"So Obama, Pelosi, and Reid are in a row boat, and it springs a leak and starts to sink. Who gets saved? The American people."

Senator Kyl tells a poor joke and gets "a big laugh" at the National Republican Senatorial Committee retreat.

Kyl's joke is...
	... terrible because it envisions the death of real human beings.
	... terrible because it's either old or it sounds like it's old.
	... okay because who cares what dumb verbiage was used to loosen up a crowd.
	... okay because it conveys a core truth that justifies a little sadism.
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It's Julien Duret, the Frenchman, previously eclipsed by the "heroic father."

He was in fact, first to reach the drowning toddler who fell into the East River.

Here's our earlier (contentious) discussion. We argued about whether the father who instinctively jumped in to save the child ought to be called a hero. In that light, consider Duret's remark:

"I don't really think I'm a hero. Anyone would do the same thing.... I was just happy that I was able to help her, and I am just happy that the family has been reunited."

"A man from France jumped into the water..."

I'm sorry, but the man from France is not getting enough attention in this story about the "heroic father" who jumped in the cold East River to save his own daughter.

"If you are a female about 5 feet 8 inches tall, 140 pounds and willing to stick your head in a toilet..."

"... a northern Wisconsin prosecutor wants your help in proving a high-profile homicide case."

[Douglas] Plude, 42, was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide in 2002. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the conviction last year after learning that an expert witness who conducted the first round of toilet tests exaggerated his credentials....

Prosecutors... say he poisoned her with a migraine drug and pushed her face into the toilet to drown her while she vomited.

Plude says his wife was depressed, committed suicide by taking the pills on her own and then drowned. He claims he found his wife slumped over the vomit-filled toilet and tried to perform CPR to keep her alive.

Prosecutors called on expert witness Saami Shaibani to shoot down Plude's story at the first trial.

Shaibani said that, based on his tests involving volunteers he positioned at a toilet, Plude had to be lying about the positions he claimed to have found his wife in. Genell Plude also could not have inhaled toilet water on her own and someone must have forced her head into the water, he testified.

Defense lawyers from across the country have derided the tests and call them an example of unfair expert testimony. One of them, North Carolina lawyer David Rudolf, who clashed with Shaibani in another case, laughed about the tests in an interview last year.

"He had women sticking their heads in toilets!" he said. "That's just not science. How do you peer review that? How do you test his conclusions?"

Is it impossible to drown in a toilet? How would you prove it?