A police officer responding to a shoplifting complaint caught up with the 15-year-old suspected candy bar thief, who was making his getaway on a bicycle, reports The Associated Press. After initially denying that he took the candy, he ‘fessed up when the officer informed him that he could smell the chocolate on his breath.

The list of species that global warming zealots claim will be wiped out by climate change is long: Antarctic penguins; Arctic polar bears; Australia’s koalas; British dragonflies …  

But in what could be a case of Darwinian evolution in action, the BBC reports that “great tits cope well with warming.” Presumably, great tits won’t do as well – at least in the short term - when the pendulum shifts towards global cooling and there’s a pronounced nip in the air.

Or, maybe not. The Stiletto highly recommends Ben Stein’s documentary, “Expelled,” about how evolutionary biologists who worship at the altar of Darwinism have thuggishly barred all dissenting opinions – particularly, intelligent design – from the marketplace of ideas and expelled (fired, denied tenure, blacklisted) apostates from universities, scientific journals and research facilities. They include biologist Richard Sternberg, who was fired by the Smithsonian Institution after publishing a peer-reviewed article that mentioned intelligent design; astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, who was denied tenure at Iowa State University – despite having discovered several planets; and Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason University for showing students a PowerPoint presentation that mentioned intelligent design on two slides.

Dinesh D'Souza and other conservatives zero in on this scene:

Richard Dawkins is going on about how evolution explains everything. This is part of Dawkins' grand claim, which echoes through several of his books, that evolution by itself has refuted the argument from design. The argument from design hold that the design of the universe and of life are most likely the product of an intelligent designer. Dawkins thinks that Darwin has disproven this argument.

So Stein puts to Dawkins a simple question, “How did life begin?” … One might expect Dawkins to invoke evolution as the all-purpose explanation. Evolution, however, only explains transitions from one life form to another. Evolution has no explanation for how life got started in the first place. Darwin was very clear about this.

In order for evolution to take place, there had to be a living cell. The difficulty for atheists is that even this original cell is a work of labyrinthine complexity. Franklin Harold writes in “The Way of the Cell” that even the simplest cells are more ingeniously complicated than man's most elaborate inventions: the factory system or the computer. …

Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the DNA double helix … is a committed atheist. Unwilling to consider the possibility of divine or supernatural creation, Crick suggested that maybe aliens brought life to earth from another planet. And this is precisely the suggestion that

Richard Dawkins makes in his response to Ben Stein. Perhaps, he notes, life was delivered to our planet by highly-evolved aliens.

Even Dawkins admits that his "X-Files" explanation just kicks the can down the street a ways, because it doesn’t answer the question of how these aliens came into being.

Aside from the sheer delight of seeing Dawkins – author of “The God Delusion” - hoist on his own petard, Stein also explores the association between Darwinism and atheism (you can’t have one without the other); explains how Darwinism was used to justify the eugenics movement in the U.S., during which tens of thousands of Americans were sterilized against their will because they were deemed too physically or mentally flawed to breed; and – most chilling – reminds us that Adolph Hitler combined Darwinism and eugenics to rid the Third Reich of "inferior" races and human specimens.

At its heart, “Expelled” is about scientific, academic and MSM censorship. Whatever your position on intelligent design, there is no denying that the stifling of scientific inquiry is spreading.

Global warming skeptics, for instance, are called “deniers” and the media gives their research short shift – or ignores evidence suggesting that global warming could be a cyclical phenomenon related to solar flare activity, for example – to create the false impression that the science is settled. It is not. And neither is the science settled on Darwinian evolution.

Scientific inquiry depends upon continually challenging hypotheses – no scientific finding is supposed to be considered “fact.” Stop people from asking the questions or dismiss research that doesn’t fit into the consensus, and you stop scientific progress and go down blind alleys.

The facts: Barack Obama won 38 percent of white Dems in NC, and didn’t do much better amongst whites in IN (35 percent). In exit polls of 1,881 IN Dems and 2,316 NC voters, two out of three Hillary Clinton supporters said they would be dissatisfied if he is their party’s nominee.

