Even we couldn't make this up...and it comes from the New York Times, not the National Enquirer.

"When Lawrence Jacobs walked into the courtroom a few weeks ago, he couldn't believe his eyes. There was a noose swinging from the prosecutor's chest. Mr. Jacobs's son is being tried on capital murder charges. The noose was on a necktie." "Then he saw it again. This time two prosecutors were wearing ghoulish ties, one with a dangling rope, the other with an image of the Grim Reaper. "That's when it really hit me," Mr. Jacobs said. "These guys are out to kill my son. And they're making light of it."

The prosecutors said the ties were jokes. Their boss was not amused but took no disciplinary action--just told them to stop wearing them.

"Defense lawyers say the neckties are simply the latest proof of a racially tinged, bloodthirsty culture at the Jefferson district attorney's office, which has put more people on Louisiana's death row in recent years than any other parish."

Until recently, the proseutors handed out plaques decorated with hypodermic needles to comemmorate each execution by lethal injection. This proseuctorial disease is not limited to Jefferson Parish.

In East Baton Rouge, 75 miles away, the district attorney celebrates death sentences with office parties, replete with steak and Jim Beam.

In Texas, one district attorney formed a "Silver Needle Society" while another one hung a noose over her office door.

In Mississippi, a former assistant attorney general had a toy electric chair on his desk that buzzed.

If we have to have a draft, forget the youth--let's make these southern prosecutors go first.