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By The Associated PressToday is Monday, April 8, the 98th day

of 2013. There are 267 days left in the year. Today’s Highlights in History: On

April 8, 1913, the 17th Amendment to theConstitution, providing for popular electionof United States senators (as opposed toappointment by state legislatures), was rat-ified. President Woodrow Wilson becamethe first chief executive since John Adamsto address Congress in person as heasked lawmakers to enact tariff reform.

On this date: In 1820, the Venus deMilo statue was discovered by a farmer onthe Greek island of Milos.

In 1913, the Republic of China’s firstparliament convened.

In 1935, President Franklin D. Roo-sevelt signed the Emergency Relief Appro-priations Act, which provided money forprograms such as the Works Progress Ad-ministration.

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roo-sevelt ordered a freeze on wages andprices to combat inflation.

In 1946, the League of Nations assem-bled in Geneva for its final session.

In 1952, President Harry S. Trumanseized the American steel industry to averta nationwide strike. (The Supreme Courtlater ruled that Truman had oversteppedhis authority, opening the way for a seven-week strike by steelworkers.)

In 1963, “Lawrence of Arabia” won theOscar for best picture at the AcademyAwards; Gregory Peck won best actor for“To Kill a Mockingbird” while Anne Bancroftreceived best actress honors for “The Mir-acle Worker.”

In 1973, artist Pablo Picasso died inMougins, France, at age 91.

In 1974, Hank Aaron of the AtlantaBraves hit his 715th career home run in agame against the Los Angeles Dodgers,breaking Babe Ruth’s record.

In 1988, TV evangelist Jimmy Swag-gart resigned from the Assemblies of Godafter he was defrocked for rejecting anorder from the church’s national leaders tostop preaching for a year amid reports he’dconsorted with a prostitute.

In 1993, singer Marian Anderson diedin Portland, Ore., at age 96.

In 1994, Kurt Cobain, singer and gui-tarist for the grunge band Nirvana, wasfound dead in Seattle from an apparentlyself-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.

Ten years ago: U.S.-led military strikesin Baghdad hit a hotel housing hundreds ofjournalists and an Arab television network,killing three journalists. Kidnapper-rapistJohn Jamelske, who had imprisoned fivewomen and girls, one after another, as sexslaves inside a makeshift dungeon in hisDeWitt, N.Y., home, was arrested. Con-necticut won its second straight NCAA

women’s basketball championship, defeat-ing Tennessee 73-68.

Five years ago: The top U.S. com-mander in Iraq, Army Gen. David Petraeus,told Congress that hard-won gains in thewar zone were too fragile to promise anytroop pullouts beyond the summer as heheld his ground against impatient Democ-rats and refused to commit to more with-drawals before President George W. Bushleft office in January 2009. American Air-lines grounded all 300 of its MD-80 jetlinersamid safety concerns about wiring bun-dles; the carrier ended up canceling morethan 3,000 flights over the next four days.Tennessee captured its eighth women’sNCAA championship with a 64-48 victoryover Stanford.

One year ago: A U.N.-brokered plan tostop the bloodshed in Syria effectively col-lapsed after President Bashar Assad’sgovernment raised new, last-minute de-mands that the country’s largest rebelgroup swiftly rejected. The U.S. andAfghanistan signed a deal giving Afghansauthority over raids of Afghan homes, re-solving one of the most contentious issuesbetween the two wartime allies. BubbaWatson saved par from the pine straw andwon the Masters on the second hole of aplayoff over Louis Oosthuizen.

