Call off the cavalry.

Forget the fiscal cliff.

Congress banned the word 'lunatic' last Wednesday.

Hoots, man, we're saved.

Nothing more needs doing now.

Come on back to your home districts, you mighty House of Representatives members and receive the sweeping thanks of a majestically grateful constituency.

We are not worthy of such statesmanship and stand, those still able to stand in the face of such intellectual prowess, trembling in awe.

The Founding Fathers had nothing on you. Jefferson? Madison? Washington? Who needs them when we've got you, babe.

With the country heading toward a fiscal cliff at breakneck speed, you wise men and women knew just what needed doing. Ban the word 'lunatic' from US law, you understood, and all of our problems would disappear like a puff of weak smoke in a strong hurricane.

The halls of Congress are not good enough for you.

Mount Olympus awaits.

Zeus, Apollo, and Athena scurry off like children caught with their hands in the baklava jar.

Nitpicking but true-and I feel quite contrite even making this suggestion-Congress might have done just a teensy weensy bit better, hard as it may be to believe, if it had banned lunatic behavior in Congress, in addition to banning the word 'lunatic' in US code.

But perhaps I condemn the speck of dust in the eye of Congress while ignoring the whacking great planking board in my own eye.

One of the bill's sponsors, Senator Kent Conrad, explained, “Federal law should reflect the 21st Century understanding of mental illness and disease, and the continued use of this pejorative term has no place in the US code.”

In all seriousness, I agree. Lifting the stigma of mental illness is nothing to laugh about but one wishes Congress would practice what it preaches and avoid behavior that one might be tempted to describe as lunatic.

The timing, too, of Congressional action was perfect, as if the captain of the Titanic had called together an emergency meeting of his ranking officers to address the need to part one's hair to the right rather than the left when sailing into a giant boat-sinking iceberg.

The vote in the House of Repre-sentatives was 398-1, with only Louie Gohmert, of Texas, voting 'No', explaining, “Not only should we not eliminate the word 'lunatic' from federal law when the most pressing issue of the day is saving our country from bankruptcy, we should use the word to describe the people who want to continue with business as usual in Washington.”

Something else needs doing, too.

Congress should also fully fund the variety of program needs to address the very real mental health issues faced by millions of Americans every day, thousands of them in our own region, so ably served by Crossroads Community Services.

Crossroads provides services for those with mental illness, intellectual disabilities or who suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, over 4,000 people directly served in Buckingham, Cumberland, Farmville, Prince Edward, Amelia, Charlotte, Lunenburg, and Nottoway, and more than 2,000 others served by Crossroads through prevention programs.

Using the standard, and very conservative, factor of 10 other people whose lives are touched by each person served by Crossroads, we see that at least 60,000 people in our seven-county Crossroads service area are positively and importantly impacted by Crossroads, which was forced to absorb a cut in state funding of 39 percent between 2004 and last year.

Banning the word 'lunatic' means less than nothing if those who voted 398-1 to do so are unwilling to muster a similar vote for enough federal funding to states to fill in the blanks faced by mental health programs, and it holds true whether we go over the fiscal cliff or not.

Call off the cavalry?

Not on your life.

Many in need of mental health services face a cliff every day.

-JKW-