wasted taxpayer money.

Nuclear madness: The Senate voted, in keeping with the Shrub administration, to lift the ban on research and development for "smaller" nuclear weapons. The ban was 10 years old. As part of the vote, the Senate authorized the development of the nuclear bunker buster bomb and the accelleration of nuclear tests at the Nevada test sites.

All creatures great and small -- bye-bye: The House, not to be outdone by its Capitol cronies, voted to exempt the Defense (War) Department from laws designed to protect endangered plants and animals. It seems that the goby fish and the California gnatcatcher, among too many others, are harassing the military, keeping them from testing weapons and training killers.

Travel Guide: A Mad Cow has come to Canada and possibly some ground up mad cow has come to the US in dog food.  Christine Todd Whitman has left her job as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, taking a few slight jabs at Shrub for his retrograde environmental policies.  Legal medical marijuana is on its way to Maryland.  And al Qaeda set its sights on, you guessed it, Norway.

This week in history: The first passenger railroad began.  It  traveled between Baltimore and Elliots Mills, MD (1830) and the first telegraph message was sent from Baltimore to Washington(1844). The Sacco & Vanzetti trial began (1921). The US detonated the first thermonuclear bomb in the Marshall Islands (1952). The Trail of Tears ended in Oklahoma with 4000 Cherokees dead (1838).