December 15 - And the winner is....Gray Davis!  Governor of California. 

Generally the recipients of this award are small frogs in stagnant ponds.  Their silliness doesn't affect all that many and the bad they do is generally localized.

 Occasionally, however, a big frog in an important pond does or says something so inane that it would be criminal not to note here the transformation to a Jackass.

Shortly after the election, The Washington Times - Weekly Edition  asked the governor, given the deplorable showing of Republicans in California, whether anyone from the GOP could ever be elected to an important state-wide office.

"Sure they can," said Davis, "but only if they are pro-choice, anti-gun and anti-tobacco."

The reporter gave the governor another chance to redeem himself but Davis reiterated the same three qualities he feels are required for political advancement.

Davis is the governor of the largest state in the Union, a state with enormous problems and unlimited potential.  With the defeat of Al Gore, Davis immediately rises to the level of a potential presidential candidate in 2004 and he blathers on and on about tobacco as if he were an old-maid Sunday School teacher.

For embarrassing his constituents and lowering political discussion to new depths, Gray Davis is a worthy Jackass Of The Week.

December 8 - And the winner is....Jim Bowles!  County Sheriff, Dallas, Texas. 

Fights between inmates have tripled since Sheriff Bowles banned smoking in the county jails.  Contraband smokes have compromised jail employees.

"We're seeing the same things that other jails and prisons experienced when they banned smoking," says a flunky of Sheriff Bowles.

Well, duh.  The good sheriff knew banning smoking would cause big problems so of course he bulldozed ahead and implemented the ban.  When America was saner, Bowles' kooky and dangerous policy would have gotten him removed.

Jails are not meant to be pleasant places but when keeping violent inmates under control is the only task entrusted to Sheriff Bowles and his staff, it's mighty peculiar that anti-tobacco's agenda trumps common sense and safety.

For knowing full well that his smoking ban would endanger inmates and guards and for mulishly plowing ahead, Sheriff Bowles meets the criteria for Jackass of the Week.

December 1 - And the winner is....Alfred Muller, MD!  Mayor of Friendship Heights, Maryland. 

Dr. Muller, a physician, is leaving office in 2001.  As a memento of his reign he is presenting his village to the world as the butt of jokes.  The good doctor wants to ban smoking entirely from his village's streets, parks and sidewalks.  

He says this ban protects civil rights.  As proof he offers the testimony of a fellow fanatic who claims that asthma results from a whiff of tobacco smoke wafting through the breeze.  Friendship Heights is a densely packed enclave on the border of Washington, DC where fossil pollutants blanket the streets.

Despite the M.D. after his name, Muller is a throwback to the bronze age when shamans made decisions by pondering entrails or casting feathers into a basin of water. 

For further besmirching the credibility of the medical profession and completely skewing the concept of civil rights, Doctor Muller is the Jackass of the week.

November 24 - And the winner is....David Grossman!  Toledo-Lucas County Health Commissioner. 

Dr. Grossman is the anti-tobacco operative who has proclaimed a countywide smoking ban despite the fact that he holds no elective office.  The "doctor" honorific he inserts before his name appears to be a bit of a reach since he is unaware that there is no credible evidence that secondhand smoke poses any hazards.

Defining quote:  "I'm not taking away anyone's right to smoke but when smokers' habits affect nonsmokers it becomes a public health issue."

For spouting nonsense and usurping the public trust, this freeze-dried old hippy embodies the Jackass of the week.

November 17 - And the winner is.....Maudelle Shirek!  Vice Mayor of Berkeley, CA - Stalingrad of the Pacific.  Ms. Shirek combines that city's bossiness with a brand of anti-tobacco fanaticism that causes real harm to impoverished senior citizens. 

According to a puff piece in today's San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Shirek enjoys globe-trotting to the world's dictatorships on behalf of the poor.  She has dined with such luminaries as Fidel Castro.  In her spare time she oversees a senior center where she has forbidden salt and sugar to her charges.

Her defining moment came when she could have scored a meal-on-wheels program for housebound senior citizens.  She turned the donor down flat.  Why?  The benefactor was a tobacco company.  Let the old folks eat cat food.

For the moral obtuseness that celebrates hobnobbing with dictators who murder their own people while rejecting a program funded by an American company that would have helped her constituents, Maudelle Shirek is a worthy recipient of the Jackass of The Week Award.