By DALE McFEATTERS, Scripps Howard News Service

WASHINGTON -- There's alarming news on the cultural front. After 60 years, the Men's Dress Furnishing Association, its membership down from 120 to 25, is disbanding. The association is the trade group of American necktie makers.

WASHINGTON -- Our presidential candidates go through a rigorous, even brutal, screening process -- grueling campaigns across four time zones, endless debates, alarming ethnic foods.

WASHINGTON -- An old economic rule of thumb, in the days before globalization made everything so serious, was that the value of a currency was in inverse proportion to its attractiveness.

WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton has proved a relentless, even implacable campaigner, a veritable Inspector Javert among politicians. But it is clear she is coming to the end of her string.

WASHINGTON -- This is a lesson for the civics books. Five months ago, ethanol derived from corn was the new miracle green fuel. By using corn to power our cars, we could tell the sheiks to go pound their sand.

WASHINGTON -- When I was a Peace Corps teacher in Africa, really remote Africa, more than a few of my students wore glasses and I never thought much about it. Then the government asked us to test the eyesight of the students at our little high school.

WASHINGTON -- Al-Qaeda's leaders must be hiding in the high mountains or somewhere where the air is thin because the latest communications from their number two leader is seriously loopy and sustained oxygen deprivation may be the explanation.

WASHINGTON -- Alcohol and presidential politics have a long and honorable history in America.George Washington distilled whiskey and brewed beer and made liberal use of both in his various elections. He and Martha would convene daily at around 3 p.m. for a toddy.

As a former Pennsylvanian, I'm both pleased and a little alarmed at all the attention my home state is getting in the run-up to its April 22 primary.The political reporters covering the Obama-Clinton campaigns act like foreign correspondents in an exotic land of strange food and weird customs.

For your planning purposes, scientists have determined that Earth will end in 7.59 billion years.Billion? For a second you had me scared there. I thought you said (begin ital) million (end ital). These kinds of huge numbers should be left to deep-space astronomers and the gnomes who draw up the federal budget.