Our elected leaders

. During an April Texas House committee hearing (according to a Houston Chronicle report), State Rep. Betty Brown suggested a solution to the voter-registration confusion caused by Chinese-Americans' Anglicizing their names (which yields nonstandard spellings): "Do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens," she asked a Chinese-American activist, "to adopt (names) that we (lawmakers) could deal with more readily here?"

. During a March Florida Senate debate on whether to exempt "animal husbandry" from the law against bestiality, Sen. Larcenia Bullard asked (seriously, according to a Miami Herald reporter), "People are taking these animals as husbands?"