Warning: A Lack Of Respect Can Be Hazardous To Your Health

This past summer in Tucson, gunfire rang out in a mall after somebody said hello to the wrong person. We wonder what this world is coming to when friendliness is interpreted as hostility. However, with gangbangers, the norms are upside-down.

DISS ME AND YOU'RE DEAD. Your Lightning Round knows life is cheap. But the San Francisco Chronicle offers a discouraging reminder from the streets of Oakland, where an average of 100 people are murdered every year, and a lack of respect is a motive.

Increasingly, the young murder suspects coming to the station for questioning seem to lack basic morality, said Sgt. Tim Nolan, who has been investigating Oakland homicides for 17 years.

"There are more and more families where there's less and less structure," he said. "Talking to these suspects day in and out, there's a higher percentage today with no sense of right and wrong. It's frightening, but we are creating super-criminals."

All it takes is a look, a put-down or a lost fight, and bullets fly. Disrespect has become the No. 1 reason to kill.

Killings have been concentrated in these neighborhoods for so long that revenge killings continue for decades. There's a six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon that happens after each death: The killers and their victims can typically trace a relationship through family, friends, schools or prison stints.

What can we say... except "Help!" On the other hand, presidential candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas has a lot to say. In fact, he already said it in 1998.

YOU VOULDN'T VANT TO SEE OUR BACKHAND, NYET? John McEnroe thinks the Russian mafia is infiltrating tennis. This comes after several match-fixing allegations, one of them involving fourth-ranked Russian Nikolay Davydenko.

McEnroe told the London Daily Telegraph, quoted by AFP:

"I think this issue has to be closely looked at, because it's very conceivable that it's happening. There are guys out there who are 100 in the world, 200 in the world, and they're making 50,000 pounds a year.

"And if someone says that they'll give you 50,000 pounds, so your entire year's money, I think there's a strong possibility that they have taken the money, without a doubt," McEnroe said.

"There is definitely temptation for people. It's becoming more of a drama because there's more money in sports."

Oh John, you cannot be serious! What happens if somebody refuses to throw a match? Exploding rackets? Suicide ball boys?

HEY BIG SPENDER. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent $16,000 on flowers last year, presumably to make nice with visiting dignitaries, according to Roll Call. She should've linked up with the left-leaning former owner of Tucson's Roses & More, who probably could've taken care of her for free.

Roll Call also notes some other eye-raising expenses:

• A $10,000 contract to former Clinton White House speechwriter Heather Hurlburt to write the speech Pelosi delivered to the Israeli Knesset.

She's House Speaker and can't even speak with her own words?

• Nearly $20,000 to Washington attorney Richard Meltzer to help with Pelosi’s transition. “Just like a presidential transition, Richard Meltzer was hired to oversee the historic changeover of Congress,” [Pelosi spokesman Nadeam] Elshami said.

Uhhh, that sounds a little like outsourcing to us.

• More than $2,400 to hire a makeup artist for the week of her swearing in. Pelosi later reimbursed the entire cost from her personal funds.

What's wrong with Estee Lauder?

WRONG NUMBER. The Secret Service is trying to figure out how a 16-year-old boy from Iceland got a private number to the White House. As ABC News reports:

Introducing himself as Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the actual president of Iceland, Atlason found President George W. Bush's allegedly secret telephone number and phoned, requesting a private meeting with him.

"I just wanted to talk to him, have a chat, invite him to Iceland and see what he'd say," Vífill told ABC News.

And he was convincing...

Vífill claims he was passed on to several people, each of them quizzing him on President Grímsson's date of birth, where he grew up, who his parents were and the date he entered office.

"It was like passing through checkpoints," he said. "But I had Wikipedia and a few other sites open, so it was not so difficult really."

When he finally got through to President Bush's secretary, Vífill alleges he was told to expect a call back from Bush.

"She told me the president was not available at the time, but that she would mark it in his schedule to call me back on Monday evening," he said.

Instead, the police showed up at his home in Akranes, a fishing town about 48 kilometers from Reykjavik, and took him to the local police station, where they questioned the 16-year-old for several hours.

Next time, he says he'll call as Karl Rove.

THAT SHOULD SPEED THINGS UP. From our backyard: a passport printing company is coming to Tucson and moving into some cool headquarters.

From KOLD News 13:

Stanley Incorporated has a printing facility in Hot Springs, Ark., and is due to open the Tucson facility in the former Gateway Ice Center on Tucson's East Side near Speedway Blvd. and Kolb Road.

Hopefully the wait for passport times will thaw just like the ice.

RETURN TO SENDER. If you want to wish one of our troops a Merry Christmas, you better know who you're writing to. The Pentagon is no longer delivering mail to "Any Wounded Soldier" for fear of terrorist booby-traps or nasty-grams.

From the AP:

"Are we going to forget our soldiers because we are running in fear?" Fena D'Ottavio asked. The suburban Chicago woman was using her blog to encourage friends to send mail to unspecified soldiers until she learned of the ban, which she called a sad commentary on society.

Last season, despite the rule, officials say as many as 450,000 pieces of mail not addressed to anyone in particular managed to reach Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. But they were returned or, if they had no return address, were thrown out altogether, because the hospital lacked the manpower to open and screen all the mail, spokesman Terry Goodman said.

Your Lightning Round finds it sad that the worst of us on the planet set the agenda for the best of us.

But don't despair. Simply log on to www.letssaythanks.com and send a card to any member of our armed forces. You pick a design from one contributed by children and add a message on the inside. If you're in a hurry, you can pick from one of several pre-worded greetings. All messages are screened before they go out.

All of this, by the way, doesn't cost you a dime. The folks at Xerox are picking up the tab. In the wake of the PODS debacle involving a member of the Air Force, we're anxious to salute a company going beyond the call of duty to support our troops.