How much of Obama’s poor showing amongst whites is due to the lingering echo of the racist, anti-American comments Rev. Jeremiah Wright has repeatedly made from the pulpit and the podium, and how much is attributable to conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos”?

The Associated Press reports that Wright had little impact in either state because the electorate was already polarized along racial lines long before the revolutionary rev’s rhetoric came to light:

† Six in 10 white voters in both states supported Hillary Rodham Clinton … close to the average 57 percent of whites who had backed the New York senator in Democratic primaries since Super Tuesday, which was Feb. 5. It's also slightly below the 63 percent of whites who voted for her in Pennsylvania and 69 percent in Mississippi, the most recent contests before Tuesday's voting.

† Whites lacking college degrees favored Clinton over Obama by 31 percentage points in Indiana and 45 points in North Carolina. Since Super Tuesday, she has triumphed over Obama among this group by an average 30 points, including 41 points in Pennsylvania and 55 points in Mississippi. … Other than liberal Vermont, Wisconsin is the only state where Obama has won more than half of whites who have not graduated college.

† White men leaned toward Clinton on Tuesday, as she got 59 percent in Indiana and 55 percent in North Carolina. Clinton got 57 percent of their votes in Pennsylvania and 67 percent in Mississippi.

Wright’s influence would have been strongest amongst late deciders in both states, yet exit polls did not bear this out. Wright was cited as an important factor by the 25 percent of IN white voters who picked their candidate within the past month, and the 25 percent who knew which candidate would get their vote more than a month ago. Ditto NC, where 25 percent of whites also made up their minds late in the game and cited Wright as an important factor in their vote, along with the 30 percent of white voters who chose their candidate early.   

Hillary got 87 percent of these “Wright-thinking” IN late deciders and 92 percent in NC – compared to 86 percent of these IN early deciders and 91 percent in NC. In other words, in neither state did Wright affect the choice of early or late white voters.

Bottom line: Wright did not make white Dem voters any more likely to vote for Hillary.

Although Obama’s campaign is convinced that IN might have narrowly gone his way if crossover Republicans hadn’t skewed the outcome - Hillary won by just 14,000 votes - Rush’s effect on the outcome of the contest trickier to tease out. (The NC results are so lopsidedly in Obama’s favor because of the size of the black vote it’s not worth considering how much, if any, influence Operation Chaos had in that state).

The Washington Post reports:

As he had before several recent primaries, Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Clinton to "bloody up Obama politically" and prolong the Democratic fight. …

In Indiana, 10 percent of Democratic primary voters described themselves as Republicans, a higher rate than in any state but Mississippi, and they went for Clinton by eight percentage points, according to exit polls. …

By contrast, Obama won Republican voters, often by very large margins, in seven of the eight states where exit polls were able to report the group before the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4, when Limbaugh first coaxed listeners to vote for Clinton. …

Also notable was that in Indiana, six in 10 Republicans who supported Clinton on Tuesday said they would vote for presumptive GOP nominee John McCain over Clinton in the fall, if that were the matchup. By contrast, most Republicans who voted for Obama said they would back him against McCain. …

But at least as much data suggested that many Republicans voted for Clinton because the Democratic primary was the more meaningful one and because they simply preferred her to Obama. In Indiana, about nine in 10 GOP Clinton voters said she would make a better commander in chief, and more than six in 10 said she would have a better shot at beating McCain.

And Clinton's edge among Indiana Republicans was relatively small, if set against the broader racial divisions in the contest. Her eight-point advantage among Republicans, nearly all of whom are white in the state, was much narrower than it was among white Democrats, whom she won by nearly 2 to 1 over Obama.

Which means Rush didn't make white voters any less likely to vote for Obama, again because even in IN the effect of racial polarization dwarfed the effect of Operation Chaos.

However, the size of the Republican crossover vote does have implications in the general election - and belies Hillary's contention that will fare better against John McCain than Obama will.

The New Republic’s Jonathan Chait notes that the exit poll results show “7% of the Indiana electorate, voted for Clinton in the primary but have no intention of supporting her in the fall’:

Now, this isn't a precise measure of the “Limbaugh effect” - no doubt there are some Republicans who backed Obama in the primary out of anti-Clinton sentiment, but plan to vote for McCain in November. But it is a good place to start when making a ballpark estimate. And it's a sizeable number.

