It's a fine day for treason and treachery.

Few things elicit the same hindbrain twinge of revulsion in me as betrayal, and boy, oh, boy is my hindbrain all a'twinge after reading the news this morning. The sin of Judas is a popular one in the news these days, from places as far apart as Warsaw and Havana.

The new Archbishop of Warsaw had his job offer revoked when it turned out that he'd spent twenty years playing Bishop Finkski, stool pigeon extraordinaire, to the Communist-era Polish security services. Wonder how many kneecaps got broken in questioning thanks to tips from the good cleric? Wonder how many Poles will never look at the inside of a confessional quite the same way again?

Meanwhile, to the south of here, Cindy Sheehan will be manning a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun travelling across Castro's Cuba to go denounce her homeland on foreign soil. When reminded of the US trade embargo that makes travel to Cuba technically a crime for US citizens, she airily responded that she believed her mission was exempt from those restrictions, since she was only travelling there for the purpose of lambasting her government and gaining publicity by doing something goofy on the wrong side of the Guantanamo gates.

Lastly we go to my old stomping grounds of Cobb County, Georgia, where a local woman apparently noticed that, while her wedding vows went on at length about loving and cherishing and that sort of thing, they were pretty much silent on the topic of slipping your beau an antifreeze mickey. Having done in her husband in such a fashion, she went on to poison the man with whom she was cheating on him. Now the state of Georgia intends to kill her, but not with antifreeze, more's the pity.

Dante reserved the ninth and lowest circle of hell for the sin of treachery. Betrayal of friends, betrayal of country, betrayal of family; each had their own special area and gruesome torment. Oddly, there appears to be no shortage of people clamoring to get in...