You remember the D.C. snipers, don't you? Of course you do. You remember those two fun loving minority boys who jaunted around Montgomery County, Maryland, last October randomly killing pedestrians whenever the mood struck them. And what's more they didn't discriminate, no sireee. Color didn't matter to them. They freely shot all races and creeds.

In that sense, they were a bit more liberal minded than Chief Moose who headed the sniper investigation. You see, despite eye witness reports of two black men in a dark colored sedan leaving the scene of the shootings, Moose insisted that his task force look only for white men in a white van. What I'd like to know, is, what does Chief Moose have against white vans? At least he could have gotten the vehicle right.

But that story has been covered quite extensively in the media, unless, of course, you read or listen to CNN, what I charmingly refer to as the "Communist News Network." Malvo and Muhammed were let go at several road blocks, on at least two occasions, because they didn't fit the profile, and Moose forbade his task force to stop or search cars carrying black males.

Now there's a new wrinkle to Bullwinkle the Moose. It seems that Chief Moose has wanted to sign a book deal about the events of last fall and perhaps even a corresponding movie deal. It promises to net him a tidy sum although not as much as Madam Clinton's piece of fiction. But there's one little thing standing in the way of the Moose's new found wealth-- ethics.

But that's never stopped liberals before, has it?

It seems that Montgomery County has an ethics code for police officers that prevents them from profiting from any criminal case in which they are involved while still on the the county payroll. All right, sounds good to me. But Chief Moose has taken a different tack. Since the sniper case is a "once in a lifetime" event, he's argued before the Ethics Board that there should be an exception for him.

Apparently, that argument didn't play out so well. So the Moose did the next best thing, he played the race card, arguing that the ethics board unfairly discriminated against him.

There was only one thing wrong with this ploy. The Ethics Board held white officers to the same standards.

Next he tried the 1st admendment ploy, arguing that the Ethics Board was depriving him of his right of free speech.

Of course the Ethics Board cut that one out from under him as well. He could publish anything he wanted. He just couldn't get paid for it. He still had the right of free speech, just not paid speech.

But now comes the unkindest cut of all--the poverty card. Yes, Chief Moose and his wife argued "poverty." You might be wondering, "How did they do that?" And that's a very good question. Now comes the evidence.

It seems that the Mooses (yes, the name's ridiculous but that's the only way I can write it) moved to Maryland from Portland, Oregon, as a result of Moose's winning the affirmative action lottery in Montgomery County, with quite a bit of help from then Attorney General Janet Reno, who made sure that Montgomery County got a Moose of the correct color.

Mrs. Moose (no, this isn't a children's fairy tale) informed the Ethics Board that during their move, the moving men exclaimed, "Why Mrs. Moose (or maybe it was "Ms" Moose, I just don't remember) you don't even have any antiques!"

Yes, that's right, let me repeat that: "Mrs. Moose, you don't have any antiques!" And that, kind reader, is the evidence that the Mooses' are impoverished--yes, we have no antiques.

Of course, Chief Moose pulled in a cozy $160G's a year as the County's top lawman, and Mrs. Moose is an attorney, with teaching appointments in local colleges. Yet the poor, poor Mooses have no antiques. Gad, don't you just feel sorry for them?

But just yesterday, Chief Moose put all this nonsense to rest--he resigned from the Montgomery County police force. Of course if he had done it a year earlier, fewer people would have been killed. But now, anyway, he can have his book and movie deal. Oh, and I suppose that he and his wife will go out and buy some of those long-awaited antiques that they've been deprived of, most likely due to all that racial bigotry found with antique dealers around the country.

Now an interesting question comes up. And that is, who'll ghost write this book for him? Oh, I'm sure it'll be ghost written, after all, Chief Moose had one devil of a time reading Muhammed's simplistic notes, left at the scene of the shootings. In fact, if you heard him on the tube, you were hard pressed to tell where the fault lay for the gibberish you were hearing--Muhammed's inability to write, or Moose's inability to read.

Need antiques? I have an idea. Send them Ruth Bader Ginsburg.