An article in the New York Times discusses how a growing number of states are seeking to either expand or restrict voting rights based on a person’s mental competence. Currently, the states’ restrictions vary in scope and enforcement, and officials are grappling to clarify laws as America grows increasingly unglued and demented by the day.

Key to the issue are the voting rights of the non compos mentis (not master of one’s own mind), who are typically Republican, except for the paranoid schizophrenics (Libertarian) and the pyromaniacs (Democrat). In Missouri, advocates for the mentally ill have sued the state to secure voting rights for these non compos mentis citizens who understand the nature and effect of voting, which civil rights experts feel should be the national standard for the issue.

Then there’s states like Rhode Island, where convicted felons lose their right to vote, but those who are found “not guilty by reason of insanity” do not. One man is crusading to remove two such criminally insane murderers from the voting rolls on the grounds that they are “nuts” even though both men have the mental capacity to vote.

Other states are simply modernizing their laws. In New Jersey, the state constitution may be amended to replace language forbidding an “idiot or insane” person to vote, under the grounds that 90% of the population was effectively disenfranchised.

(Oh, I know… it’s way too easier to pick on poor, deranged New Jersey, and it’s unfair. Evidence of our national mental decay is all over the newspaper every day. We are waging an insane war at a great cost to ourselves. We are destroying our world’s environment without little regard to the future. We care more about our politicians’ religions than their commitment to education and health care. We suffer from collective anxiety, paranoia, exhibitionism, amnesia, body dysmorphic disorder, delirium, and addiction. And yet we are concerned that elderly citizens with Alzheimer’s disease are going to try to vote. What are we afraid of? That we might re-elect Eisenhower?)

The G8 annual summit is winding down, and despite feeling deeply apolitical these days, I suppose I better start paying attention. Because it’s the news, and it’s of historic consequence, and it’s more dignified to mock global leaders than chatter about how Paris Hilton has single-handedly undermined the American penal system.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany played host to this year’s summit, held at a ritzy Baltic resort that was insulated from determined protestors by a razor-topped seven-mile fence (that’s seven miles long, not tall.) Among the leaders, poor Bush was as uncool as the star quarterback at science club meeting. Even stalwart pal Tony Blair rebuffed Bush’s gushing sentiments (”This is the last meeting I will have with him as prime minister… I’m sad about that”) with coolness: “To be absolutely frank at the moment, I haven’t had time to be nostalgic”. How can I miss you if you won’t go away?

As is tradition, the host country set the agenda, and Angie made it clear that global warming would be the prevailing issue, even though February’s G8+5 2007 summit focused on climate change and proclaimed “a new paradigm for international cooperation.” Apparently, that new paradigm is G8-5. But any meeting about greenhouse gas emission cuts is going to end with G7 at one end of the table, glowering and spitting at the perpetual G1. Bush balked at how the agreement was so goddamn “binding” (Bush is a noted fan of those non-binding agreements). Despite failing to get Bush to agree to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2050, Angie declared victory.

Aside from global warming, other headline-grabbing topics included Bush’s stomach ailment, which invoked inevitable punning about how Bush was feeling “under the weather.” Putin’s surprise proposal to Bush for a joint missile shield in Azerbaijan to defend against Iran was an intriguing but probably empty gesture. And as a grand finale, the leaders pretended real humanitarian work was achieved by renewing their 2005 summit pledge to send 60 billion dollars to Africa to fight diseases. While the eye-popping monetary amount will make headlines, you may notice that no new money is actually being pledged. Bono, for one, is “exasperated… I think it is deliberately the language of obfuscation… We wanted numbers but this is burobabble… We are looking for accountable language and numbers. I might be a rock star but I can count.”

Well spoken, Bono. I like that, battling burobabble with bonobabble. Why isn’t U2 invited to the G8? And why is Italy still invited, despite their farcical electoral processes and stagnating economy? And what the heck is Emperor Putin doing there, anyway? Maybe they should make it the G6. But that would raise a question of which informal international summit group that Italy and Russia belong to. Certainly not the D8, or the G11, or the G20, or the G33. Whatever. I guess it doesn’t hurt to have them there. As long as they sing Kumbaya before ducking into their armored limos to be whisked back to their native lands, it’s all in good faith.