How sizeable? The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein does the math:

Among the 17 percent of primary goers who said they would choose Sen. John McCain over Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up, 41 percent of that group came from Clinton’s own camp. … [s]even percent … (40 percent of 17 percent) said they would defect to the Republican should she end up the nominee. That would be a difficult punch to stomach in November. In 2004, nearly 1 million Indianans voted for John Kerry. A seven percent defection rate would have meant 70,000 less votes.

Tea leaf reading is, by definition, subjective. It’s one thing for a Dem to go into a voting booth and pull the lever for one candidate or the other – with the exception of a Bradley Effect, whatever criteria used to make the choice can be quantified in exit polling. It’s more difficult to measure the effect of Operation Chaos in exit polling, because in addition to determining why a crossover voter chose one candidate over the other, you need to consider how (s)he intends to vote in November.

Republicans who voted for Hillary were really voting against Obama, and can be expected to abandon Hillary in favor of McCain in the general election. What about Republicans who voted for Obama? Some, no doubt, sincerely believe him to be the best candidate in the race. Others might just have been much quicker on the draw than Rush, who has called off Operation Chaos because “I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees.”

Mother’s Day Bonus

Liza Mundy, a staff writer for The Washington Post’s Sunday Magazine, writes about a ladies-only wine-and-cheese party she attended with some 20 mothers in her social circle, at which “a few of the women began reminiscing about their own youths, comparing the transgressions they'd committed in their teens and 20s and debating whose were the most egregious.” The shocker:

“I win, I win!” one mother exclaimed. “I was a stripper!”

This contribution came from a woman I have long admired. Smart and good-humored, she has always seemed a veritable supermother, remarkable for her ability to work a full day and come home to direct a range of extracurricular activities for her bright and engaging children. I see them sometimes out for a walk, and always imagine that they are discussing quadratic equations or figuring the velocity of the wind. And now it emerged that, in her salad days, this working mom with a security clearance had removed her clothing, onstage, to the accompaniment of “Pretty Woman.” …

Laughing, I asked if she would ever tell her children about her short-lived foray into the entertainment business, which ended when she came down with food poisoning the next day. “No, I don't think I'll be telling my kids about that one,” she said, although, she added, she would never want to lie.

She probably won't have to. Likely, few children would think to ask their mom if she appeared in her birthday suit, or portions of it, in public.

Mundy notes that “sooner or later many mothers of our generation will have some 'splainin' to do” and finds the silver lining behind this dark cloud:

Coming of age, as we did, in the 1970s … many of today's most responsible mothers (and fathers) once engaged in social experimentation that … they are glad wasn't photographed. Ironically, it is these very memories that have turned many of us into hyper-vigilant parents, intent on making sure our children don't get up to the very behaviors our cohort once engaged in with such glee.”

The rest of the article explores the question, “What do children need to know about their parents' pasts, and when do they need to know it?” and offers expert opinion.

† There's No Such Thing As Free Healthcare: The $50 million Healthy DC proposal to mandate health insurance coverage for all residents of Washington, DC (presumably, “residency” is not synonymous with “citizenship”) may neither be mandated nor universal,” reports The Washington Post. Under D.C. Council member David A. Catania’s original proposal the estimated 45,000 residents who currently are uninsured would be fined $250 for failing to buy coverage:  

Uninsured residents would have been identified from income tax forms, on which filers would have to say whether they had health coverage. At the hearing Friday, health-care advocates questioned penalizing low-income residents who do not have insurance because they cannot afford it. 

Catania’s proposal hit another bump in the road when private health-care provider CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield, which would have contracted with the District to provide coverage, “may pull its planned $5 million annual contribution and its doctors network out of the deal.”

† Hillary’s Many Makeovers: “Often ridiculed for adopting a Southern twang when south of the Mason-Dixon line, Mrs. Clinton hauled out her best local pronunciation in her [NC] campaign stops,” writes John Fund, in The Wall Street Journal’s “Political Diary” (E-mail subscription required):

“It's time to quit wringin' our hands and start rollin' up our sleeves,” she told a crowd at High Point this past weekend. The town's name rolled off her tongue sounding like "Hah Point.”

