Butter knives and bloody chainsaws

A few days ago, we witnessed the spectacle of a school principal who was caught with a butter knife being added to the terrorist list. Evidently, the U.S. anti-terrorist patrols have a thing against butter knives. For around the same time, on April 25, Gregory Despres arrived at the U.S.-Canadian border crossing at Calais, Maine, carrying a homemade sword, a hatchet, a knife, brass knuckles and a chain saw stained with what appeared to be blood. Although U.S. customs agents confiscated the weapons and fingerprinted Despres, they let him into the United States. He was later discovered to have decapitated a 74-year-old country musician named Frederick Fulton. The musician's head was in a pillowcase under a kitchen table. Despres's common-law wife was discovered stabbed to death in a bedroom. Of course, the folks manning the border can't really be blamed. Depres, after all, wasn't carrying a butter knife.