Brickbats

Some people take their right to a jury of their peers rather literally. In Houston, Texas, the lawyer for a four-foot-six-inch man accused of fatally shooting his grandfather has asked that the jury pool include some people who are five feet tall or shorter to guarantee a fair trial.

In the former Soviet Union, freedom marches on. Moscow's first sex shop has opened, providing the natives with a wide selection of blue movies, inflatable dolls, and "orgasm creams."

Those of you who like to play board games may want to pick up Serial Killer. The object of the game, which comes in a body bag, is to travel around the country, collecting as many kills as possible, without getting caught. Those ladies down at the Parents' Music Resource Center are going to love this one.

The FBI has asked Congress to force phone companies to install equipment that will make it easier to eavesdrop on telephone conversations.

Big-government conservatism at work: Vice President Dan Quayle's staff had convinced him to oppose continued funding for a space station. But, reports The Washington Monthly, Budget Director Richard Darman changed Quayle's mind. He told the veep that if the money wasn't spent on the space station it would just be used on social programs.

The City Council of Lagrange, Indiana, is considering expanding the town's open-container law to bar drivers of horse-drawn buggies from drinking alcohol. The ordinance is aimed at local Amish lads who get tanked up and careen wildly through the streets.

The Florida Commission on Human Rights has ruled that the Jacksonville sheriff's office illegally discriminated against transsexual jail guard Belinda Smith. Smith was fired in 1985, while she was still a man, for wearing women's clothes.

In the last three years, Charles Plunkett has given hundreds of rides home to bar patrons too drunk to drive themselves. Now the California Public Utilities Commission has ordered him to get a state permit to carry passengers or go to jail.

Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson was lecturing a class of fifth-graders in Duluth on the importance of studying and using their imagination. Turning to the blackboard, he wrote immajination. After studying the word, he erased the j and wrote a g.

A few years ago, special investigators demanded that Ed Meese and Oliver North turn over their records. Meese and North said the move would violate the confidentiality the administration needed to run foreign affairs. Congress complained about a cover-up. Now the special prosecutor investigating the House Bank has subpoenaed the bank's records. The House is going to fight the subpoena because it violates members' "confidentiality."

California's program of taxing tobacco to fund an antismoking public-relations campaign has drawn lots of praise. So it isn't surprising that some people want to expand the idea. Writing in the Western Journal of Medicine, Dr. Thomas S. Bordenheimer called for slapping excise taxes on fatty foods such as fries and burgers to fund anticholesterol messages.

Spy magazine says that the next time we hear politicians complain about how expensive it is to run a campaign we should tell them to spend their money more wisely. Spy discovered the following purchases made with campaign funds: Rep. Guy Vander Jagt, $2,023 for season tickets to the Muskegon Hockey Club; Sen. Wyche Fowler, $18,240 for tickets to Miss Saigon; Rep. James Traficant, $9,100 for golf expenses; Sen. Joseph Biden, $6,787 on "mementos"; Sen. Orrin Hatch, $602 on candy; and Sen. David Boren, $6,621 on a birthday party for himself and $22,000 to redecorate his Washington, D.C., office.