Pretty scary, especially for this “Illinois native and Arkansas lawyer” who, as Washington Post columnist George Will points out, “became, retroactively, a lifelong Yankee fan at age 52 when, shopping for a U.S. Senate seat, she adopted New York state as home sweet home.”

Columnist Kathleen Parker – who is wet-your-pants funny when she wants to be – notes, “All politicians adapt and mold themselves to fit their audience, but Hillary Clinton has elevated the art of identity politics to a science of morphology.” She explains:

She doesn't just show people what they want in order to convince them that she's their “man” - and we no longer use that word entirely metaphorically. She becomes the people she wants to sway. …

In James Cameron's "Terminator II: Judgment Day," the T-1000 android was made of liquid metal and could duplicate others. He “learned” a person by touching him and absorbing his data. …

She's shown that she can speak in gerunds with or without g's. She can summon an African-American pastor's cadence in church or produce tears in a coffee shop surrounded by working gals who are tired, too. …

Impressive, if appalling. But most impressive of all has been Clinton's metamorphosis into a man. She isn't only the alpha dog. She's Cujo.

If you just think of the number of hairdos Hillary has had over the years – heck, just during her presidential campaign – David Byrne’s line “I changed my hairstyle so many times now, don't know what I look like” takes on a whole new meaning. 

† Why We Need Gitmo (second item): Former Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainee Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, 29, accused by the U.S. military accused of fighting with the Taliban in Afghanistan, was amongst the three suicide bombers who murdered seven Iraqi security forces in Mosul on April 26, reports The Washington Post. After Ajmi was released into the custody of the Kuwaiti government as part of a diplomatic arrangement inl late 2005, he made his way to Iraq via Syria. While this suicide bombing in Iraq is the first linked to a former Guantánamo  detainee, the Defense Intelligence Agency says up to three dozen others are confirmed or suspected of having returned to terrorist activities – a claim that international human rights groups and lawyers for Gitmo detainees dispute,  contending that “only a handful” have fought U.S. forces after their release. A Pentagon spokesman tells the WaPo, “Our reports indicate that a number of former Guantánamo detainees have taken part in anti-coalition militant activities after leaving U.S. detention. As these facts illustrate, there is an implied future risk to U.S. and allied interests with every detainee who is released or transferred from Guantánamo.” To date, some 500 detainees have been released from Gitmo or transferred to other governments, and 65 of the 270 still incarcerated there will be cut loose as well.

† The Other Shoe Drops (“Well-Chosen Words,” second item): Attorney Joseph Ziccardi is asking U.S. District Judge Eduardo C. Robreno  to reconsider sanctions levied against him after his client HTFC CEO Aaron Wider used the “F-word” 73 times in a deposition, reports The Legal Intelligencer. Robreno ruled that Wider and Ziccardi are jointly and severally liable – the former for his “hostile, uncivil, and vulgar conduct, which persisted throughout the nearly 12 hours of deposition testimony,” and the latter for “chuckling at Wider's abusive behavior” – which he denies. In his motion, Ziccardi contends he was deprived of due process because the judge did not put him on notice that it was considering sanctions, thus his "opportunity to be heard was meaningless."

Raid on Sect in Texas Rattles Other Polygamists

- The New York Times, May 8, 2008

Good Shoes Can Prevent Falls

- HealthDay News, May 7, 2008

“[F]ive years after the notorious Jayson Blair scandal that ended his Times tenure and created a credibility nightmare for the paper,” Maureen Dowd’s ex-paramour and former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines tells trade publication Editor & Publisher, “I am proud of the fact that it set the standard for in-house inquiries. I feel proud of the fact that we had as close to a full investigation as any journalistic entity has done in my experience." Now imagine how much prouder he might have been if his former paper’s hiring practices were color-blind instead of quota-based, or if Blair’s editors had figured out what he was up to after the first or second fabricated or plagiarized article and fired his sorry ass.

