The horror of this war is its numbers, frozen in the portraits at the morgue: an infant’s eyes sealed shut and a woman’s hair combed in blood and ash.

-- Anthony Shadid

Aug. 30, 2010, from Baghdad, Iraq

One of the world's great journalists, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Anthony Shadid of the New York Times, died today. He suffered a fatal asthma attack while trying to bring the world news of the atrocities now taking place in Syria. He was only 43 years old and he leaves behind a wife and two children. He will be greatly missed.

You learn something new every day:

On Fox News this morning, Mitt Romney explained that his positions today are more conservative than those when he was the governor of Massachusetts because “living a life tends to make you more conservative.” This echoes a saying often attributed (perhaps apocryphally) to Winston Churchill. It usually goes something like this: If you’re not a liberal at 20 you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.

Whatever the heartlessness or brainlessness of any given ideology, the conventional wisdom that people get more conservative as they age is wrong, according to sociological research.

At any given time older people are likely to be more conservative than contemporaneous young people. But relative to themselves as young people, today’s older folks have generally become more liberal than they once were.

That said, why are there so many cranky old conservatves out there? That's probably because so many of today's 50s-and-over came of age in the white working class backlash that started in the mid-1960s and lasted through the Reagan years. Those people may actually have been more conservatve once. Scary, huh? Also, I wonder if the studies are really measuring liberalism or its first cousin, tolerance. I think people generally become more tolerant as they age, because they're exposed to more people and more situations that challenge their original way of thinking. Look at Dick Cheney -- an ultra-conservative guy who learned that one of his daughters is gay, and then became fairly moderate on gay rights issues. That kind of thng happens a lot -- and the world is somewhat better for it.

Ants....have...no...blood.

As Rick Santorum surges to the top of the GOP field, there's been a lot of talk about his ability to connect with blue-collar voters.

Well, there is one thing that the ex-Pennsylvania senator has in common with the working class: He knows what it's like to lose a job.

But there's where the similarity ends. In the four years after voters in the Keystone State unceremoniously bounced Santorum from office in a landside, the career politician earned a whopping $3.6 million, averaging close to $1 million a year over 2008, 2009 and 2010 -- despite seeming, as the New York Times' Gail Collins described him, sort of unemployed.

He...is...NOT...the...99 percent:

Rick Santorum said they would come this week, and here are four years worth of his taxes, from years 2007 through 2010.

They can be found here, here, here and here. The returns are the most in number that have been released by any of the major GOP contenders - Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney didn't release several years' worth.

Santorum and his wife Karen filed joint returns for all four years. As you'll see from the returns, the Santorums' adjusted gross income went from about $659,000 in 2007, his first year out of the Senate, to $952,000 in 2008, to $1.1 million in 2009 and about $923,000 in 2010.

They paid about $167,000 in taxes in 2007, about $262,000 in 2008, $310,000 in 2009, and $263,000 in 2010.

There is rental income from a condo and depreciation on that property over the various years. The Santorums' charitable giving was a small percentage of his income each year.

You would think that losing an election by 18 points wouldn't be the best career move, but as been reported previously, everyone from health care companies to frackers to Fox News to, ahem, the then-Brian Tierney led Philadelphia Inquirer were eager to practically throw dollars at a former U.S. senator. Pundits will continue to blather on about Santorum's bond with the working man, but I'm not really sure why. Clearly, he doesn't feel their pain.

Well, it's time I stopped being the only journalist in America -- sports or otherwise -- not to mention Jeremy Lin in some context (in contrast to ESPN, where Bristol, Conn., is about to spontaneously combust -- the only way the 24-hour sports behemoth could get any more excited would be if praying by Lin and Tim Tebow convinced Brett Favre to come out of retirement. But I digress...)

So this is the headline on the back page of the New York Post today after yet another Lin buzzer-beater: "Amasian!" Hmmm. It brings to mind some classic Post sports headlines from years past, like Sandy Koufax's perfect game in 1965." "Jew Da Man!," and Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point explosion against the Knicks ("Blacktacular!") and this more recent one when Jose Reyes left the Mets for Florida ("Press the Hispanic Button!").

OK, those aren't actual headlines, and for obvious reasons. They're offensive (or, in tabloid speak, "They're Offensive!").

So is "Amasian!," and for reasons that don't require a long explanation. It takes the remarkable and complicated story of Jeremy Lin and boils it down to one thing: His race. And no doubt, his race is definitely part of the longer and complex version -- especially the lingering questions of whether college recruiters and NBA scouts overlooked his talents because he is a Taiwanese-American. But "Amasian!" pegs the entire saga to race in a way that is both childishly simplistic and offensive. Hopefully we won't see the likes of this again.

I'm surprised this story isn't getting bigger play. It's on the Huffington Post so it must be true:

It's a story that has circulated in and out of the UFO community for years: Did former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower have three meetings with extraterrestrials?

