MORGANTOWN, West Va.: All I know is what I read in the paper. A professor in chemical engineering at West Virginia University has found a way to run a diesel engine on chicken manure.

Now you don’t just shovel it into the tank, you have to turn it into a liquid first, then mix it with about two-thirds diesel fuel. Even the professor ain’t quite sure why it works, but it does.

These chicken experts are amazing. First they found a market for chicken feet, gizzards and wings… and now, manure. Corn farmers have spent millions of dollars and many years building a market for ethanol fuel, devoting their best corn to the cause, and now along comes these chicken folks who make theirs from something they otherwise can’t give away for free.

This new “chicken diesel” is going to solve a problem for truckers who park their rigs in front of the house overnight. Those ornery neighbor boys that you have been suspicious of… well, they won’t siphon your tank again but once. That’ll cure ’em.

Senator Jay Rockefeller announced that he is donating $15 million to build an Alzheimer’s Center in memory of his mother. That’s his money he’s giving, not yours… a rare occurrence for a politician, and almost unheard of for a Senator. This is a fine example of what Kip Kiplinger wrote about last week in Washington. While bin Ladin uses his personal wealth to do evil, in this country we’ve got fine folks like Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, and the Senator’s great-grandfather who contributed vast fortunes to great and wonderful causes, to build lives, not destroy them. And as Kip says, Americans of all economic persuasion, rich and poor, still share this spirit of generosity.

Well, bin Ladin is still hiding from us. If he’s in one of those caves maybe Mr. Rumsfield will send in some spelunkers and coal miners to find him and dig him out. You know, if he is human… and there hasn’t been any evidence of that lately…, instead of the caves of Tora Bora, I bet there are times when he wishes he had gone to the beaches of Bora Bora. Even if he never looked at the pretty girls stretched out on the sand, the scenery would beat whatever he’s surrounded by tonight.

You probably heard about the football game in Cleveland this afternoon. It was kind of a dull game for the home crowd till less than a minute to go. But it ended like some of those soccer games we hear about in Europe. It’s no surprise that some of those football fans got mad enough to throw hundreds of beer bottles on the field near the end of the game. The surprise was that not all of ’em were empty.

I’m going to ask you to do a favor for all my friends in the cattle business, eat a steak for Christmas. You can still have a turkey or ham on Christmas Day if tradition demands it, but sometime during the holidays, buy a few pounds of T-bones and sirloins and give the family a real treat. With gas below a dollar, you’re saving so much on the automobile these days you’ve got plenty of dough for a special meal or two.

Historic Quote from Will Rogers:

“Europe don’t like us and they think we’re arrogant, and bad manners, and have a million faults, but every one of them, well, they give us credit for being liberal (meaning “generous”). Doggone it, people are liberal. Americans… I do know that America is fundamentally liberal.” Radio broadcast, October 18, 1931