Sham

The NFL insists it is committed to hiring more minorities, but it doesn't support a plan to use draft picks as an incentive for teams to consider black coaches. "It's ridiculous. It would be a sham," Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Association, said after a discussion during yesterday's league meeting in New York about the plan, proposed by attorneys Cyrus Mehri and Johnnie Cochran Jr. The plan would reward teams that interview minority candidates for front-office and head coaching positions with extra draft choices and take picks away from teams that don't.

IF YOU call them woolly mammoths, we'll have to hurt you. These Maine women, ages 33 to 70, perpetuate two grand traditions: spinning wool and posing scantily clad. They are scantily clad in wool, by the way. (By the way, doesn't that stuff itch?) Susanne Grosjean, a Maine wool spinner, came up with the idea of a calendar featuring her sister spinners in all their glory - and wool. The group is using the proceeds to fund a trip to Ireland and to benefit breast-cancer research.

An owner of one of the bonds that were floated for Chester's proposed $335 million trash plant filed suit yesterday, saying that the initial bond issue last August was a "sham" and that the tax-exempt status of the bonds is in doubt. Agents of the FBI, meanwhile, have been meeting in Philadelphia and Newark in the last two weeks in a widening investigation of several bond issues, including Chester's, according to reliable sources. The FBI is investigating possible wire fraud in bond issues underwritten by the Wall Street investment banking firm of Matthews & Wright Inc., the sources said.

Two years and seven months after Sept. 11, 2001 - a day in which the U.S. Capitol and the House of Representatives narrowly dodged a disaster that could have left Congress without a working quorum for months at the worst possible time - the House debated how to provide a continuing constitutional system in the event of a catastrophic terrorist attack. Unfortunately, the resulting bill, which was hailed by its sponsors and Republican House leaders as the ultimate and only solution to the issue, has divided the House on partisan lines.

NEW YORK Times Editor Howell Raines struck a blow for gay rights by announcing that, starting next month, the Times will publish "reports of same-sex commitment ceremonies and of some types of formal registration of gay and lesbian partnerships. " But no one should mistake this reform for a meaningful victory on behalf of social justice. If Raines is really interested in advancing equality, he shouldn't reform the Times wedding pages. He should abolish them. These pages are built on the false assumption that the weddings of wealthy non-celebrities constitute news.

Like a vexed parent, Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Steven T. O'Neill said he didn't know quite what to do with Britt Reid. The 22-year-old son of Eagles Coach Andy Reid was back in front of O'Neill yesterday to answer for a doped-up shopping trip to Dick's Sporting Goods, in Plymouth Meeting, last August. In that incident, Britt Reid stumbled around the store and then rammed his truck into a shopping cart. Police uncovered more than 230 pills, including Valium, in his truck.

After hearing a seven-count charge sheet that alleged he ordered the killing of thousands of Iraqis, the assassination of religious and political figures, and the deployment of chemical weapons on a small mountain town, Saddam Hussein scoffed at an investigative judge yesterday and dismissed the process. "You know that this is all theater by Bush, the criminal, to help him with his campaign," Hussein said. The ex-Iraqi dictator was belligerent and unapologetic in court. Asked at the beginning of the hearing what his name was, for the record, he replied: "I am Saddam Hussein, president of Iraq.

Robert Chester was laid to rest in Eden Cemetery in Collingdale on May 23, 1983. But a year after the death of the 55-year-old black man, the City of Philadelphia approved Keystone Steel, the company he owned with a white partner, for a $50,000 contract as a minority-owned firm. The firm's minority status was based on the dead man's name. It may be out of the ordinary for a firm's minority status to be dependent on a dead man. But the fact that the city awarded a contract to a white-owned business when it was supposed to go to a minority was far from unusual.

IF YOU BELIEVED the promises of advocates for the so-called campaign-finance reform law passed last year, you would expect to see a substantial reduction in the influence of big money in politics by now. But this newspaper never believed those promises. We doubted that politicians would miss many beats before finding ways to get the same money from the same donors that once went to the "soft money" contributions banned by the law. So we're not surprised that the big-money race in politics continues.

Who could oppose a line item in Pennsylvania's budget giving $100,000 to the Montgomery County Association for Retarded Citizens? Or $150,000 to the Delaware County Drug and Alcohol Commission, or $100,000 to the YWCA in Northeast Philadelphia? The do-good citizens' lobby group Common Cause, that's who. And it has good cause to do so, while Gov. Ridge and legislative leaders just have bad excuses for continuing a poor public policy. The point here is not to eliminate small state grants to worthy nongovernmental organizations.