(2005-04-20) — Governors of Arizona, Nevada and Oregon today praised California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s call to “close the borders,” saying it would improve the security and living conditions of all citizens in their own states.

However, a spokesman for Gov. Schwarzenegger said he was speaking of the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, not California’s borders with neighboring states.

“We’re grateful for Arnold’s unilateral move to protect us from incursion by Californians,” the three governors said in a joint news release. “Our porous borders have posed a grave threat to our states for too many years. The ideological degradation spawned by this influx has devastated our own local cultures.”

A spokesman for the local branch of the Minuteman Project said its patrols would continue to man border checkpoints looking for California license plates and “backpackers in Birkenstocks.”

(2004-04-20) — In one of his first official moves, Pope Benedict XVI today announced that the Vatican would “spin off” the U.S. division of the Roman Catholic church, but retain a 49-percent stake in the new entity, called R.C. Lite.

The partial divestiture of its holy-owned subsidiary comes as a new CNN poll reveals that 74 percent of U.S. Catholics say they’re more likely to follow their own conscience than the teachings of the church.

R.C. Lite will elect its own leader to the largely ceremonial post of New-World Pope. Thorny moral questions in the new religious sect will be decided by Internet polling, the results of which will provide non-binding guidance to church members.

To counter Pope Benedict’s dogmatic conservatism, several church sources said America’s leading Roman Catholic politician, Sen. John F. Kerry, D-MA, is considered a shoo-in for the New-World Papacy.

“We need a pope with nuanced ideas,” said one unnamed U.S. Bishop. “He needs to be a uniter, not a divider. He can’t be afraid to change his deeply-held convictions in light of shifting public opinion. He must be courageous enough to keep his beliefs separate from his behavior and decision making.”

If Mr. Kerry accepts the R.C. Lite leadership post, insiders say he will assume the name Benadryl XIII.

(2005-04-19) — America’s leading Roman Catholic politician today greeted the news of German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s election to the papacy with a warning that Pope Benedict XVI has “no mandate other than an obligation to heal the wounds of the church and bring people together in the spirit of diversity.”

“This is not a time for narrow ideologues, or dogmatists,” said Sen. John Kerry, D-MA. “I’m praying that the new Holy Father — despite his reputation as God’s Rottweiller — will realize his duty to be a big-tent guy. And he should never take what is an article of faith for him, personally, and try to impose it on others.”

Mr. Kerry said that, even though his favorite candidate didn’t win the papal election, the Massachusetts Democrat will continue to play an influential role in shaping Catholic doctrine and practice.

(2005-04-19) — Sen. Joseph Biden, D-DE, today asked the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to prevent President Bush’s nominee for U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, from staring at him during confirmation hearings.

“Mr. Chairman, he’s looking at me again,” said Sen. Biden. “Make him stop looking at me.”

Indeed, a review of the video indicates that Mr. Bolton had directed a scowling gaze at several Senators during the hearings.

An aide to Sen. Biden said Mr. Bolton is trying to intimidate the Delaware Democrat into approving his nomination and has privately “threatened to have Biden unelected.”

“The Senator feels bullied,” said the unnamed aide. “Imagine how terrified Kofi Annan would be if we sent Bolton to the U.N.”

(2005-04-18) — In perhaps the most substantive attack to date on President Bush’s nominee for U.N. Ambassador, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, today accused undersecretary of state John Bolton of secretly engineering the British invasion of American pop music in the 1960s.

But an angry, red-faced, enraged and furious Mr. Bolton responded to Sen. Boxer’s allegations of his links with the Beatles by shouting, “I am not the eggman. I am not the walrus.”

The California Senator said Mr. Bolton’s clandestine funding of the Beatles, largely through purchasing their albums, “threatened American sovereignty and destroyed our native doo-wop tradition.”

Mrs. Boxer based her allegations on anonymous reports from terrified former schoolmates who said Mr. Bolton not only bought Beatles albums, but encouraged others to do so, “and brutally disparaged American jazz and big band music.”

An aide to the Senator said that if this tactic doesn’t sink the nomination, “she is prepared to prove that Mr. Bolton is contributing to global warming by exhaling a toxin so powerful that it has bleached his facial hair.”

“If it does that to his mustache,” said the unnamed source, “imagine what it’s doing to Mother Earth.”

(2005-04-16) — Senate Democrats revealed today that they have preemptively retaliated against a Republican maneuver called ‘the nuclear option‘ by slowing the Senate’s work to a virtual standstill.

However, they could not specify when their ‘pre-taliation’ had begun, since even Sen. Robert Byrd, D-WV, who was elected to the Senate in 1958, could not recall the moment.

