	13 May 2013 Immigrant Pants Are Safe in America My wife sometimes talks to her clothes as if they were people. "Well. You haven't been out in a while,… Read More.
	6 May 2013 Cry for George Jones When I heard that 81-year-old country singer George Jones died, I did not do the only decent thing. I did not … Read More.
	29 Apr 2013 Social Media Is Crap Journalism What's wrong with social media as a news source? It's wrong two-thirds of the time, it can be manipulated by … Read More.

Inquire Within

Christine O'Donnell made a big noise in the Delaware primary, and then someone dug up a tape on which she said that, in her youth, she "dabbled into witchcraft."

Dabbled "into?" A lot of native English speakers would have said "dabbled in," but that's not very important if you're talking about witchcraft.

Used to be you just had to worry about the anti-gay Republicans being gay (and they often are). Now, you have to worry about which Republican rode the broom back in college.

This is not to say the Democrats are witchcraft-free, either. Nancy Pelosi? Hilary Clinton? You can almost smell the bubbling cauldron.

Some kind of black magic must be afoot in the country. Look at all those jobs that magically vanished and keep vanishing, no matter which political party is in charge — and by "in charge," I mean, "looking for their next mistress or hanging around the toilet at the airport."

Obviously, there are certain grades and varieties of Christianity whose members could not possibly vote for someone who had dabbled "into" witchcraft, no matter how long ago. However, God is ever-forgiving (or was until he got into politics), so maybe if you can win in Delaware, you get a pass.

The problem is that O'Donnell is just the tip of the witchberg. She says she doesn't summon the dark powers anymore, but isn't that what witches ALWAYS say? Not a truthful bunch, your wielders of unholy powers. And what about all the other politicians? How many of them are mixing potions and casting spells right now?

If communism was big enough threat in the 1950s to bring forth what bad writers automatically call a "witch hunt," then how big a threat is actual witchcraft and assorted Satanic jiggery-pokery hoodoo?

I'm not talking about that "Wicca" stuff, either, which is to real witchcraft what a Tupperware party is to the ritual killing of children.

I say that right now, in America, we have a witchcraft problem — a problem that dwarfs our unemployment problem, our president-with-a-funny-name-gotta-be-a-Muslim problem, our drug problem, our illegal immigration problem and our Lady Gaga problem.

What we need is The Inquisition.

For centuries, the Catholic Church ran an efficient, colorful organization for the suppression of heresy called the Inquisition. The Inquisition got to the bottom of things, usually through the use of red-hot irons applied to the prisoner's tender parts. In short, the Inquisition was like a congressional committee that killed people.

And the Inquisition was the exact opposite of America's namby-pamby liberal judges. The Inquisition arrested you, tortured a confession out of you and had you burned to death. Fast. No appeals!

Americans don't have much experience running an inquisition and the Catholics got out of the business, but I bet the Vatican still has a copy of the Inquisition manual lying around somewhere. Popes never throw anything away.

And anyway, what do you really need? Robes? The willingness to torture? An endless belief that everyone else's heart is filled with evil?

And you got entertainment value from the Inquisition, too. The Inquisition in, say, 1340 was a combination of professional wrestling, Christmas midnight Mass and district court after Labor Day weekend.

At first, the new inquisition might be resented by some of the evangelicals so prominent in today's politics, since the whole procedure is tainted with Catholicism, which is, as some of us know, not an "American" religion. Just make sure the grand inquisitor you appoint is from either the South or the Midwest. As someone who grew up in Missouri and lives in Massachusetts, I can assure you that anything said in a Southern or Midwestern accent sounds American. Do not — repeat, do not — appoint a grand inquisitor from either Boston or New York.

Once you buy the robes, learn the lingo of heretic-hunting and burn your first couple of witches, the whole thing'll pretty much run itself. People will start turning in their neighbors, and local mobs will be howling to help you root out the witchy among us.

You'll find, as you go on, that there are far more heretics than you suspected. Gang members seem to be worshiping something other than the risen Christ, and who knows what strange voodoos illegal immigrants bring to our shores. Muslims are heretic by definition, and the Jews will have their turn because they always do. And who's behind all those damn vampire shows on television? That's an open-and-shut case.

For every medieval problem there is a medieval solution.

Thank God.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com