What Would Janet Reno Do? - A child living in a Communist country disappears on the way to the United States, and then resurfaces alongside relatives living in the East Coast. The relatives, also refugees from Communist tyranny, announce their intention to seek asylum for the child. Unfortunately for the child, one parent remains back at home and is unable to speak freely with American immigration authorities. Sound familiar?

No, it's not Elian Gonzales, but Jia Yukun, a 12-year-old Chinese girl who disappeared from San Francisco International Airport earlier this month and later turned up with relatives in Massachusetts. Her timing is better than Elian's, for if she had arrived on America's shores back in 2000, she might have found herself facing the barrel of a machine gun and 200 heavily armed INS officers trying to force her out of the country. Look for the John Ashcroft's Department of Justice to handle the situation differently from Janet Reno, whose strong-armed tactics eventually cost Bill Clinton's hand-picked successor Al Gore the 2000 Presidental Election. The irony of it all.