April Fool's Day passed last week without my marking it with at least a column or any other jokes. My wife said that the meeting of our condo owners that night did not count.

There have been in recent days, however, a number of developments in American and world politics that were above the tear line in terms of meriting an editorial or a column but which nonetheless had a sort of mordant or morbid appeal to them.

One of these was the case of former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, a Republican. Convicted on seven felony counts prior to last November's elections, he not surprisingly lost at the polls. Now, the new Democrat-led Justice Department has decided that prosecutorial misconduct occurred in the trial and plans to throw out the convictions. Gov. Sarah Palin's Alaska is murmuring about re-running the election.

It may be that the prosecutors were naughty boys and Attorney General Eric Holder's action in throwing out the convictions will set an important example to future potentially naughty prosecutors. However, it is also possible that in 2008 the then-Republican-led Justice Department, which had had such model attorneys general as John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey, did a bag job in the Stevens case.

Here is the theory: They had to prosecute him because what he had done was blatant. But they then deliberately messed up the case by withholding evidence from the defense so that in the long run Mr. Stevens' convictions would be thrown out when the mistakes came to light. There could now be the sort of court fight about the matter that the Republicans have loved so dearly ever since George W. Bush achieved the presidency in Florida in 2000. Tell me this one was just an April Fool's Day jest, please.

Or, let's try another one. On Thursday, responding to the demands of vociferous members of Congress, the Financial Accounting Standards Board changed rules to now allow banks to value toxic and other assets on their books as they wish, no longer according to "mark to market," what the market value of those assets actually is.

Let's assume that Bank X has on its books a bunch of subprime-mortgage loans that are basically worth nothing. "Worth nothing" means that no one in his right mind would buy them at any price.

Now, thanks to the lobbyists, the contribution-fed Congress and the happy banks, things are changed. The federal government or some other body financed by the federal government under the latest bailout plan might like to buy them, in principle to help the bank resume its lending activities.

Due to the change in FASB rules that the Congress has now pushed through, the banks holding the valueless assets can say that instead of their being worth nothing, their true market value, they are worth whatever the banks say they are worth, and the government or its clients can buy them at that price. April Fool! Except there is no April fool in this case except the miserable taxpayers, who have been rolled again.

Or then there was the fashion parade that almost supplanted the serious business at the G-20 summit in London. Michelle Obama, who just has to be the most impressive First Lady America has had in living memory in terms of fitness, intellectual timbre, good motherhood and beauty, raised some eyebrows by embracing the queen, as in Elizabeth II.

I remember when it was acceptable to speak of the queen only in the third person, nor ever use the pronouns "she" or "her" with reference to Her Majesty. She -- I mean, Her Majesty -- has softened her image somewhat over the years, seeking modernity. (It is still said that she really only likes dogs and horses.) What we can be absolutely sure of is that Ms. Obama would not have hugged the queen unless she had not been told in advance that the queen wouldn't mind, or if the queen had not made the first move.

What I found more entertaining was the star quality meeting between Ms. Obama and French president Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, model-singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. Those two sized each other up for center stage in a sort of Miley Cyrus meets Britney Spears encounter and when Ms. Sarkozy as hostess had to yield place to Ms. Obama, our president's spouse probably should have asked Mr. Obama to cover her back.

We will leave out the part played in the G-20 family photo moments by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner. Her costume was certainly different, and fetching, but my favorite among the women leaders at the summit remains far and away German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

I always thought U.S. President George W. Bush had a thing for her. What strikes me about Ms. Merkel is that as a former East German who majored in physics and chemistry, soft-spoken but obviously with the political nerves of a day trader, nobody messes with her. She came to the G-20 with the certainty that Germany was not going to shell out any more money in economic stimuli to save the Americans' hides, and stuck to her guns, achieving just that outcome.

The other -- probably bad -- joke of the week took place in Malawi. The former Madonna Louise Ciccone, there to adopt a playmate for her adopted son David Banda, got stiffed by a judge who said that a foreigner adopting a Malawian had to have been resident in Malawi for 18 months. This was new, I guess, since it hadn't prevented Madonna from walking off with David Banda.

I like Madonna a lot, from her early days singing "Borderline" to playing Eva Peron. She is one of the few performers these days who can actually sing, dance and act. At the same time there was something vaguely grotesque about her in Malawi -- dressed like a slob, roots showing, being told that she would have to live in Malawi (hard to imagine) -- if she wanted another Malawian child.

It wasn't funny, or an April Fool's joke, since it involved the future of a child. At the same time it was probably good for her to learn that she can't have just whatever she wants on the basis of her money and fame.

Other candidate April Fool's jokes this year included former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich and North Korea, but they were too much of a stretch for even a dark sense of humor.

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