An ex-government consultant says the story is true that the 34th commander in chief chatted, if you will, with aliens at a New Mexico air base, according to reports.

No definitive proof has ever surfaced to confirm this president-meets-aliens tale. However, according to Timothy Good, Eisenhower and FBI officials arranged for the out-of-this-world summit at Holloman Air Force Base.

Actually, I'm not 100 percent sure if I believe this. If America's leaders really did meet with more intelligent life forms, how did we end up living under trickle-down economics?

Tom Corbett isn't the flashiest or most charismatic governor in America. But I'm beginning to think he may be the dumbest:

Gov. Corbett toured a Malvern factory powered by state-of-the-art robotics Tuesday, then hit the automatic-reset button on a replay of the state university tuition wars that dominated the battle over his first budget proposal last year.

Corbett insisted to reporters during his tour of the high-tech Siemens Medical Solutions plant that his 2012-13 plan for a steep new cuts in state aid to higher education - including 30 percent less money to state-backed schools such as Pennsylvania State and Temple Universities - could be dealt with by reducing campus operating costs, not by raising tuition.

Let's think about this. Corbett is touring a manufacturing plant driven by robotics -- proof that the kind of assembly line jobs that once existed for high school grads have disappeared, and that our economy now needs college grads with math and science training to design these high-tech devices. And he chooses this as a venue to defend his jihad against public universities for the middle-class in Pennsylvania. Brilliant.

Corbett's right about one thing -- universities are bloated and inefficient, and smart cost-cutting is one part of the solution. But in the end Harrisburg needs to work with college administrators to pour any savings back into making higher education more affordable, not more expensive. If he really wanted to create jobs in the Keystone State, Corbett would push for efficiencies that would lower tuition -- not raise it -- and also bolster community colleges and vocational training. I guess Grover Norquist wouldn't sign off on that plan, unfortunately.

Corbett has more leeway in the budget than he lets on -- in some areas he's actually increasing spending. This is what's more important to the governor than sending Pennsylvania kids to college:

For instance, Corbett’s budget proposal provides $1 million in anticipation of a voter ID bill passing. This bill was introduced by state Republicans last year, but did not pass. It would have required that voters show a government-issued photo ID before being allowed to cast a ballot. Critics argued that the bill would disenfranchise senior and minority voters.

Also, as we like to say here at the Daily News in front-page headlines...WTF?

Another area that gets more funding this year under Corbett's proposal is the state’s Alternatives to Abortion Services Program. The budget allocates more than $6 million to it, which is a slight boost from last year.

The relatively-unknown program, which is run by a contractor, funds counselors throughout the state who work to convince pregnant women not to have abortions. It is paid out of the Department of Public Welfare’s budget — which has otherwise seen massive cuts under the Corbett administration.

So the same conservatives who've been telling me we need less government spending and more personal freedom have no problem with spending millions in taxpayer dollars to tell women what to do about their pregnancies? That makes about as much sense as going to a company that needs smart college grads and defending your decimation of the state's universities. I guess this all makes the very existence of Tom Corbett Exhibit A for why we need to improve education in Pennsylvania. Severely.

Suddenly it seems like there's a new news cycle and a new lead story for Rick Santorum every hour, He says Obama wants to bring back the guillotine! He's shouting at Occupy protesters! He wants a constitutional amendment to require chastity belts! OK, I made up that last one, but in the bizzaro-world known as SantorumLand, suddenly anything seems possible.

Like his electiion as president.

Which is why people should be paying more attention to his views on fracking and less to his views on f.... oh nevermind.

As the Center for Responsive Politics reports, Santorum is one of the top U.S. Senate recipients of campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry — and what makes those numbers so stunningly outsized is the fact that he remains one of the top Senate recipients even though the last time he ran for Senate was in 2006. Put another way, this is not a run-of-the-mill legislator who happened to get a few afterthought contributions from the industry; this is a guy who was such a sycophantic apostle of the industry that he received enough oil and gas money to keep him on the top-recipient list a full six years after he was voted out of office — that is, a full six years after he raised a single dollar for a Senate campaign. In baseball terms, it’s the equivalent of Hank Aaron racking up so many home runs that he was able to hold the record well after he retired — only with Santorum, it’s not home runs, it’s oil and gas cash.

Will the oil gazillionaires get their man in White House? Probably not, but his chances of making to the Final Two and November Madness look better every day:

A third national poll has now shown former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) with a lead in the Republican primary race. A new survey commissioned by CBS News and the New York Times shows Santorum with 30 percent of GOPers, followed closesly by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at 27, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) with 12 and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has faded to the back with 10 percent. Santorum's lead is within the margin of error, and therefore he and Romney are locked in a statistical dead heat.

That's why you need to get to know the real Rick Santorum.

Ants have no blood.