The other day while watching the evening news, it crossed my mind that "the world is going to hell in a handbasket." I don't know what a handbasket is, other than the obvious possibility that it's a small basket that is easily carried. I'll bet they collected eggs in a handbasket on the farm way back when my father was a child. But I don't know the significance of going to hell in one.

Welcome to Heaven in a Handbasket. Our Gift Basket Business is for sale!!

" 'Hell in a handbasket' poses one of the most perplexing problems that has crossed our desk in years."

The woman ahead of me in a supermarket checkout line wrote a check for three bananas. I was appalled. "No wonder the country is going down the drain," I told the children that evening as they settled in front of the TV to watch "Miami Vice." "You mean to hell in a hand basket," said the oldest child as he rose to refresh his bourbon.

Neither side now cares a fig ... and would send them all to heaven in a hand-basket.

Hundreds of Lodi teens will gather tonight at this year's prom to carouse and dance, but they better not be drunk and they definitely shouldn't "back it up." ... "No wonder this whole town is going to hell in a hand basket."

"If I was being taken up to heaven in a hand-basket I would step out of it, for the delight of this."

"Everything has gone to hell in a hand basket, and we got stuck holding the basket."

"It's a little odd for Boivin, who will have both a child and a grandchild simultaneously, but people wrap their heads around these things." "... vague concerns that society is going to hell in a hand basket, I don't think are good enough [to block the transaction]."

I always value reader interaction, although some of you are more gracious than others. You all come from the same demographic; were I to hazard a guess, I’d say your average age was close to 75. There's a lot of talk about World War II and the world going to hell in a handbasket.

"The economy is not going to hell in a handbasket," says Boston-based financial adviser Paul Jackson.

"I’m in a quandary as to why it took L.A. so long to ask for the National Guard’s assistance when everything was going to hell in a hand basket."

At each site, and also in her fancy home to start the game, a big action melee ensues in which Jolie, aided by sharp editing, digital enhancement, computer generated optics and thousands of rounds of blank ammunition, kicks tail, sending all the mean men and ancient Hindu murder goddesses to hell in a hand basket. After which, sweatless, dauntless but with hair ever so slightly mussed, she cocks one eyebrow and utters a quip that someone thinks a real British person might come up with.

While he runs from his past, she falls in love but the demonic horde is closing in on Manhattan in search of the missing succubus who holds the key to prevent Hell going to Heaven in a hand-basket.

"We had to combat the image the Sun was presenting, that the City was going to hell in a hand basket."

... she did all the work; all I was doing was going to heaven in a hand basket. [NSFW]

"I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out," his father told the media. "They blew up their poster boy."

Then there was the person who wrote that all city employees are "idiots." "Well, that's not very helpful," Williams said. "I can't help you if you say the whole city is going to hell in a hand basket."

Whenever something like this happens, of course, everyone wants to know why. So they seize upon the particulars ... Or they make enormous generalizations about American culture, to suggest that we're all going to hell in a handbasket.

"We're sending the message to bad guys, 'We're coming after you, we're coming after you, we're coming after you,'" he said. "I frankly don't think that the message of 'Everything is going to hell in a handbasket' is particularly true."

Apparently, fair use is going to hell in a hand-basket very soon.

Social capital in America has declined since the 1960s. "By many, many different measures, ever since I started to vote, America has been going to hell in a handbasket," he said.

I do think that people hear this and assume, `Oh, society is going to hell in a handbasket.'

Myth: The world is going to hell in a hand basket.
Fact: Society is constantly improving.

When I was in high school, the naysayers were saying that rock 'n roll would send the kids to Hell in a handbasket.

Nova Scotia hasn't gone to hell in a handbasket since then.

I only hope that I don't find out the hard way that anyone I may have picked on has a roiling rage and enough Telekinesis to blow me to heaven in a hand basket.

Just when you think this country and its ideals are going to hell in a handbasket, when world opinion of the U.S. has hit a new low, a book arrives to let you know you’re not the first generation to experience disappointment.

