Logic

JUDGE FRANCIS Cosgrove doesn't do explanations. So we can't unbraid the twisted logic in his refusal to hold former Police Captains James J. Brady and Joseph J. DiLacqua for trial. What a shame. You might want to try the same logic next time you get hauled into traffic court. Two rookie police officers who arrived on the scene moments after an apparently drunk Brady ran his city car into a pole told Cosgrove DiLacqua ordered them to submit false reports and to alter the scene to make it appear Brady had been forced off the road.

ICAN'T believe that anyone would write a letter to the Daily News to defend Abu Abbas, the mass murderer and terrorist who plotted so many innocent deaths - but here comes a Mr. Eric Hammell, who writes that Abbas is innocent of the murder of Leon Klinghoffer because he was on shore and not on the boat when it happened. To say that Abbas told the hijackers on board not to hurt anyone is a blatant lie, and distortion of the facts, and Mr. Hammell should be ashamed of himself to write such a letter.

Since the administration and Congress have made available $100 million in aid to the so-called freedom fighters in Nicaragua, would it not be appropriate to give a comparable sum (in relative terms, perhaps $500 million) to the "freedom fighters" in South Africa? Or, to reverse the situation, if "constructive engagement" is satisfactory in South Africa, would it not also be appropriate in Nicaragua instead of killing, maiming and impoverishing much further an already impoverished population?

What sane, logical reason can any person give for the possession of an assault weapon, which sprays bullets instead of firing them one at a time? Such weapons should be outlawed, with the exception of the military, and possibly the SWAT teams of the police departments. There should be very severe fines and jail terms for anyone who possesses one of these very lethal weapons. There is no sense at all to any individual possessing one. Milton Shapiro Philadelphia Have an opinion on the news or issues of the day?

A longshoreman was charged by a federal grand jury yesterday in the theft last year of nine logic analyzers from the Philadelphia waterfront. What's a logic analyzer? That's what the thieves wanted to know. One of them had the nerve to call the owner of the pieces to ask, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Carlos A. Martir Jr., who announced the charges against James Roberson, 34, of 33rd Street near Lehigh Avenue. It was not clear whether the phone call led to Roberson's arrest.

I NEED someone to explain something to me. If your grandmother or other relative was brutally murdered like Marie Lindgren, how could you not want the death penalty for the low-lifes who did it? I don't want the perpetrators to be able to watch cable, get educated, spend my hard-earned tax dollars and eventually come out into the world again. They took a human life and - in my eyes - they would do it again! I say give the death penalty without any appeals! Silvia Puglia-Velykis Philadelphia

A recent White House "issues lunch" reportedly went this way: The report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography came up. Patrick J. Buchanan, the White House director of communications, had what is for him a modest proposal - ban the sale of Penthouse and Playboy from military bases. There was a pause until someone said, "Well, that would certainly do wonders for our recruiting program," at which point everyone, President Reagan included, laughed. Next item, please. The anecdote is instructive.

One team had the best record in baseball (104-58), was never more than a half-game out of first place all season and stampeded down the stretch to go 20-7 after Sept. 2. The other team was nine games out of first at the all-star break, won fewer games (89) than any full-season American League East champion in history and stumbled through a final two weeks (nine losses in its final 13 games, six in its final seven games) that made the '64 Phillies look almost respectable. So if you were laying the odds on an American League playoff series between these two teams, whom would you favor?

"Out with logic, on with lunacy" was the OWL Party of Oregon's campaign slogan a dozen years ago when it fielded a full state of statewide candidates. OWL platform planks included proposals like liquidizing the state's assets so taxpayers could see what they would look like in cash. This crowd made Lyndon LaRouche's bunch appear reasonable by comparison. Given recent international, national, regional and local events, the OWL Party could resurface and do quite well. The MOVE grand jury must have had several OWL adherents on it. How else do you explain their inane conclusions?

Some years ago I was talking to a journalist friend of mine and it was around Easter time. Nonchalantly, I said I was overjoyed with the hope of rising from death some day and living again. What a great day it would be, I opined, to rise to a new life and be immortal. My friend thought for a while and then said, "I don't think I'd care to come back to life here; once was enough. " I was shocked into silence because I had always assumed that everyone would rejoice to rise from the dead.

