A lighthearted look at news of the day:

Apparently, Mexico has a new strategy for getting tourists to stay a few extra days. It’s unclear, however, how people are supposed to spend money while they’re locked in jail on false drug charges.
❑ ❑ ❑
Mexican federales arrested 42-year-old Yanira Maldonado, a mother of seven from the Phoenix area, saying she had marijuana under her seat on a bus. Well of course, it was obvious. If you’re a drug peddler, you know the last place they ever look is under your bus seat.
❑ ❑ ❑

A lighthearted look at issues of the day:

This is graduation season, or the time when years of hard work earns you the reward of sitting in a long, boring meeting and balancing a piece of cardboard on your head.
❑ ❑ ❑
Congratulations! Here’s your diploma. Your first student loan payment is due Friday.
❑ ❑ ❑
Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS division that apparently didn’t like conservative groups, invoked the Fifth Amendment last week to avoid testifying about this before Congress. Thousands of audited taxpayers now have a new strategy.
❑ ❑ ❑
Members of Congress were clearly upset at Lerner’s decision not to testify. For one thing, politicians can’t imagine someone actually not wanting to speak when a camera is present.
❑ ❑ ❑
Lerner told Congress she had done nothing wrong, just before she said she wasn’t going to say anything more. In retrospect, we all would have been better off if Bill Clinton had used this strategy in the Monica Lewinsky matter.
❑ ❑ ❑
Not long after this, the IRS released a statement saying, “We have no knowledge of an employee named Lois Lerner.”
❑ ❑ ❑
Two would-be criminals in Fresno got caught last week because one of them accidentally “pocket dialed” 911 while breaking into a car. Isn’t that always how it goes? You can station lookouts on all sides but forget about who is listening in your pants.
❑ ❑ ❑
Some emergency dispatch centers say about one-third of the calls they field are from phones accidentally dialed from within pockets. It’s a good thing first responders are there to save our rear ends.
❑ ❑ ❑
Authorities rank “pocket dialing” criminals right up there with the ones who brag about their exploits on Facebook or Twitter. It’s enough to make you lose faith in the rising generation of thugs.
❑ ❑ ❑
Apple’s CEO had to explain to Congress last week why his company took pains to avoid paying U.S. taxes. The hearing almost coincided with that of IRS official Lois Lerner, who was asked to explain why the IRS has been abusing its power. Apparently, no one saw the irony.
❑ ❑ ❑
Apple is in trouble because its CEO feels U.S. corporate tax rates are too high and its stockholders are demanding the highest possible returns. When he used the words “thrift” and “profit,” senators had to recess to find a dictionary.
❑ ❑ ❑
Fox is starting a new reality show in which real workers at real companies have to decide which of them should be fired. Apparently, some television networks haven’t caught the vision of how the economy needs companies to create jobs, not destroy them.
Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.

On Second Thought is a weekly feature that takes a lighthearted look at current events.

The state announced last week that the Timpanogos Highway again has to face months of more construction work. The road, which originally was supposed to open in May 2011, has had more false starts than a track meet in an earthquake.
❑ ❑ ❑
Thanks to the missed deadlines and traffic snarls, Utahns now have come to dread these 10 words, “We’re from UDOT and we’re here to help your commute.”
❑ ❑ ❑
The Timpanogos Highway ought to qualify for federal stimulus money. After all, few projects seem so perpetually shovel ready.
❑ ❑ ❑
Contrary to public opinion, President Obama did not have the worst of all possible weeks last week. For instance, he didn’t order a drone strike on a litter of cute puppies.
❑ ❑ ❑
It was impressive, however, to see his administration angering State Department employees, conservative groups and then, in a perfect finale, the media. It sort of made his first-term fight with the Catholic Church look like, well … a tea party.
❑ ❑ ❑
I’ll say this, Obama has succeeded in uniting divergent groups. Word is AP reporters soon will be donning tricorn hats.
❑ ❑ ❑
So, the IRS was investigating conservative groups and now the government will be investigating those investigators, while people are urging an investigation into how the Justice Department investigated phone records from the Associated Press. Kids, there is a lesson here. Go to school to become an investigator.
❑ ❑ ❑
Abercombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries says he wants only beautiful, slim people wearing his company’s clothes. So why is it those people seem to be wearing hardly any clothes at all in company advertisements?
❑ ❑ ❑
Maybe the clothes are so exclusive no one qualifies to wear them. What a brilliant marketing plan!
❑ ❑ ❑
Abercrombie & Fitch, meanwhile, has signed an international agreement to make sure garment workers in Bangladesh have safe working conditions. The company says it doesn’t want poor people wearing its clothes, just making them.

Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.

On Second Thought is a weekly feature that takes a lighthearted look at current events.

President Obama has once again vowed to close the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, if only he could find the darned key.
❑ ❑ ❑
Rumor has it he asked the former president for it during the opening of Bush library, but W. said he thought Dick Cheney still had the keys.
❑ ❑ ❑
Congress and the president have decided not to furlough air traffic controllers after all. Instead, they just won’t pay them.
❑ ❑ ❑
Five years after the Great Recession, home prices finally are spiking upward again. That means Congress can once again take the money it spent helping people avoid foreclosure and divert it to helping poor people get homes they can’t afford.
❑ ❑ ❑
Boeing officials say the company is working on a plane that would have the longest range of any passenger jet. The trick is designing a galley large enough to hold the amount of peanuts and pretzels needed to keep people alive from London to Honolulu.
❑ ❑ ❑
The Defense Department announced last week it won’t permit any religious proselytizing in the military. In other words, it may be true there aren’t any atheists in foxholes, but anyone trying to press the issue could get court martialed.
❑ ❑ ❑
Americans were infused with hope last week that strong leadership would emerge to vanquish the stubborn ideologues in Washington and save the nation’s long-term economy from ruin. But then they learned Iron Man is fictional.
❑ ❑ ❑
If Washington wrote its own superhero movie, the House version would have Austerity Man battling the evil forces of Sequestration and the Deficit Hog. The Senate version would have Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving to … the Deficit Hog.
❑ ❑ ❑
Social media is filled with sophisticated, modern, Information-Age consumers who know they can trust crowd sourcing more than the mainstream media. That’s why, not long after the Boston Marathon bombings, the Czech embassy had to release a statement instructing Twitter and Facebook users that, contrary to what many people were posting, the Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya.

Jay Evensen is the associate editor of the Deseret News editorial page. Follow him on Twitter @jayevensen.