If you take the Delta Shuttle, as I did over the holidays, one of the fine periodicals you get to read free is NewsMax.com, the print version of the simpleminded kneejerk right-wing Web site with which it shares a name. They say we are known by the company we keep; here are some of the fine advertisers who share the pages of the current (December '02/January '03) issue of NewsMax.com with its writers, who include not only prominent conservative pundits such as Bill O'Reilly, Thomas Sowell and Michelle Malkin but also a rising GOP star, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania:

* Crystal Clear of Westbrookville, New York, which sells a "patented electron water/air machine" that purports to break down the "extremely tight" hydrogen bonds in water to produce a fluid in which "all the properties are completely different!" ("100 years from now," a "UCLA prof" testifies, "scientists will still be able to identify my water and that's why as a senior citizen I am stronger now than when I ranked #1 in the world in discus!").

* The makers of the Photon Sound Beam, "Ed Skillings original 21st Century Electro-Medicine Technology," which offers "Advanced Noble Gas Lymph Technology With Radiowave Sound Probe" to restore cells to health using "The Full Harmonics of Life Force Energy And Photonics Nutrition."

* Carotec, which sells "Trace Sea Minerals in the form of Phytomicrosphere® developed in France"; the company, vrtuously, has "flatly refused to sell colloidal minerals," insisting that its substitute product "captures the promise of colloidal minerals ... in a proven, effective, elegant way."

* Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America, a book sold by NewsMax itself; described as a translation of a Chinese military manual, Unrestricted Warfare is said to show "that the People's Republic of China is preparing to confront the United States and our allies by conducting 'asymmetrical' or multidimensional attacks on almost every aspect of our social, economic and political life," including a 9/11-style attack on the World Trade Center (a possibility allegedly alluded to three years before the attack actually happened).

* The authors of an online article that claims, according to the NewsMax.com ad, that "[t]here are new ICBM's in Cuba. They are new-age Inter-Continental Bird Missiles ... millions of secret, quiet launches ... small, quiet, flapping wings, have beating hearts ... carry living biological warheads ... Castro's perfect weapon" (all ellipses in the original); the "weapon" in question, say the authors, is West Nile virus, sent by Castro to "completely destroy the USA."

These aren't tiny ads tucked in the back of the magazine among the classifieds; each is a full-page ad, with the exception of the ad for Unrestricted Warfare, which takes up two pages. All quotations are verbatim, from the print ads in the magazine.

These are your friends, Senator Santorum. And you, too, O'Reilly.