Today’s Birthdays: Comedian SheckyGreene is 87. Actor-turned-diplomat JohnGavin is 82. Author and Pulitzer Prize-win-ning reporter Seymour Hersh is 76. FormerU.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is 75.Basketball Hall-of-Famer John Havlicek is73. “Mouseketeer” Darlene Gillespie is 72.Rhythm-and-blues singer J.J. Jackson is72. Singer Peggy Lennon (The Lennon Sis-ters) is 72. Songwriter-producer Leon Huffis 71. Actor Hywel Bennett is 69. Actor Stu-art Pankin is 67. Rock musician SteveHowe is 66. Former House RepublicanLeader Tom DeLay is 66. Movie directorJohn Madden is 64. Rock musician MelSchacher (Grand Funk Railroad) is 62.Actor John Schneider is 53. “Survivor” win-ner Richard Hatch is 52. Rock musicianIzzy Stradlin is 51. Singer Julian Lennon is50. Rock singer-musician Donita Sparks is50. Rapper Biz Markie is 49. Actress RobinWright is 47. Actress Patricia Arquette is45. Rock singer Craig Honeycutt (Every-thing) is 43. Rock musician Darren Jesseeis 42. Actress Emma Caulfield is 40. Ac-tress Katee Sackhoff is 33. Actor TaylorKitsch is 32. Rock singer-musician EzraKoenig (Vampire Weekend) is 29. ActorTaran Noah Smith is 29. Actress KirstenStorms is 29.

Thought for Today: “A highbrow is aperson educated beyond his intelligence.”— James Brander Matthews, American au-thor and educator (1852-1929).

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Ephesians6:10. Portals of Prayer, Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis

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BY BILL O’REILLY Creators Syndicate

On Easter Sunday evening, a TV show about goodand evil aired on the History Channel —the final installment of “The Bible” minis-eries in which Jesus is executed. AMC ranthe season-ending episode of “The WalkingDead” — the series where zombies try toeat the brains of human beings. One foot-note: The world might have been a betterplace had the zombies preemptively gottento the guy who thought up this series in thefirst place.

Anyway, the zombies won. They beatJesus in the ratings, especially among view-ers ages 18 to 49.

What lesson can be derived from Jesuslosing to the walking dead? Well, it provesthat about 12 million Americans want tosee blood and gore. Wait — there wasplenty of that in the Bible’s crucifixionscenes. Maybe the zombie viewers simply wantedcheap thrills. Yeah, that’s it. Cheap thrills triumphedover a spiritual experience. Cannibalism beat bap-tism.

Base entertainment almost always beats highbrowstuff. But watching flesh-eating zombies on Easterdoes put a different spin on things, does it not? Imean, how soon can we digest dismemberment ontelevision after eating our baked ham dinner? Onehour? Two?

At least Jesus was in context. The New Testamentsays the son of God rose from the dead on Easter. Thezombies rise from the dead whenever their makeup isfinished.

Honestly, I have no idea what this zombie phenom-enon is all about. Way back in the 1960s, I saw thefirst modern zombie movie: “Night of the Living

Dead.” Things were creeping along OK until a little girlturned into a zombie and tried to eat her mom. Atthat point, my entire group decided enough wasenough, and we bolted out of the theater.

But today that scene would be tame.Now zombie kids will eat their entire fami-lies if given the opportunity. Depravitydoesn’t even begin to cover it. Apparently,we Americans have an unending appetitefor gross behavior. Pun intended.

What must Jesus think? Here he is, beingnailed to the cross by smirking Romans andgetting trounced by TV zombies at thesame time. The prince of peace preachedthat we all should love our neighbors asourselves. I do not believe that Jesus wouldcondone eating your neighbor even if youare dead.

Many folks who like this zombie busi-ness freely admit it’s a low form of enter-tainment. “But so what?” they say. It’s fun toenvision yourself outsmarting zombies,

blasting them to hell with shotguns and then escapingto some tattoo parlor. I guess that’s fun in someprecincts.

But not for me. I threw in with Jesus even thoughthe guy who played him looked a bit like Spicoli in“Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” Sure, I knew how theminiseries was going to end, but there are worsethings you could do on Easter Sunday — like watch-ing man-eating zombies.

All I know is this: When Jesus appeared to theapostles after he died, thank God they did not haveaccess to AMC.

Veteran TV news anchor Bill O’Reilly is host of theFox News show “The O’Reilly Factor” and author ofthe book “Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand inthe Age of Obama.”

Zombies Versus Jesus

Bill

O’REILLY

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.Tribune Media Services

What we have here is a failure to communicate. Orat least, that's Rick Ross' story and he's sticking to it.

The Miami rapper has ignited a prairie fire of con-troversy with a song called “U.O.E.N.O.,” itstitle a phonetic spelling of an ebonic pro-nunciation: “You don't even know.” In it,Ross raps as follows: “Put molly all in herchampagne/She ain't even know it/I tookher home and I enjoyed that/She ain't evenknow it.”

