most everybody's commented about the airplanes at the burns' museum, but one which a lot of people missed was the enola gay. the enola gay was one of the airplanes featured in burns' air and space museum. it's actually in the new annex to the NASM, the Udvar-Hazy center in Dulles, Va. About 10 years ago there was a huge controversy over how the museum should do an exhibit about the Enola Gay. Part of it included some stuff about the results of the Hiroshima bombing, which were considered, by some, to be unpatriotic.
when OFF was celebrating homer's successful return from canada, homer took out some Rx pills from his stomach and they're in balloons. you better believe drug smugglers do that stuff to avoid customs, and they have more creative ways which i don't want to go into any detail about, it's kinda gross.
apu getting stopped at the border is a reference to the fact that the relatively porous border between Canada and the United States might be attractive to terrorists trying to sneak into the country. In late 1999 US customs agents stopped a group of terrorists from entering the US at the border. They had plans to blow up a whole bunch of things during the New Years Eve celebrations.
the thing about the mentally retarded man being executed is a reference to the case of daryl renard atkins. atkins who had the cognitive abilities of a 9-12 year old, robbed and killed an air force officer in yorktown, va. he was sentenced to death, but the supreme court granted a stay of execution in 2002, arguing that it violated his eighth amendment rights. then in 2004 texas was going to execute james lee clark, a man with an IQ of 65. they were able to do this because in the atkins, the high court was very ambiguous about what constituted mental retardation. different doctors attempted to give an iq level of clark, and in april, 2004 was he was granted a stay of execution.