I have learned to recognize this kind of mail from the envelopes, which always have gimmicky statements designed to arouse my curiosity (“If you do not open this envelope immediately, you will never see your children again”). So I usually throw the envelopes away without opening them. But this doesn’t work: the junk mail companies have armies of workers who comb through everybody’s garbage at night, retrieve their announcements, and put them right back in the mail.

We could solve this problem if we all bought portable blowtorches. We could stroll up to our mailboxes, open the doors, and incinerate everything inside. Or, for a more efficient approach, the Postal Service could buy larger blowtorches and incinerate everybody’s mail right at the post offices. Ideally, the Postal Service would buy enormous blowtorches and incinerate the junk mail companies directly, but this is probably illegal.

The only problem with the incineration plan is that it would also destroy the occasional piece of actual mail. I got a piece of actual mail the other day, from the White House. It was signed by a machine that had learned how to reproduce the signature of Anne Higgins, Director of Presidential Correspondence, and it said: “On behalf of President Reagan, I would like to thank you for your message and to let you know that he appreciates the time you have taken to send in your views. They have been fully noted.”

This letter troubles me greatly, because I never sent any views to the White House. This means the White House now possesses somebody else’s views masquerading as mine, and, what is worse, has fully noted them, whatever that means. I guess they have a machine in the White House basement that fully notes views at a high rate of speed, then tells the Anne Higgins signature machine to shoot out a thank-you letter.

Now here’s my problem: I recently acquired a view that I would like to send to the White House, only I’m afraid that now it won’t be fully noted, because they probably have some rule about how many views will be noted per citizen per year. So I want the person who used my name to send in his view to now use his name to send in my view, and we’ll be even.

My view concerns the neutron bomb, which, at the Pentagon’s urging, President Reagan recently decided to build, and which would eventually be deployed in Western Europe. The neutron bomb is a nuclear device that kills people without destroying buildings. Many people feel this is inhumane; they much prefer the old-fashioned humane-type nuclear devices that kill people and destroy buildings.

Western Europe’s reaction to the neutron bomb has been mixed: most buildings are for it, and most people are against it, on the grounds that it might kill them. They’re always wallowing in sentiment, those Western Europeans.

Anyway, here’s my view: I think we should develop the neutron bomb, but instead of using it to defend a bunch of ungrateful people with unAmerican views, we should keep it for ourselves. All we have to do is modify the design so that instead of leaving buildings alone and destroying people, it leaves buildings and people alone but destroys third-class mail. This would save the country billions of dollars in blowtorch fuel alone.

I think President Reagan has come up with a swell idea in his plan to give lie-detector tests to government employees suspected of leaking. “Leaking” is when a government employee tells the public what the government is doing. This is very bad, particularly in the area of foreign policy, because our foreign policy is supposed to be a secret. This principle was perfected by Richard Nixon, who used to keep the foreign policy hidden in a little jar buried in the White House lawn. Nobody ever had the vaguest notion what he was going to do next. For example, he went around for years announcing that our foreign policy was to hate the Chinese, then one day he showed up in China laughing and chatting with Chairman Mao and spilling ceremonial wine on himself. This kind of erratic behavior kept the other nations on their toes, because they could never really be sure that Dick wasn’t going to suddenly turn around and, say, order the Air Force to defoliate Wales.

Today, our foreign policy is so secret that not even the President really knows what it is, which is why he is concerned about leaks. He doesn’t want to be embarrassed at a press conference when some smart-mouth reporter asks him a question about why we’re secretly sending arms to one of those humid little countries in Central America that the forces of international communism are always trying to spread into, and he doesn’t know the answer. So the President came up with this plan whereby if the public ever gets hold of any classified government documents, which basically means all government documents except the Zip Code directory and those cretin newsletters your congressman sends you at your expense, the government employees who could have leaked the information will have to take lie-detector tests, and if it turns out they are guilty they will be fired or shot or something.

Needless to say, the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization of left-wing communists, claimed Reagan’s plan is unconstitutional, but this is typical. The ACLU is always yakking about the Constitution, and most of us are getting mighty tired of it. I mean, if the Constitution is so great, how come it was amended so many times? Huh?

Personally, I think the President’s idea is excellent. My only concern is who’s going to administer the lie-detector tests. We don’t want government employees doing it, because they’d mess it up somehow. It would wind up like one of those Army Corps of Engineers projects where they’re trying to irrigate four beet farms in Texas but they end up causing most of Iowa to be washed into the Gulf of Mexico.

So I think we should turn the lie-detecting operation over to the Private Sector, by which I mean F. Lee Bailey, the famous criminal trial lawyer who is widely considered to be extremely brilliant despite the fact that he always gives me the impression he’s coated with a thin layer of slime. Bailey has this television show called “Lie Detector,” wherein famous people such as Ronald Reagan’s barber take lie-detector tests, then, in the highly dramatic climax, Bailey oozes up and reveals the results. I think this would be an appropriate forum for investigating suspected leakers:

BAILEY: Mr. Carbuncle, you’re Assistant Secretary of State for Really Pathetic Little Countries, is that correct?

CARBUNCLE: Yes.

BAILEY: Okay, here’s an innocent question to put you at ease. How are you?

CARBUNCLE: Fine, thank you.

BAILEY: Are you the person who told the New York Times about the secret CIA plan to drop 250,000 poison attack frogs on left-wing guerrillas in the Republic of Belize?

CARBUNCLE: No.

BAILEY: Mr. Carbuncle, our polygraph machine, which has been monitoring your pulse rate and blood pressure, indicates that you are telling the truth. Either that or you have just suffered a massive heart attack. Here’s an autographed picture of the President grooming his horse, and thanks a million for being our guest on “Lie Detector.” Folks, be sure to stay tuned, because next we’re going to see if we can figure out who leaked the plan to sell nuclear bazookas to rival street gangs in the South Bronx.