It was a week without a lot of big stories, but we'll find something interesting to work over as we plant tongue in cheek for our flASHback on the week's news that amused and confused:

• Hawai'i Sen. Daniel K. Inouye says a second federal spending spree may be needed if the $787 billion plan approved this week doesn't fix the economy. They'll have to move beyond printing money and start photocopying it.

• Winfred H. Wong, 89, of Honolulu, faces federal fraud charges for allegedly flowing millions of dollars of other people's money through multiple accounts. When our octogenarians in the U.S. Senate do that, they call it economic stimulus.

• After six years in the writing, former Gov. Ben Cayetano finally released a scathing 500-page political memoir. He could have saved a lot of time by just lining up his enemies and peeing on them.

• Board of Education member Kim Coco Iwamoto supported giving a vote to the student representative on the board, saying she is fully capable of understanding issues and voting intelligently. That puts her one up on her adult colleagues.

• Schools Superintendent Pat Hamamoto ordered the department to stop serving peanuts because of a national salmonella scare. What'll they eat at Board of Education meetings now?

• Honolulu taxpayers are subsidizing TheBoat to the tune of $120 for each roundtrip passenger, according to a city study. It might be cheaper to buy frequent riders their own yachts.

• Scam artists in Nigeria duped several local renters into paying them to lease O'ahu homes that the Nigerians didn't own. Democrats should have hired them to sell the economic stimulus plan to Republicans.

• Honolulu police brass are pushing new rules that would force officers to cover their tattoos so they don't look like criminals. Do criminals have tattoos of Chief Boisse Correa on their bottoms, too?

• The airline go! announced its first quarterly profit since starting interisland flights more than 2 1/2 years ago. Executives were so excited that they woke up the pilots to give them the news.

• PETA says it's more humane if fast-food restaurants kill chickens by gassing them instead of zapping them unconscious and cutting their throats. Chickens say they'd prefer that customers just order the beef.

And the quote of the week ... from Mayor Mufi Hannemann about his upcoming visit to the White House: "It's an honor to be selected to represent my fellow mayors and to have a hands-on meeting with the president." Careful there, big fella. The Secret Service frowns on visitors who don't keep their hands to themselves.