t's unconscionable that Americans who volunteer to put their lives on the line for their country in the military have been targeted by rapacious payday lenders charging annual interest rates of 400 percent or more.

The Senate in June unanimously approved a measure co-sponsored by Florida Democrat Bill Nelson and Missouri Republican Jim Talent to cap annual interest rates at 36 percent for payday loans to service members. The measure needs House approval to become law. Ideally, that would come this week as Congress considers a military-spending plan.

f fashion models were purebred dogs instead of underfed women, there would be an outcry over the abusive standards for appearing in shows and photo shoots. The prize for women who aspire to the catwalk is a ridiculous size 0, though overachieving undereaters seem to be reaching for size 00, which invites further starvation, serious illness and worse.

If the industry needed a wake-up call, it got one last month, when Luisel Ramos, an Uruguayan model who had been advised to lose weight, died of heart failure after taking her turn on the catwalk. She reportedly had gone days without eating and for months consumed only lettuce and diet soda.

Nevertheless, organizers of Madrid's Fashion Week caught designer and fashionista scorn for banning the unreasonably thin from their show. The Madrid standard: a minimum body mass index of at least 18 - a measure of body fat based on weight and height. A reading of 18 is still underweight (18.5 to just under 25 is considered normal), but it is outsized among the ranks of supermodels, many of whom hover between 14 and 16.

While the just-completed New York Fashion Week carried on as usual, Milan Fashion Week officials were considering applying their own healthy standard for models.

It's doubtful that models will be in dressing rooms bulking up with cheeseburgers or anything more caloric than watercress to "make weight," like prizefighters and amateur wrestlers. But ending the parade of the starved and sickly seems like a fashion trend worth following.

he Bush administration deserves to be criticized for many of its foreign policies, but Hugo Chavez is not the one to do it. By his intemperate and foolish remarks at the United Nations on Wednesday and his continuing support for authoritarian regimes, the Venezuelan president has forfeited his claim to leadership in world affairs.

"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said in reference to President Bush's speech of the day before. Chavez made the sign of the cross and engaged in other theatrics to provoke his audience of the UN General Assembly. George Bush was re-elected with 50.7 percent of the vote in 2004 after a vigorously fought, unfettered campaign, and he will leave office without a fuss in 2009 after eight years. Bush can be called many things but not the ultimate embodiment of evil.

Chavez has been brandishing anti-Americanism ever since he became president in 1998. He intensified his denunciation of the Bush administration after a failed coup in 2002, which he believed Washington had fomented. Venezuela, with its vast oil reserves, has benefited greatly from the surge in oil prices since 2001. Chavez is criticizing the leading force behind a world economic system that has enriched his country and enhanced his power.

Were Chavez really concerned with the oppressed of the world, he would not consort with Kim Jong-Il and Bashir Assad, who have continued their fathers' repressive regimes in North Korea and Syria. Nor would he have created an informal alliance with anti-democratic Iran, or extended a lifeline to Fidel Castro in Cuba, or visited Iraq in 2000 to support Saddam Hussein. If the United States opposes a dictator, Chavez backs him.

This monotone foreign policy, combined with his outburst this week, undercuts Venezuela's campaign for the Latin American seat on the UN Security Council, which will be decided by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly on Oct. 16.

Deprived of an international forum, Chavez would have more time to spend on his re-election campaign. It ought to be as freely contested as the 2004 race between Bush and John F. Kerry. And if Chavez wins on Dec. 3, he ought to devote his six-year term to solving the great recurring problem of Venezuela: How a country endowed with such natural wealth can leave almost half its people in utter poverty. Chavez would earn more enduring fame by leading Venezuela out of this resource trap.

Fish. Bluegills, to be precise, are aswim in the fight against terror - working, with the help of a high-tech monitoring system, to quench the thirst for safe water supplies.

Seems that these cousins of the perch are bitin' - nibbling on just about anything that won't nibble on them first: aquatic vegetation, various insects, worms, bread crumbs.

The way it's supposed to work is that when something is amiss in the water, and before the gilled guards go belly-up, the proper folks are alerted, the water tested and any trouble is headed off before it gets to the glass.

ne would have thought that with so many barricades installed, streets closed off and officers hired, police would be able to prevent a man with a loaded gun from getting inside the U.S. Capitol and rushing past the offices of top congressional leaders. The breach of Capitol security Monday by a man apparently high on drugs, who drove past security and onto the Capitol grounds, may well have been a fluke, but it demands a rigorous review by police and congressional authorities.

Thankfully no one was injured in the early-morning incident, in contrast to the tragedy that occurred in 1998 when two Capitol Police officers were fatally shot. Accordingly, Capitol Police showed a commendable amount of restraint in peacefully apprehending the suspect, who apparently got into the building via an unprotected construction entrance. Clearly embarrassed, Acting Capitol Police Chief Christopher M. McGaffin was right to call the security breach "unacceptable" and to promise an investigation.

Among the questions that need to be answered is why the public wasn't told about the breach in a timely fashion. It took some nine hours before any information was released; that lapse, like gun-toting inside government offices, doesn't make anyone feel safer.

or anyone who's encountered the stupefied look on a young cashier's face when the computer dies and the cashier can't make change, this is a hallelujah moment.

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics has released a report calling for teaching math basics so kids are able to decipher problems in their heads - without the crutch of calculators or computers. Can we get an amen?

Over the years, the council has had major impact on math instruction in public schools - and not always in a good way. In 1989, the group's advice all but killed the "times tables" (also known as the multiplication tables) and other memorization and drilling techniques that once found favor in classrooms. The council had pressed for strategies such as concept learning, estimation and widespread use of calculators.

Understanding concepts to solve math problems is vital. Students who can use logic and apply knowledge in finding answers will be more competitive in school and in life afterward.

But many Asian countries have long realized drilling and memorization are vital, too. The tools reinforce what's being taught and provide building blocks for mastery of higher level math. The council's report echoes that assessment.

The United States now may be seeing the folly of largely abandoning drills and memorization. U.S. eighth graders rank well behind eighth graders from other nations on international tests. Many Asian countries rank high. Singapore is No. 1.

The council's report makes several recommendations for improving math teaching. Chief among them: establishing uniform curriculum standards nationwide to reduce the wide fluctuations in performance that come with different expectations and rigor from state to state. At the classroom level, teachers should focus on the early mastery of addition and subtraction, the "quick recall" of multiplication and division and the clear understanding of decimals. These approaches have proven especially successful in boosting the performance of low-income, low-performing students, experts say.

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