In the midst of attacks from without and scandals from within, many Catholics might be tempted to despair. They may well conclude that the Church is going to hell in a hand basket, and they wring their hands of any responsibility for setting things aright. Or, in the midst of their despair, they may conclude that the project of Christianity is no match for the relentless secularism of our culture. The best that we can hope for is to get in a good kick to the shins here or a minor victory there, but the war is lost.

The Merriam-Webster Editorial Department relates a similar idiom, "going to heaven in a hand basket," appeared in 1949 and means "holding an ecclesiastical office that requires little or no work."

And what's with all these sayings? Emo, Metrosexual, Bling-Bling. No wonder the English Language is going to hell in a handbasket, the younger generations are slaughtering it!

This would be going to heaven in a hand-basket. Why, then, are we told to take the cross upon ourselves?

Leftists, liberals and Democrats believe that the Earth is going to hell in a handbasket, woven by environmentally destructive products such as gasoline.

Despite its problems, Mr. Zollinger said, "I don't want to believe the processing tomato industry is going to hell in a hand basket."

I married in good faith, but after the first few years and the birth of a child, it was apparent that the happy union had gone to hell in a hand basket. Last year, my husband fled to a foreign country ...

Michael Vick has been implicated in a dog-fighting ring. The NFL is going to hell in a handbasket with all these off-field issues.

"If code enforcement doesn't work, we're going to hell in a handbasket and our communities will deteriorate," said Alan Berk, who has lived in Sandy Springs for 25 years ...

The world, if you’ll excuse the expression, is going to hell in a hand basket, and the grownups are busy handing out parking tickets. You’d think we’d have learned by now to differentiate between what a true threat is and what it is not, and yet we continue to major in minors.

This has happened since the beginning of online, since BBS services really. Mid-90’s discussion forums (think investing) always had user-to-user messaging and people going offline and getting involved via email and in-person meetups. (Scary, right?! Think of all the traditional media stories that have painted an alarmist portrait of all these people using online to initiate new relationships when we were all supposed to be heading to hell in a handbasket and bowling alone.) It’s just that now, online communities of interest are being built with this type of functionality, and aspects of radically transparent information exchange, more explicitly in mind. Is this Web 2.0?

"Canadian companies are being sold to foreign interests and the government is washing its hands of this. The country is going to hell in a hand basket. When is this Prime Minister going to do something to save Canada?"

Just another sign that Hell had gone to Heaven in a hand basket.

OK, there is the little matter of television scheduling, but that has already gone to hell in a hand-basket ...

It’s not that these generals now feel guilty that the U.S. is an aggressor and the Pentagon’s officers are war criminals. They just don’t want to lose. Apparently the Iraq war is going to hell in a hand basket -- from U.S. imperialism’s viewpoint -- and everyone connected to the Pentagon knows exactly how quickly.

Every last one of them boys figured he was going to heaven in a hand-basket.

Hellinahandbasket.com is for sale!

In Paris -- he told us -- he wished somebody would send them all to Heaven in a hand basket. That was his way out of the difficulty; he wanted to get rid of them before his money was all gone -- he said he was a practical man and the thing did not pay.

Or perhaps what Hieronymous Bosch would have come up with if he'd been commissioned to paint hell in a hand basket. "It's designed as an art object."

As for Creed Bonbright, he 'pears to think that if we have plenty of law in the Turkey Tracks we'll all go to heaven in a hand basket.

Asks Neil Cavuto: Who says housing is going to hell in a hand basket?

Financial markets are optimistic by nature, but what if it all went belly up, pear-shaped, to hell in a hand basket? The Bank of England’s latest Financial Stability Report attempts to provide a numerical answer by projecting how shocks flow through the financial system.

The United States has little cause to fear a post-war depression in the opinion of Edward J. Flynn, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, here today to see his alma mater, Fordham University, in its Sugar Bowl tilt with Missouri. "There have always been people saying we're going to hell in a hand basket," he said [in January 1942!].

Why, he'd want to go to heaven in a hand basket!"

Why is it always "Going to hell in a hand basket?" You can not fit much into a hand basket, as it is rather small. So why a hand basket? Why not a pail or a bucket or even a wheelbarrow?