The Clinton campaign sent out a mailing to IN voters attacking Sen. Barack Obama’s positions (plural) on gun control, accusing him of telling different audiences what they wanted to hear. The ad unintentionally revealed the campaign’s own discomfort with firearms: the image of the Mauser 66 hunting rifle is flopped; is a double-set trigger model (favored in Europe, but uncommon in the U.S.); and at $2,200, is beyond the means of the average blue collar hunter, who no doubt bitterly wishes (s)he could afford to own one of these fine German rifles.

When The Politico’s Ben Smith first posted the mailer on his blog, several hunting enthusiasts wrote to point out the error – of which he, too, was unaware, it should be noted – so he looked into the matter further.  A WV Mauser dealer informed Smith: “The gun in the photo does not exist. The bolt is facing to the left side of the receiver, making it a left-handed bolt action rifle.” He added “It’s like a picture of Babe Ruth hitting right-handed.”

Barack Obama (D-IL) had said that IN would be the tie-breaker, after Hillary Clinton (D-NY) won PA and he won NC as he was expecting to. And so the tie was broken – but just barely. Hillary won IN 51 percent to 49 percent, and lost NC by 41 percent to 56 percent.

Hillary’s disappointing showing in IN means that she could not whittle away at Obama’s lead in pledged delegates or popular vote totals. However, Hillary will likely decide to stick it out until June 3^rd, as she expects to split the final cluster of primaries with her rival - WV, KY and PR for her and OR , MT and SD for him.  

Hillary has the cohones to argue that IN is the third large industrial state he lost - the razor-thin margin notwithstanding - because the white working-class workers needed to win against John McCain (R-AZ) in November are in her corner. But the closeness of the race – and a measurable amount of her support apparently coming from mischief-making Republicans who have no intention of voting for her in the general election - undermines her case to the superdelegates. (There are even rumors of a “crisis meeting” to beg superdelegates who’ve already declared their support for her from switching sides.)

Writing for the New York Times blog, “Campaign Stops,” Ron Klain - Al Gore’s chief of staff when he was VP – noted that “Indiana may be the most level playing field the two campaigns have confronted in this see-saw contest.” He explained:

For Senator Clinton, the demographic profile of the state is very similar to other middle-America industrial states that she has won. The heart of the state is its small, economy-in-transition, blue-collar towns - like Muncie, New Castle, Anderson and Kokomo - that look very similar to the places where she did well in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The rural expanses of southern Indiana also resemble portions of other states where she has run up large margins.

But Senator Obama also has some important assets in the Hoosier state. The northwestern portion of the state falls with his home media market of Chicago - a huge leg up for him. He also has strong support in Indiana’s major cities: few in number, but significant in Democratic primaries. And Bloomington is the sort of college town where Senator Obama has won his most enthusiastic backing.

With this in mind, the big news in IN would have been if either candidate poached voters from the other’s core base, or of some other factor skewed the expected results. For the most part, that didn’t happen.

Exit polls of 1,738 voters were conducted in 35 precincts across IN. Black voters made up roughly 14 percent of the electorate in IN, and Obama got 90 percent of their votes. Hillary won 60 percent of the white vote overall, including 58 percent of white men and 65 percent of voters who didn’t attend college. She also won the votes of seven out of 10 rural and small town voters, who comprised 30 percent of the electorate.

Thirty percent of IN voters said the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a “very important” factor in their vote, while 18 percent said he was “somewhat important”; 69 percent of them voted for Hillary. Another indication that Wright had some impact: One in four voters made up their minds in the last week, and 59 percent of them chose Hillary.  

Unlike NC, the Dem primary in IN was open to all voters. However, The Indianapolis Star reported that “Republicans appeared to be crossing over in droves today in Marion County and suburban counties”:

Overall,  an estimated 11 percent of Republicans crossed party lines and 52 percent of these crossovers voted for Hillary; Obama eked out 51 percent win amongst independents, who made up 23 percent of all voters. (BTW, McCain won 77.6 percent of Republicans who did not vote for one of the Dems; he won 73.5 percent of the Republican vote in NC.)

Exit polls of 2,271 voters in NC, were conducted in 35 precincts across the state, along with a telephone poll of 400 absentee voters. Blacks made up a third of all voters in NC, and Obama captured 92 percent of this group. Hillary won 54 percent of the white male vote in NC and 67 percent of white voters who did not have a college education - but she would have needed 70 percent of the total white vote to overcome Obama’s advantage of having a near-lock on the black vote.

