Nobles and knaves

Nobles: The D.C. Council, for softening the District's ludicrous and unfair drunk-driving laws.

The best laws are supposed to discourage bad behavior, not punish good behavior. And it goes without saying that drinking and driving is a behavior to be vigorously discouraged. But D.C. law currently gives police officers the power to arrest a driver with a blood-alcohol level as little as 0.01. In other words, a spoonful of cough syrup could land a motorist in jail.

In wake of public outrage, the council rightly passed an emergency bill Tuesday stating that anyone with a BAL under 0.05 is not presumed to be under the influence. With a BAL between 0.05 and 0.08 (the legal limit) a motorist is presumed to be neither drunk nor sober, meaning it's the officer's discretion.

Mayor Tony Williams has not committed to signing the bill, however. He should do so immediately. A DUI conviction is a black mark on one's reputation, as it should be. But not for those who are acting responsibly.

For adhering to reason, the D.C. Council is the Noble of the week.

Knaves: Kamau Kambon, for trying to resuscitate Hitler's "final solution."

It is a reflection of the tragic state of American universities today that a professor could easily take the Knave honor every Saturday. If only out of fairness for the rest of the world's morons, the Editorial Page usually looks elsewhere. Occasionally, however, there comes along an exceptionally moronic professor whose pure maliciousness simply cannot be overlooked.

Meet Mr. Kambon, who spoke at Howard University on Oct. 14 in a C-SPAN televised event, "Black Media Forum on the Image of Black Americans in Mainstream Media." A former visiting professor at North Carolina State University, Mr. Kambon concluded his speech with these remarks:

"Now how do I know that the white people know that [black people] are going to come up with a solution to the problem? I know it because they have retina scans, they have what they call racial profiling, DNA banks and they're monitoring our people to try to prevent the one person from coming up with the one idea. And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem ... I'm saying to you that we need to solve this problem because they are going to kill us ... the problem on the planet is white people."

For his genocidal comments, Mr. Kambon is the Knave of the week.