By DALE McFEATTERS, Scripps Howard News Service

Welcoming members of the military home hasn't changed much over the last century, although now they invariably arrive by commercial jet instead of a train or troop ship.

With all the fights he has going -- Iraq, Afghanistan, the two little nuts in Iran and North Korea -- you wonder why President Barack Obama would pick a fight with Fox News. But he has.

Looking for a one-stop source of advice on sex trafficking, fraudulently obtaining mortgages, opening a brothel, tax cheating and shooting your husband?

Your go-to source for help appears to be certain offices of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, whose acronym, a nut, now seems singularly appropriate.

Those critics of President Obama who feared he would use his back-to-school speech to indoctrinate America's use with socialism were closer to the mark than they realized. Thanks to sophisticated mind control techniques Obama learned in a Far Eastern madrassa, he is capable of imparting powerful subliminal messages.

Congress is returning to Washington and President Obama's health-care overhaul is in trouble thanks in large part to the noisy misinformation spread at town-hall meetings while lawmakers were on their August recess.

After North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Libya's Moammar Gadhafi may be the world's most widely ridiculed leader. Wait, it gets better: He's making his first visit to the United States in September.

The fate of the economy may rest on those little shoulders sagging under the weight of their huge backpacks as they trudge back to school.

The American economy is 70 percent driven by consumer spending, and the problem is that consumers aren't spending. This is holding back not only our own economic recovery, but recovery in Europe as well. The French and Germans are counting on us.

Sarah Palin is the gift that keeps on giving, and one of those gifts is her ex-son-in-law-to-be, Levi Johnston.

I'd like to thank the American taxpayers for our new car. We couldn't have done it without you. Nobody else but the federal government would have given us $4,500 for an 18-year-old SUV with a cracked windshield.

The Framers of the Constitution were relaxed -- many Republicans might say careless -- in laying out the qualifications to hold office in their new government.