I work in a senior position in a Federal agency responsible for keeping our homes and borders safe from terrorism. As part of our country’s program of extraordinary rendition, I recently instructed law officers to deport an immigrant to his home country, where he was to be interrogated until he provided information useful to our government. I’ve now discovered that law enforcement was directed to the wrong address, and arrested a man named Fred who is a native born certified financial planner. It is my understanding that Fred is now being tortured in an Arab state that cannot be identified with electric shocks to his genital region. The original target of the investigation is still at large. Should I tell my boss? -Anonymous, Washington, DC

Well, how strong are the electric shocks? Are they “eyeballs popping out of the skull” bad, or just “can’t they finish with this and just kill me” bad? Seriously, it’s clear that Fred has gotten a raw deal here. While he could be helping seniors plan for their retirement with a diversified mix of investment instruments, which is probably what he loves to do, Fred is now rotting in some stinking vermin filled hole in a country whose collect calls we wouldn’t even be taking if it wasn’t for the so-called War on Terror. Whatever you do, it’s unlikely that Fred will ever get out. Maybe if he had some real information to bargain with, he could persuade somebody that his life has some value. But he doesn’t, so you can be pretty sure Fred’s a goner.

You, on the other hand, have gotten a pretty swell deal. Your file now gives you credit for catching a terrorist, one of the few picked up on American soil, and you’re up for a two level rise in your government service pay grade. Let’s say you were to go to your boss and report this so-called error. Don’t you think he might be compelled to start an “investigation”? And who’s likely to be spitting blood onto the dirt floor of a dank forgotten cave then?

Before you start feeling so bad about native born Fred, you should ask yourself, are you so certain your target was a terrorist in the first place? Or do you just assume that because he has swarthy skin and an Islamic sounding name? Anyway this Fred guy doesn’t sound like much of a man and probably broke down sobbing long before the torturers even turned the juice on. I’m not saying Fred deserved what he got, but you know what they say: where there’s smoke there’s fire. So do rest easy. There’s no reason at all to tell your boss anything. After all, Fred’s the only one who knows for sure, and dead men tell no tales.

My daughter, who is everything a mother could ask for, has entered a number of local beauty pageants, but despite her talent and pretty curls and collection of sequined dresses has always come in second. Her good friend, who has beaten her in these competitions, came over for dinner yesterday and we had a nice meal of corn flake crusted meatloaf. She is now securely tied up in our basement. I very much want to give my daughter the experience of winning, but I want her friend to suffer as little as possible. Should I finish this off with a blunt blow to the head, or look for some rat poison? -Helpful Mom, Boulder, CO

Little in this world is black or white, all is shades of grey. There is no single right answer to “How do I murder my daughter’s friend?” But there are a few rules of thumb. First, consider what kind of person it is that you’re dealing with. Is it a girl who keeps to herself and might swallow a fistful of barbiturates to end the suffering that she keeps inside herself? Or is she the kind of girl who is more likely to take a ride with a stranger in a rusty truck and wind up in a ditch by the side of the road?

If you really want to alleviate her suffering, you should consider a plastic bag over the head as the surest way to cause the onset of quick and speedy death. Unfortunately, the coroner will figure that one out in about two seconds. So your best bet if you want to make it look like a stranger did this is trauma from a blunt instrument, if you can safely get the body to an obscure part of the woods. If anyone asks, just talk about the stranger with beady eyes offering free music downloads outside the high school.

Smuggling out the body, however, might be even harder than committing the crime. One solution is just to break a window and tell the police that a stranger came in and did it in the fifteen minutes that your own daughter was out brushing her hair. It’ll mean some amount of media scrutiny in the short term, but some creep will come out of the woodwork and say he was the bastard who did it and then eventually he’ll get electrocuted or at least chemically castrated and your mind will be at ease. Meanwhile your daughter’s local beauty pageant career can continue unimpeded as long, at least until there’s an even prettier girl you need to get rid of.

My boss, a film industry bigshot you’ve definitely heard of, asked me to smuggle a rare and protected rodent into the country so one of Tony Pellicano’s goons could leave it on a famous actor’s doorstep. Then the rodent died in transit and I kinda flushed it down the chemical toilet because I was afraid customs would find it. My boss says that since I lost the animal, he would personally make me kill my own cat and leave it on this actor’s doorstep. I’ve always thought of myself as a loyal assistant, but this is too much. Do I have to kill my cat? -Shawn, Los Angeles

Yes, Shawn, you have to kill the cat. What did you expect, I’d say, “Oh no, you need to protect your little itty bitty kitty-witty from the big bad coke snorting Nobu noshing monster?” Do you plan to spend the rest of your life walking around with rodents hidden in your underwear while people with real guts go on to sign ten figure development deals? Tomorrow, you take that cat and strangle it and leave it on that doorstep. Then you pick up your boss’s mobile phone (yeah, your boss’s phone, not your own) and text the actor’s phone with some threats to his career and to his own pets. Then you call the cops from a payphone and tell them to go to the actor’s house, and let the guy tell them about how some big deal studio chief murdered an animal just to threaten him.

Meanwhile you’ve tipped off the magazines who’ve got their cameras ready to get photos of the arrest. And trust me, they’ll be there. Do you know how the people of the great city of Los Angeles feel about cat killers-do you have any idea? Do you know what they do to animal killers in the LA County Jail? So then if he’s lucky your boss winds up at home with an ankle bracelet, while you sell a screenplay about your life working for the rottenest man in Hollywood. And rack up some bills on his credit cards while you’re at it: he’s in no position to do anything about it. Now you’re sitting watching the waves in Santa Monica sipping some new triple distilled cachaca or whatever it is that rich people drink these days scheduling your yoga lessons for the month. If everybody could get that far in life that just by killing a little cat, there’d be a lot of happy mice in the world.

I run a business in which I employ illegal aliens who are grateful to have a job. In their off time some of them do unpaid work on my personal property, which I think is only fair because if they don’t like it there’s always somebody who’ll do their jobs for even less. One of my employees agreed to perform some sex acts with me because I owe her three paychecks and her children are hungry. But she insists I wear a condom. Should I, or can I keep back another week of pay and see if she comes around? -Vincent, Dallas, TX

You know what they say: all’s fair in love and war and domestic employment. The prospect of giving this woman a strapping half gringo child she can take back to her Latin American country must be an exciting one. On the other hand, you should know that if she has a child in this country he or she will be an American citizen and you could be liable for child support. So for that reason alone you should consider providing yourself with protection.

I am concerned, however, about your hiring illegal laborers and paying them their wages several weeks late. You’ve given these people the invaluable experience of a North American lifestyle, something they can tell their grandchildren about and that might inspire them to improve the squalor of their own countries. Americans have gone so far as to pay for the privilege of traveling to Central America and building latrines for the toilet-deprived peoples of Spanish-speaking countries. Now the citizens of those countries violate our laws by crossing over our borders, clamoring for access to our schools (you said this woman has children, and no doubt if they’re not getting enough food at home they’re ripping off an American kids’ lunch).

The prudent course is to take what you can now, condom or no condom. The charitable course, however, requires that you take some action to help bring these unfortunate illegals into compliance with our laws, ideally before you’ve paid them any money. I’ve taken the liberty of looking up for you the number for the Dallas office of the INS. It is (214) 767-7900, dial extension 134 for the enforcement branch, and the nice people there will help you out.