Called ‘the Constitutional option’ by Republicans, the nuclear option would change Senate rules to effectively prohibit filibustering judicial nominees (known as ‘the nerve-gas option’), thereby forcing an up-or-down vote to fulfill the Senate’s Constitutional ‘advice and consent’ role under Article II, Section 2.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-TN, immediately called for the appointment of a committee of nine Democrats and nine Republicans “to determine if the productive work of the Senate had slowed or halted, and when.”

(2005-04-15) — Despite his threats to force a vote on President Bush’s judicial nominees by changing Senate rules to prevent a Democrat filibuster, the top Republican Senator doesn’t have the raw material to carry out “the nuclear option,” according to the latest report from CIA analysts.

“Our best human intelligence and imagery from satellites and drones has failed to produce evidence of nuclear-option readiness on the part of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,” said an unnamed source at the CIA. “As far as we can tell, he lacks the basic ingredients necessary to deploy the nuclear option.”

The probe began after the CIA intercepted encrypted messages between Sen. Frist and North Korean President Kim Jong-Il in which the two exchanged tips on “playing the nuclear card.”

A spokesman for Sen. Frist said, “We’re quite serious about enforcing the Constitutional mandate to hold an up-or-down vote on the president’s nominees. If the Democrats continue to raise the specter of a filibuster, Sen. Frist plans to hold his breath until they relent.”

The unnamed spokesman declined to clarify previous remarks in which the Tennessee Republican said that if Democrats continue to block votes on judicial nominees, he would “turn the Senate into a lake of inconvenience and mild discomfort.”

(2005-04-14) — Democrat National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean, seeking to overcome his party’s reputation as “a vision-free zone” today unveiled a DNC version of the old Republican Contract with America.

A $307 million advertising campaign will launch the new Democrat agenda under the slogan: “A Better America without DeLay.”

“The Democrat party will sweep Congress in 2006 with a unified, proactive, principled message,” Mr. Dean told an audience of state party leaders. “This slogan capitalizes on our major accomplishment of 2005 and hints at a brighter future thanks to Democrat leadership.”

Polls show a groundswell of enthusiasm among voters as Democrats continue to build on their record of legislative accomplishment by holding news conferences to disparage House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-TX.

“This is why we came to Washington,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. “To make government really work for the little people.”

While the new Democrat agenda is still in the “slogan phase,” Mr. Dean said he would soon poll his supporters on the internet to “flesh out” the vision.

(2005-04-12) — Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, continued her verbal assault on President Bush’s nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. today — this time questioning the source of Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s mustache.

During a withering barrage of rhetorical questions, Sen. Boxer told Mr. Bolton that he needs anger therapy and virtually accused him of stealing the prodigious, light-colored, facial growth from a junior analyst at the CIA.

“We know you’re a bully,” the California Democrat said. “Given your track record of abusing the little people, this committee would like to see some proof that your alleged mustache isn’t a battle prize torn from the lip of one of your pathetic victims. I want to see the DNA comparison.”

Mr. Bolton deflected the question and politely thanked the Senate committee for its “substantive review” of his qualifications.

One unnamed Senate Democrat privately conceded that Mr. Bolton would “likely win confirmation by a whisker.”

(2005-04-12) — With gasoline prices at the pump well over $2 per gallon, Democrats in Congress who have staunchly opposed oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), today sought to prove they have a proactive plan for America’s energy independence.

At a news conference on the steps of the Capitol, Congressional Democrats unveiled a new 7-point plan for fossil fuel freedom. The $873 billion program would create a new Department of Independence from Petroleum Suppliers to implement the following proactive measures.

• Low-income families will receive a monthly allocation of refined Alaskan caribou milk — a cheap, plentiful alternative to gasoline.

• America will harness the energy of environmental protestors by paying them to push the cars of government officials.
• American corporations will be required to hire people from neighborhoods within three miles of their facilities to enhance “employee ambulatory commuting.”
• Popular vacation spots will be required to relocate to within five miles of population density centers. For example, Disney will open virtual Magic Kingdom kiosks in thousands of convenience stores nationwide.
• All of the nation’s remaining undeveloped land, abandoned lots and industrial ‘brown field’ sites will be designated as national parks to provide local vacation spots within walking distance for most Americans.
• The IRS will offer a Family-Compound Tax Credit to extended families which establish joint residence on the same property, thereby eliminating the need to drive to visit loved ones.
• The federal tax on a gallon of gasoline will be increased to $8.59 in order to reduce consumption and thereby increase the supply which will drive down the price per gallon.