“Molly,” is the street name for the drugmethylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA),better known as ecstasy. It is a stimulant andhallucinogen. It also lowers a user's inhibi-tions. The lyric, then, describes date rape.

Women and those who love them have re-acted angrily. UltraViolet, a women's advocacygroup, is pushing Reebok to drop its endorse-ment contract with Ross. A group called theParents Television Council is calling on theFederal Communications Commission to “in-vestigate” any radio station playing the song. At least onestation, WUVS-LP in Muskegon, Mich., isn't waiting. Pro-gram director Paul Allen Billings told Billboard magazinehe has pulled all Rick Ross songs off his air.

Ross says they've got it all wrong. In a recent inter-view with a New Orleans radio station, he explainedhow, ahem, the people who heard the song made a mis-take.

“Woman,” he said, “is the most precious gift knownto man. It was a misunderstanding with a lyric, a misin-terpretation. The term rape wasn't used. I would neveruse the term rape in my records. Hip-hop don't con-done that, the streets don't condone that. Nobody con-dones that. So I just wanted to reach out to ... all thesexy ladies, the beautiful ladies that have been reach-ing out to me with the misunderstanding. We don't con-done rape and I'm not with that.”

As if not saying “rape” prohibited him from describ-ing rape.

Amazing. Just ... wow. And one hopes “the sexy ladies, the beautiful

ladies,” are not also the staggeringly naive ladies. For abigger pile of horse manure, you'd have to visit a sta-ble.

Perhaps you're old enough to remember when, asa culture, we decided to take rape seriously. If you re-call public service announcements telling you that“no means no,” if you saw police implement policiesaimed at more sensitive treatment of rape victims, ifyou were paying attention when the boss chasing the

secretary around the desk ceased to be acomic staple, perhaps you can appreciatewhat strange times we find ourselves in.

Perhaps you find yourself saying: Didn'twe already have this conversation?

Perhaps you have felt the profound dis-connect of hearing would-be senator ToddAkin seek to explain the biology of rape.

Or would-be senator Richard Mourdockdiscussing how God wants women to getpregnant through rape.

Perhaps you were stunned how twoboys in Steubenville, Ohio, raped a drunkengirl and it was documented in text mes-sages and cellphone pictures.

Or how students at Yale paraded aroundchanting, “No means yes! Yes means anal!”

Perhaps it made you feel — and this feel-ing is depressingly common lately — as if yesterday'sachievements are eroding like sandcastles in the surf.Ignorance, in remission for years, returns like a stub-born cancer.

We should have known. Progress has no finish line. Once won, it must be

protected and renewed. At 37 years of age, Rick Rossgrew up in the era after the “no means no” lectures,when we apparently assumed people would “justknow” things the rest of us were painstakingly taught.The fallacy of that is testified to in a song celebratingdate rape by a man who has not the faintest clue atdarn near 40 years of age.

So take “U.O.E.N.O.,” as a cautionary tale, a remixof the old axiom about eternal vigilance being theprice of freedom. Turns out, it's the price of enlighten-ment, too.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald,1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may con-tact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

© 2013, The Miami Herald

We Are Seeing Progress Undone

Leonard

PITTS

Brokaw: Hod Will Be MissedTom Brokaw, New York

Hod Nielsen was an emblematic member of thegreatest generation, a soft spoken and modest manwho spent most of his life celebrating in radio broad-casts or newspaper columns the achievements of oth-ers.

Those of us who grew up hoping to get a mentionin a Hod column the morning after a game or in a pre-view of a coming season had no idea of his youthfulheroics leading up to the greatest military invasion inhistory — D-Day, the audacious battle that began tospell the end of Nazi Germany.

Hod was a P-38 pilot, flying air photo reconnais-sance missions over the landing sites during thatstormy spring of 1944. He once described to me a Ger-man fighter plane chasing his lightly armed aircraft

back out over the English Channel. Laughing, Hodsaid, “I knew then I had seen enough of the world; Iwanted to get back to South Dakota.”

