Hunting illegal immigrants, relaxing porn laws and whaddya know, Billy Packer's still an ass!

- And so it continues….the 2007 NCAA Tournament continues to be a walking contradiction, still the greatest sporting event in the world, period, but experiencing a year without two of the staples that have made it such. The absence of a single buzzer-beating, my-team-would-have-lost-without-it shot is a profound disappointment to me, because the sight of an exuberant team spilling onto the floor and piling on top of one of their own players who made a clutch shot at the buzzer to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat is, for me, the quintessential March Madness moment. A second disturbing ingredient in this year’s tournament is the presence of a single double-digit seed in the Sweet 16 round. The lowest remaining seed is UNLV, seeded seventh. Worse still, the two regional final games already set for Saturday feature 1-2 matchups in terms of seeding. Seeing the chalk emerge victorious nearly every game is boooooring. Still, I wouldn’t trade this event for the Super Bowl, the World Series or either incarnation of the Olympics. Even at its worst, it’s still better than anything else sports has to offer - well, except when Billy Packer is announcing a game, then not so much. The fact that Packer and his surly, bitter, curmudgeony act weren't a part of any of Thursday night’s game meant that it was a good night for basketball. Unfortunately, he’s back tonight, and we’ll have to endure two games full of his caustic, perpetually dissatisfied, bitter old man routine. Ultimately, though, it’s still the NCAA Tournament, and that supercedes all of this other crap.

- Further proving my point about how f’ed up the TV schedule has been this year, Smallville returned to the CW for two new episodes after an inexplicably long winter hiatus, and now next week we’re back to reruns. The CW doesn’t understand the concept of flow and rhythm, that’s for sure. This much is made clear by the fact that they can’t seem to show enough consecutive new episodes to actively engage those who watch the show, and every time you do see a new episode, you’re plagued by the thought in the back of your mind that you had better enjoy this one, because there’s no telling when you’re going to catch another new episode. Also, mad props to the CW for bringing the show back during the two jam-packed NCAA tournament Thursday nights of late March instead of coming back a few weeks earlier and showing maybe 3-4 new episodes in a row, great thinking ass hats. P.S.………..thanks to ABC for bringing back Six Degrees, an early season favorite of mine, gone for three or four months due to ratings trouble, and dropping it randomly on a Friday night with little fanfare. I was fortunate to catch the TV listings and tune in, but when you have a show that has been plagued by low ratings and you bring it back, presumably in the hopes of having it do better with viewers than the first go-round, maybe making a concerted effort to make people aware that it’s going to be back on the air is in order, just a thought.

- I’m on record as saying my favorite part of soccer, especially everywhere in the world outside of America (where no one gives a crap about the sport) is the rioting and general mayhem caused by mentally unstable fans who throw urine bombs, burn cars and loot their cities when their team wins, when their team loses and pretty much any time they feel like it. Fans going nuts and making fools of themselves is an integral part of sports, but here’s where we’re going to draw the line between being a crazy, passionate fan and just being a world-class scumbag and flat-out wrong: when you start murdering your team’s coach after the team suffers a bad loss. That’s precisely what happened to Pakistani cricket coach Bob Woolmer after his team dropped a World Cup contest to Ireland in a game played in Kingston, Jamaica. Now comes the brutal part: Woolmer was found in his hotel room in a pool of his own vomit and blood, the victim of asphyxiation by strangulation, and authorities are treating the death as a homicide at this time. This is one of those times where I am almost at a loss for words - almost. But to whomever did this and left a grieving widow in their wake, know that you are one of the lowest life forms roaming this planet, perhaps even a rung below O.J. on the Ladder of Scum. At least the Juice had a legitimate reason to be upset with the people he murdered (allegedly), as they had an actual relationship and their actions had indeed caused emotional damage to one another. Of course, that doesn’t justify murdering or injuring anyone in any way, but at least the Juice had a legit reason to be angry. The lothario who murdered Woolmer likely didn’t even know him personally and was pissed because their team lost a cricket game - yes, cricket. Normally I’m not a death penalty honk, but for this case, I think you can make an exception once you find the person responsible. String them up, hang them, give ‘em the guillotine, firing squad, do whatever you want, just make it painful.

- Who doesn’t agree that we need fewer laws restricting the access kids have to online porn? That’s what I thought, we’re all on board with that. Well, at least U.S. District Court Judge Lowell Reed of Philadelphia thinks, as evidenced by his decision to repeal the 1998 Child Online Protection Act. He claims the measure doesn’t address new threats, especially things like MySpace, that have occurred since the law was initially put into place. His reasoning also relies on the fact that Internet content filters do a better job of protecting kids than this law does, so the law was thrown out on the grounds of the First Amendment. Call me nuts, judge, but why not keep the current law in place while lawmakers work on a new one? Just because this law doesn’t go far enough doesn’t mean you toss it out and say the heck with it. This is one case where you can't have too much of a good thing. The more measures in place to protect kids from things like online porn, the better.

- Well this is gonna end well……a Hackensack, N.J. radio show is encouraging its listeners to turn in suspected illegal immigrants to the station, 101.5-FM, or to immigration authorities. Hispanic leaders are predictably outraged over the promotional stunt (that’s what it is, even if the station claims otherwise). These leaders claim it is anti-Hispanic and might encourage racial profiling, and although it initially may appear idiotic to defend the cause of illegal immigrants, I’m going to have to side with the Hispanic community on this one. As much as it’s a good idea to make sure that we take every possible step to ensure that everyone who enters this country does so legally, for security and other reasons, spurring average citizens, many of whom are, let’s face it, not especially bright or competent, to go out looking for possible illegals is a bad idea. I don’t think you want Tommy from Trenton following some guy he sees on the train out of the city around the streets in the hopes of proving that the guy is an illegal immigrant. Just leave that to the professionals, if you don’t mind. Now, if you know someone who is employing an illegal immigrant and you know for sure that this is the case, it’s your call if you want to turn in your friend, but going on the air and encouraging vigilante immigration policing is neither wise nor something that a radio station has any business doing.