By the Way…

- They said it…A reader sent us a copy of the Postal Employees' Newsletter, wherein postal functionaries complained that the Republican platform "zeroed-in on the U.S. Postal Service in no uncertain terms." Here's what the platform actually promised to do: "defederalize, denationalize and decentralize government monopolies that poorly service the public and waste taxpayers' dollars." Postscript: we're waiting.

- Meanwhile, the winner of REASON's Post Awful Contest was not the man whose postal carrier admitted she was illiterate and delivered mail by matching characters with street signs and addresses. It was not the Olympic athlete whose two gold medals seem to have been irretrievably launched into the USPS's version of the Bermuda Triangle by its overnight express service. (Incidentally, maybe we could solve our toxic waste problem by mailing it across country. Odds are that much of it would disappear forever.) The winner is Jeanne Blahut of Seattle. She sent in an article about a husband-and-wife singing duo who sent out 600 postcards to promote an upcoming concert. The local post office apparently lost all of them. In a panic, just days before the concert, the couple brought a sample postcard to their local postal claims clerk to help him find the missing cards. No luck. Oh, and then the post office lost the sample postcard, too.