"This Episode of Sesame Street Was Brought To You by the Letters F, B, and I and the Numbers 10 to 20"

This news brief leaves out the best part of any criminal news report &mdash the statement from the suspect's defense attorney or public relations flack. Without fail, those statements make the rest of the article worth reading, and, usually, the more heinous the crime, the more entertaining the statement.

That's what makes this so disappointing to me. The reporters didn't try to contact the accused.

Because they didn't, we missed out on something horribly entertaining like,

"My client did nothing wrong. He knew all along that the person he was dealing with was an adult impersonating a 13-year-old girl, and that's whom he was trying to seduce. Well, actually, he was after the adolescent girl inside the agent, but there's nothing illegal about that, is it? Disgusting, sure; illegal, no way.

"Is it hot in here or is it just me? I'm sweating like a fat man at a chili-eating contest. Whew."

I'm sure a trained professional would've come up with something much better.

I could've used something like that today, to get me in the right frame of mind for tonight's Vice Presidential debates.

It's society's loss, really.