A belated word about Bill Bennett. The Book of Virtues author who was education secretary under former President Ronald Reagan has been in the news lately for some rather interesting remarks he made on his radio show.

It seems Bennett — engaging in what he later described as “a thought experiment” said “If you wanted to reduce the crime rate you could — if that were your sole purpose — you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”

He immediately followed up by saying the idea would be “impossible, ridiculous and a morally reprehensible thing to do … [but] your crime rate would go down.”

We’ll skip the free speech homily, to pose just one question: Why is it always Republicans who dream of an America without blacks, without immigrants, without liberals spouting their point of view? Why is it always Republicans who seem to dislike diversity of any kind, and dream of a country-as-country-club, where those who disagree or who don’t look like them aren’t allowed?

Just asking.

Mississippi’s Baptists have lost the battle to keep casinos from coming on shore. That state’s Legislature has allowed Gulf Coast casinos displaced by Katrina to move as far as 800 feet inland, less than the 1,500 feet the casinos wanted but more than the 0 feet Baptists insisted upon. Gov. Haley Barbour says he’ll sign the measure.

The Review-Journal story this morning estimated the state was losing more than $500,000 per day for every day the casinos were shut down. This prompted Mississippi Baptist Convention President William Perkins to quote the Bible: “Jesus himself said ‘No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.’ We believe the governor of Mississippi and his supporters in the Legislature have chosen to serve money.”

Indeed they have, which was the plan all along: Get casinos in the door with “offshore” gambling. Then, once the state is hooked on the revenue, insist on more concessions. Katrina did nothing but hasten the process. (To be fair, the money the Baptists think is so dirty will provide jobs for plenty of Mississippi residents who need the work these days.)

But we at Various Things & Stuff have still not gotten an answer to our question, floated several blogs ago: Where in the Bible is gambling specifically condemned? If anybody can answer that, we’ll be impressed (because, folks, it just isn’t in there).

So U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay has been indicted. Again.

This time, an all-new grand jury has indicted the controversial lawmaker for money laundering, for allegedly sending $190,000 in corporate donations from a Texas-based PAC to an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C. The RNC arm then returned $190,000 in “individual” contributions to the Texas PAC, which was then distributed to Republican candidates for office.

Why all the coy disguises? Because corporate money is illegal in some Texas races. Hence, DeLay’s indictments for conspiracy (old grand jury) and money laundering (new grand jury). The penalty for violations is — gulp! — life!

We doubt that DeLay will be sent to prison for life, although it does conjure an appealing mental image. But we also doubt that the deluded former majority leader (he was forced to step down when the indictments were handed up) will really ever resume his post or exert as much influence in the party as he thinks. At this point, fellow Republicans — to say nothing of voters — should be considering putting some distance between themselves and their former leader.

“I think there must be a journalist school where students taught how to kill Tara Reid.” — Party girl Tara Reid, complaining about media coverage.

Actually, according to the Various Things & Stuff Polling Center (where we make up believable statistics about various issues), 95.2 percent of all journalists not only say they don’t want to kill Reid, they say they don’t care about her at all.

(That’s broken down between Couldn’t Care Less, 17 percent; Don’t Give a Rat’s Ass, 21 percent; Don’t Give a Fuck, 15.8 percent and Don’t Give a Flying Fuck, 41.4 percent.)

As for the remaining 4.8 percent, a full 2 percent of those are science journalists who tell us they’re interested in Reid only as an anthropological phenomenon, and 2.8 percent who say they’re interested in dating her, if only she’d shut the hell up.