And so he did, devoting his life not just to on-the-field heroics, but also to the bonds that lasted a life-time for teammates, the second stringers who starredin the classroom or in other endeavors, the valuesthat went well beyond touchdowns scored or statetournament wins.

Meredith and I made a special trip to Yankton lastfall to spend some time with this special man and hewas characteristically up to date on the local teamsand the whereabouts of our relatives and class-mates.

He was a man at peace with his life, as he shouldhave been for he leaves a legacy of service, citizen-ship and abiding friendship.

God bless our friend Hod.

CAPITAL JOURNAL, Pierre (March 28): The late, great Republican Gov.Bill Janklow, after losing his primary smash-up against U.S. Sen. Jim Abdnor,used to boast with an asterisk that he’d never lost an election in which Democ-rats could vote.

South Dakota’s Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson, who announced this week thathe will retire in 2014 instead of seeking re-election, did even better at pulling fromthe opposite party. He never lost an election at all during his political career, de-spite serving one of the nation’s most conservative states — a feat that surely re-quired a healthy dose of support every election cycle from South DakotaRepublicans.

Some here in Pierre may have come to know Johnson first during his years inthe Legislature. He served two terms in the state House of Representatives start-ing in 1978 and two terms in the state Senate starting in 1982.

He easily walked away with his first congressional election victory in 1986,though the real contest in that year, with a farm crisis in progress, was the toughprimary against Jim Burg of Wessington Springs.

Some of his contests were closer in the years that followed, but Johnson al-ways had more votes than his opponent every time his name was on the ballot -even though he may not always have voted the way some of his more conserva-tive backers would have liked him to.

We didn’t always agree with him here at the Capital Journal, but we have al-ways trusted him to make the decisions he thought best for the people of SouthDakota. And this is another one of those times when he’s making a tough call.Though not all of Johnson’s Democratic supporters may agree — already the po-litical press is saying Johnson’s retirement opens the door for the Republicans toclaim another Senate seat — we applaud Sen. Johnson’s decision to retire as a dif-ficult but correct choice, and we thank him for his service.

KEARNEY (Neb.) HUB (March 30): The Legislature’s Health and HumanServices Committee did the right thing this week when it killed a bill by state Sen.Charlie Janssen of Fremont to cut off taxpayer funded prenatal care for illegal im-migrants.

Regarding immigrants and immigrant issues, Janssen is famous for his dis-trust, dislike and disconnect with people he regards as unworthy to be in theUnited States. It wasn’t a surprise that he chose to challenge his legislative col-leagues, who in 2012 voted 30-16 to reinstate taxpayer funding for prenatal carefor illegal immigrants and low-income women.

This year, in his attempt to throw out the funding, Janssen argued that a newcrop of state lawmakers ought to have an opportunity to vote. He said he wasdisappointed the Health and Human Services Committee voted 6-0 this week tokill his LB518. Apparently, none of the lawmakers on the committee agree withJanssen’s reasoning.

Last year, in a move that attracted national attention, Nebraska lawmakers ac-knowledged the many good reasons to restore funding for prenatal care. It lapsedin 2010 after federal officials notified the state that Medicaid must be based onthe mother’s eligibility.

Illegal immigrants are not eligible for public benefits, but lawmakers reasonedit’s not the mother’s eligibility that matters as much as the infant’s eligibility. Ba-bies of illegal immigrants become U.S. citizens the moment they are born.

Many legislators believed that funding the prenatal care was a moral responsi-bility. However, for most it was a money issue. It’s less expensive to pay for pre-natal care than to contend with the big hospital bills that result from prematurebirths and other complications when mothers don’t get medical attention duringpregnancy.

The Health and Human Services Committee, chaired by state Sen. KathyCampbell of Lincoln, recognized the fiscal advantages of caring for soon-to-be cit-izens and made the right call in stopping Janssen’s challenge.

“It’s still going to be an issue across Nebraska,” Janssen predicted. Yes, prena-tal care could remain an issue as long as people such as Janssen continue fan-ning the flames.

If only Janssen could drop his vendetta and start acting more charitably to-ward his fellow man. It’s hard to believe the guy has visions of becoming governor.

The Availability Of Prenatal Care