Two interesting observations from Jason Levine’s blog Q Daily News. First:

Last night, I had dinner with a friend who lived in Germany

before the Wall came down, and she said that there was an

almost-absolute policy in West Germany for what to do when

a parent tried to bring his or her kids across the Wall and

were killed in the process — if the children had a surviving

parent in East Germany, they were returned to that parent.

In the reasoning of the West German government, the

differences in freedom between East and West did not justify

separating children from their parents.

And:

ABC is back now on New York cable. Interestingly, when I

checked, I caught about five minutes of Oprah, when she had

Janet Reno on. I was thinking that Reno’s Parkinson’s is

getting more and more noticeable (she had a clear tremor),

and just then, Oprah recommended that Reno take a little

time off, and “maybe not shake so much.” I was floored —

has anyone ever told Oprah to stop eating so damn much in

an interview? What an insensitive boob.