MY NEPHEW is a very smart 3 1/2-year-old with an unassailable sense of logic. Like most toddlers, he sees the world in a linear way, without the usual adult contortions. Here is a recent conversation I overheard between Alex and his mother: "Alex, honey, time for night-night. " "I not tired. " "C'mon, it's late and you need to go to bed. " "I want to watch SpongeBob. " "You can watch Sponge Bob in the morning. " "I want to watch him now. " "Mommy is sleepy, Alex.

CAN WE agree that the four Marines who urinated on the corpses of three Taliban fighters violated American values, the Geneva Convention and their own training? Even if it weren't against the rules, it was bad and stupid because it gave the Taliban a propaganda gift. It feeds their narrative that Americans are brutal infidels, when they are the ones who shield al Qaeda, destroy historic Buddhist artifacts, murder other Muslims, ban music and whip women who dare go to school. Worse than the urinators were the pinhead(s)

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. " - Ralph Waldo Emerson Ralph Waldo Emerson, meet Ronald Ernest Paul. He is the very soul of a foolish consistency. Meaning that he is willing, often to a fault, to follow his ideology to its logical and most extreme conclusions. In this, the congressman differs from other GOP contenders for the White House and, for that matter, from most politicians, period. Your average pol might rail against the intrusion of government into the private lives of citizens, then turn right around and advocate a law regulating what a gay man does in his bedroom - and see no contradiction.

NUMBERS DON'T lie, as the saying goes, but for a long time last night at Villanova's Pavilion, the numbers seemed to be bending the truth quite a bit. Then again, basketball in the Big 5 has a way of doing that on many a night. Last night was no exception, as the Wildcats defeated La Salle, 76-69, in overtime. Some number-crunching to ponder: * In the first half, Villanova missed all 12 of its three-point attempts, made just seven of 23 overall from the floor and turned the ball over 14 times, yet trailed by just five at halftime.

REALITY-LOCKED political observers expected Judge Jimmy Lynn last week to knock down lawsuits seeking to knock off three candidates - City Commissioner Marge Tartaglione, Councilman Frank Rizzo and Councilwoman Marian Tasco - who are enrolled in DROP, but who are running for re-election anyway. What might have surprised some (but not all) observers was the ridicule heaped on the plaintiffs' attorneys by the judge. The lawyers argued that because the Deferred Retirement Option Plan requires an "irrevocable commitment" to retire, the three defendants were in violation.

An NBA game is like an NBA season - only the end matters. All the good effort in the world, if paired with a string of last-minute misses, really means as much as a first-minute collapse. And the 76ers know this better than most teams. For two years the Sixers have been the team that, when taking the ball out on the sideline for the final crucial possession, had their fans watching with a sense of foreboding. How will it end this time? With what off-balance miss will this loss be sealed?

The kerfuffle over Christine O'Donnell's loose grasp of the First Amendment obscures a more disturbing point - she would allow "intelligent design" to be taught in public schools. The Republican candidate for Senate in Delaware elicited guffaws in a debate with Democrat Chris Coons for seeming not to know that separation of church and state is set forth in the First Amendment to the Constitution. O'Donnell later said her only point was that the exact phrase separation of church and state is not found in the Constitution.

The Giants beat Roy Halladay and Cole Hamels. That wasn't supposed to happen. Halladay has another crack at San Francisco and Tim Lincecum in Game 5 on Thursday. Who wins: Doc or the Cat Call Kid? Let's establish the stakes first. This is the most important start of Halladay's life, the first time he pitches a postseason game when his team absolutely needs a win. Yeah, Charlie was sort of kidding about Game 4 being the most important of the series - until Game 5. It's an obvious point, but it's also true and undeniable.

The culinary cocktail fad has spread - its emphasis on classics revamped with boutique liqueurs and surprising house-made mixers - into a required accessory for most striving new restaurants. And Adsum's moody bar, run by former Apothecary mixologist Preston Eckman, is no exception, with its own battery of infused wines, smoked blackberry syrups, house apricot liqueurs, and shaker-whipped eggwhite froths. But few of the cocktails here show the sharp kitchen cross-over moves of the genre quite as artfully as the Logical Consequence.

TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, a privately held Malvern company that develops small-molecule drugs to treat cancer, announced today that it has received an investment of $5 million from Pfizer Ventures. The money brings to $37 million that investors have raised to finance the company since August. The fund will be used for the clinical development a drug that mimics naturally occurring proteins that help promote cell death.    - Christopher K. Hepp