High Street runs right down the middle of Columbus. It has a trendily renaissanced arts district.  It runs past The Ohio State University.  It is the center of a vibrant gay community.  It has some rough stretches.  It has some homey stretches.  It has some “suburb-within-the-city-limits” places.  It’s my favorite street in town, and also out of town.  As US-23, it can take me north to Toledo, and to Ann Arbor where resides that “Team Up North” that as a Buckeye fan and a former Notre Dame student I abhor with double fervor.  It goes up to Flint, even, then hugs Lake Huron before ending at the Mackinac Bridge.  But I use it most to head south, to play the slots at Scioto Downs, or to just take a nice drive down to Portsmouth, on the mighty Ohio, and beyond into Kentucky.  I could take it, eventually, to Jacksonville, FL.

But before you reach Portsmouth, you pass through Piketon, an hour south of where I sit, named for the same Pike as Pike’s Peak. It’s a depressed rural town like 10,000 others in America, with one major advantage: it’s poised for growth thanks to the very latest in uranium enrichment technology and the successful gas centrifuge proof-of-concept plant that is supposed to expand its operations.  That will help, because about 1/3 of Piketon is below the poverty line.

Last week, Piketon became infamous as the site of the murders of 8 members of the Rhoden family across 4 different homesteads. The family members were killed methodically, some in their beds, possibly asleep, even, while 3 infants and toddlers were spared, by a person or persons still unknown.

I don’t know what this is yet. Nobody seems to know.  Today a few marijuana grow sites were linked to the homes, but whether that was some sort of motive, no one can yet say.

What I do know is this: in 1959, the Clutter family was murdered in Holcomb, Kansas under similarly mysterious circumstances. America was shocked, and then was not allowed to forget, as author Truman Capote, by virtue of his glorious writing and his larger-than-life persona turned it into a macabre form of entertainment.

The Rhodens of Piketon are the 21^st Century Clutters, ramped up to 8 killings over 4 sites due to inflation.  The inflation of guns.  The inflation of coldness.  The inflation of a country pathologically loving and hating itself to death.  On the same day this broke, there was another mass shooting in Georgia.  In the last week, since last Monday, 23 people have been killed in mass shootings.  Nearly double that – 44 – have been injured in the same shootings.

Forget “Right to Life.” They’re getting rich selling “Right to Death.”

The Piketon murders are the monster grown from the demon child that Capote midwifed on that Kansas prairie. Why are we arming this ravenous beast?

Y’all, I do not know what is wrong with Paul LePage but, seriously, somebody needs to check him for a brain tumor.

His latest?  We should not raise the minimum wage because … (deep breath) people from Bulgaria and India are hard to  understand.

Maine’s Republican governor says it’s hard to understand workers “from Bulgaria” and workers from India are “the worst ones.”

The governor said Saturday that foreign workers are being used in restaurants after he criticized a referendum proposal to raise Maine’s minimum wage to $12. He says he’s disappointed his alternative proposal to hike the wage to $10 didn’t get traction.

Look, I don’t like being mean so I’ll call this a helpful suggestion:  LePage, the damn last thing you need is to be understood by a waiter in a restaurant.

But, hey, I kinda appreciate what he’s saying.  It’s really hard for me to understand LePage.  I mean, I know he’s talking English and I get that.  I understand all the words he’s saying.  I just don’t think he does.

Thelma has a theory.  “Just look at a map,” she explains. “Maine is way the hell up there.  I mean, the air has gotta be thinner than here, right?”

Maybe.  At least it’s the best explanation I’ve heard.

Good Ole Mitch McConnell.  He’s decided that the last thing Republicans should talk about is Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging Republican delegates to focus on a single politician: Barack Obama.

McConnell focused nearly all of his speech during Saturday’s Kentucky Republican Convention on opposing the outgoing Democratic president. Not mentioned were any of the potential Republican alternatives, who are embroiled in a nasty fight over delegates heading into a possible chaotic national convention this summer.

Well, the way I see it, there’s a loophole in that reasoning.  Can you figure it out?

Look, I can’t blame McConnell.  In fact, Republicans are the last thing I wanna talk about, too.

Okay, there is a woman in Indiana who is convinced that Jesus is inside her uterus.  She has photographic proof.

According to Meyer, she didn’t notice the holy apparition until a friend pointed it out when she showed it off at her baby shower.

“She said, ‘Do you see this, it looks like Jesus,” Meyer recalled.

Meyer said, after blowing up the picture, more details became apparent.

“You can see the hair and his legs crossed and everything,” said Meyer.

Had this woman lived in Texas, her ultrasound would have shown Republican members of the State Legislature inside her uterus, where they have been trying to get for several years now.

It would look something like this one —

Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.

I was present in the courtroom for the Tom DeLay punishment phase of his trial.  The only character witness he had was Dennis Hastert, which seems ironic now, right?

Well, Tom returned the favor and testified as to Hartert being a fine Christian man who prayed alone with Tom and one minister every week and they were intimate.

According to Tom, if you love the Lord, you’re a good man no matter what you do.  Saying that you love the Lord, even when you don’t, counts, too.

DeLay’s crook to crook letter.

Other congressmen also sent letters supportive of Hastert.  They argue that he is old and sick so we should show mercy to him.  Yep, the same guys who voted to impeach Bill Clinton think Dennis Hartert is a good man.

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