VBVW for June 20, 2008: The Rain In Plains

• The Very Best

Two former managers at Bear Stearns have been arrested for securities fraud. Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin are the first Wall Streeters to get busted for taking part in the subprime mortgage crisis, and we can only hope they lose their freedom–as well as their homes–as part of their eventual punishment.

Same-sex couples rushed from their home states to wed in California. The Golden State is reaping the awards from hosting gay and lesbian weddings and parties. The big numbers will really kick in when the divorce lawyers start getting a piece of the action.

Americans in some states are crossing into Mexico to get government-subsidized cheap gas, at a price about 90 cents a gallon less than in the U.S. Now the Mexican government is getting a taste for how it feels to have people sneaking over the border without visas.

• The Very Worst

A foot of rain has been dumped on the Midwest this month, collapsing levees, shutting down factories, and destroying farmland. Some have suggested the flooding is fundamentally a human error caused by re-engineering landscapes without regard to nature’s design. Of course, the people who made those suggestions are now underwater.

President Bush is exploiting record oil prices with a last-ditch attempt to lift a decades-old ban on domestic drilling. Guess who stands to make billions of dollars from this plan? Just a few small businesses that go by the names ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP . . .

Rocco Mediate played 91 holes of some of the greatest golf in history, and certainly the greatest game he will ever play. The only downside to his remarkable round was his opponent: Tiger Woods, who beat Rocco even with a fractured leg. That had to be a tough one to swallow.