Grave concerns

Under Bush, even the dead suffer.

Grave robbers, a curse of burial grounds for centuries, are back for new valuables: metal ornaments that can be melted down for quick cash as copper and other metal prices climb.

As ludicrously comic -- and impressive, in its own diabolic way -- as this is, I think some are taking their righteous indignation, stabbing it repeatedly until the blood splatters everywhere, wrapping it in a filthy cloak of hyperbole, chaining it to a big hunk of granite and throwing it overboard into the churning sea of You Can't Be Serious.

"I don't know what could be more sacred than protecting our cemeteries," said West Virginia state legislator Kevin Craig, who co-sponsored a law against scrap metal theft after a bronze door was stolen from a tomb at a cemetery in his district in 2006.

Yeah, I don't know either. What I do know is that since we've tried sending emails, writing letters, faxing, telephoning, cajoling, begging, mooning -- wait, my lawyer says I can't talk about that and neither can Mrs. Bush, so don't ask -- screaming for anyone with their hand in the Cookie Jar of Power to sort of maybe think about not being a paid shill for the plutocracy for five minutes, pretty please with the dessicating body politic on top, nothing has worked. Trust me, you don't want to see my failed attempts at cloning my man Dennis. So, we're down to Plan 9.

Most commonly, old graves are disturbed by people hunting for Revolutionary or Civil War relics to sell. In rare cases, body parts are removed by groups for use in occult ceremonies, said Nicholas Bellantoni, Connecticut's state archaeologist.

"It's kind of ghastly, but we've seen it," said Bellantoni.

Anyone know a good occultist?


















"I'll show you how to rob graves."


















"Hey Gein, no one wears the flesh of the dead around here but me!"