We’re checking in a little early at the keyboard this week. By the time you hear this, I’ll be deep into the Strawberry Music Festival, but it already has been a bizarre week for news. I mean, how often do you lose a planet?

Okay, someone decided that Pluto is just a ball of gas, so it doesn’t really qualify as a planet anymore than any other ball of gas orbiting a star. Therefore, despite what all of us have been told since we were children, our little circle in the universe consists of only eight planets. One thing I want to know is how this effects a couple of well known Disney characters. I mean Pluto was just a dog, but I always thought that Goofy was just Pluto’s alter ego. Now, from an astronomical perspective, Pluto is just Goofy. So what does it take to qualify as a planet? Does it require rocks and dirt? Okay, just tell us what the rules are, but remember, when it comes to being a ball of gas, the Earth takes a back seat to no object in the universe.

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If that’s not bizarre enough, here’s some of the Earth’s best gas of the week. The US Food and Drug Administration has decided that a product known affectionately as "Plan B," more commonly known as the morning after pill can be sold over the counter to anyone age 18 or older. Put this into perspective. If you want to prevent a pregnancy before you might engage in behavior which would cause it, you have to see a physician and get a prescription. But if you change your mind after you’ve engaged in such behavior, all you have to do is survive for 18 years on this ball of gas, then walk into the drugstore and lay your money down. This product, of course, is aimed at the female gender. I’m still waiting for the pill that will allow male people to head off a pregnancy on the morning after.

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And in the same general area of bizarre news, the California legislature has passed a bill allowing the distribution of condoms in state prisons. I can imagine several scenarios where a rubber might come in handy in prison, but few of them involve preventing pregnancy. Some people who disapprove of teenage sex complain constantly that telling teenagers about contraception just encourages them to have sexual relations. I’d like to hear what these same people think about condoms in prison.

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You may we recall that we talked just a couple of weeks ago about Katherine Harris’ self-destructing campaign for the US Senate in Florida. Harris always appeared to be a little over the top in her devotion to the Bush family’s political adventures, but she appears to have bought the entire born again formula for political success. In a speech to a convention of Baptists, Harris said that if the people fail to elect Christians to public office, lawmakers will be legislating sin. She also said that God didn’t intend for the US to be a nation of secular laws, and she called the separation of church and state, "A lie we’ve been told to keep religious people out of politics." This may not be especially important because Harris already is a marginal candidate, but it gets attention because her association with the Bush gang gives her a high profile. Here’s a well known candidate for high office saying that her religion ought to be the guiding principle of political decisions. This is, of course, identical to the politics in the countries which the Bush gang calls our enemies. Even though Harris isn’t likely to win a Senate seat, she checks in as a representative of the Bush gang. If we’re lucky, she also represents a trend toward throwing those people out of public office.

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Okay, we’ll be serious for just a moment. As usual, all I know is what I read in the papers; I don’t know what it means, but I think these two stories are connected. First, some homeowners in Alta Sierra are raising a stink because the homeowners association in that community is planning some improvements to an existing hikers trail along Rattlesnake creek. These people are upset because the trail is in their backyards. The key word is "existing." Although the Grass Valley Union has jumped on their bandwagon behind the "property rights" slogan, these are people who bought their homes knowing that the easement for the hiking trail already had been recorded.

Okay, so they really don’t have a legitimate gripe. Now look at Proposition 90 on the November ballot in California. It’s supposed to be about reacting to that US Supreme Court decision last year allowing a city in Connecticut to foreclose private homes under the eminent domain principle to allow commercial development. Opposing that decision was an issue with the potential to unite the so-called conservatives who claim they want to protect property rights, and the so-called liberals who want to limit growth, especially the kind of growth symbolized by big-box retail. Instead of bringing everyone together, however, the issue has put both sides in awkward positions. The conservatives usually land on the side of development, even by big corporations. Part of the conservative baggage in local land use decisions is the refusal to admit that a corporation is something different from an individual. That puts the guy who thinks he’s a conservative in the position of defending the right of a big corporation to do whatever it wants with the property it owns, but opposing the big corporation that wants to take his house to do what it wants.

The so-called liberals, on the other hand, are backed into a corner by the conservatives’ dilemma. The liberal wants to limit the big box on its merits, causing the conservatives to squawk about property rights. People who like to call themselves conservative are eager to play the property rights card. Some even claim that people and corporations should be free to do whatever they want with their own property without government interference, but they don’t really believe that. They have some definite ideas about what their next door neighbor shouldn’t do on his property, and they agree completely with the Birkenstocks and Volvo liberals that they don’t want Wal-Mart building a new store next door. The difference is that the liberal wants Wal-Mart to stay in the next town down the road, while the conservative says Wal-Mart has every right to build a store a couple miles away. Conservatives and liberals see their differences in light years, but they’re actually measured in miles.