A third of voters said Wright was “very important” and 15 percent said he was “somewhat important”; Hillary got 62 percent of their votes. But Wright was not as big a factor amongst late deciders in NC as he appeared to be in IN: One in five NC voters decided between the two candidates in the last week, and these voters split (49 percent for Obama, 48 percent for Hillary).

According to exit polls in both states, nearly two out of three of those who voted for Hillary said they would be dissatisfied if Obama were the nominee – and a third of them claimed they would vote for McCain if Hillary is the nominee.

In his victory speech in Columbia, NC, Obama looked past the remaining contests and addressed these partisans:

[A]s contentious as this campaign may get, we have to remember that this is a contest for the Democratic nomination, and that all of us share an abiding desire to end the disastrous policies of the current administration. …

[A]s we leave this state with a new wind at our backs, and take this journey across the country we love with the message we’ve carried from the plains of Iowa to the hills of New Hampshire; from the Nevada desert to the South Carolina coast; the same message we had when we were up and when we were down - that out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope; and where we are met with cynicism, and doubt, and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people in three simple words: Yes. We. Can.

For her part, in Indianapolis, IN, Hillary gamely vowed to keep going “full speed ahead” and renewed her call to count the votes in FL and MI, suggesting it would be “a little strange” to choose a nominee without them:

Fundamentally, I believe that Americans need a champion in their corner, that for too long we’ve had a president who has stood up and spoke out for the wealthy and the well-connected. …

And I am running to be the president of all of America: north, south, east and west, and everywhere in between. That’s why it is so important that we count the votes of Florida and Michigan. …

We’ve got a long road ahead, but we’re going to keep fighting on that path for America, because America is worth fighting for. And we believe in America’s potential and possibility that has so ignited hope and the dreams of people throughout our country and around the world.

By MSNBC’s count, Obama gained nine pledged delegates between the two state, for a total of 1,876 to Hillary’s 1,729. But in light of these latest primary results, enough undeclared superdelegates could decide to throw their support to Obama before the last vote is cast in the final primary – or Hillary could lose enough of the ones she thinks she has – to get Obama so close to the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination that what fight she has left will be knocked out of her.

Voter ID Law In IN Did Not Disenfranchise Voters

After the Supreme Court upheld IN’s voter ID law, the MSM naturally went looking for “disenfranchised” voters. This is the best The Associated Press could come up with:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway. …

Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. …

Nonetheless, she said, the convent will make a “very concerted effort” to get proper identification for the nuns in time for the general election.  …

Elsewhere across the pivotal state, voting appeared to run smoothly, despite the fears of election experts that the Supreme Court's recent refusal to strike down Indian's controversial photo identification law could cause confusion at the polls.

A voter hot line set up by the secretary of state's office had no complaints regarding photo IDs as of 3 p.m., said spokeswoman Bethany Derringer.

If these Sisters have taken a vow of poverty and cannot afford to obtain a picture ID, the state will provide it free of charge.

Life Imitates The Simpsons

In “Lard of the Dance,” Homer Simpson dreams up a new money-making scheme: Collecting grease from restaurants – and from the Springfield Elementary School cafeteria – to sell to a rendering plant (video link). With biodiesel the preferred bio fuel of hard-core environmentalists, The Christian Science Monitor reports that “[y]ellow grease is becoming liquid gold”:

Mark Rosenzweig watched with suspicion as a tanker truck sidled up to a local [San Jose, CA] Burger King's grease bin last month. The driver plunged a hose into the 300-gallon tub of used French-fry grease and slurped it into his tank.

Mr. Rosenzweig called the police, patiently citing legal codes to convince them that, yes, grease theft is a crime. He should know. As a legitimate grease collector, he has his livelihood stolen four to five times a month these days.

In March, grease bandits in South Bend, Ind., broke bin locks to get to their oozy booty. One collector, Griffin Industries Inc., has two detectives working cases in Kentucky, Texas, Florida, Missouri, and against an entire grease gang in northern Arkansas.

Grease is a traded