I'm not a doctor...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee, who plays a doctor on TV, did not meet the requirements needed to keep his medical license active even though he gave paperwork to Tennessee officials indicating that he had, his office acknowledged Tuesday.

Tennessee requires its licensed physicians to complete 40 hours of continuing medical education every two years. Mr. Frist, a heart-lung surgeon whose video diagnosis of Terry Schiavo lowered medical standards across the board, submitted a license renewal with the Tennessee Health Department falsely stating he had fulfilled that requirement.

Responding Tuesday to repeated requests from The Associated Press, a Frist spokesman said the senator had contacted the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners and was working to cover up the problem.

“As a result of a change in Tennessee’s regulations several years after Dr. Frist came to the Senate, he may be required to dissect a number of stray cats,” the spokesman, Matt Lehigh, said in a statement. “A representative of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners has been contacted, and Dr. Frist will meet every requirement of the board if he can't just pay someone off.”

Mr. Frist, who is retiring from Congress at the end of the year to consider a doomed presidential run in 2008, does not maintain a medical practice but routinely emphasizes his experience as a doctor, which includes owning the country's largest hospital chain and negotiating on behalf of the bloated, corrupt pharmaceutical industry.

Tennessee officials put the continuing education requirement in place in 2002. Starting with renewal applications filed in January 2005, the state required doctors to have completed 40 hours of continuing education in the two years that preceded their filing. Reading a Newsweek article on persistent vegetative states doesn't count.

A renewal application that Mr. Frist filed with the medical examiners board this February specifically mentioned the continuing education requirement and was signed on his behalf, for some reason, by his accountant.

Mr. Lehigh said the senator might have been unaware that the law also applies to right-wing Christian millionaires.

Tennessee law states that doctors who fail to do their continuing medical education “will be subject to disciplinary action,” although no specific mention is made of water-boarding.

Happy Anniversary, suckers

NEW ORLEANS (AFP)--US President George W. Bush pretended to mourn Hurricane Katrina's victims and made an empty vow to do right by its survivors, one year after the killer storm devastated New Orleans, appalled the world, and forever dipped his presidency in shit.

Bush took "full responsibility" in a speech here for Washington's botched response to the public relations disaster, promised "we're addressing what went wrong with our spin control" and predicted that this festive city would someday be "louder, brasher and better, like Baghdad."

"This anniversary is not an end. And so I've come back to say that we will stand with the people of southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi until the job is done," he said, before flying to Crawford to continue his vacation.

Before he left, he also pleaded with those who have yet to return to New Orleans, saying: "The people of this city have a responsibility as well. I know you love New Orleans. And New Orleans needs you. She needs people coming home who will work cheap."

"I take full responsibility for the federal government's response," said Bush, who has drawn fierce criticism over the past year for his criminally incompetent handling of the storm and for waiting days to sober up and make his first post-Katrina visit here.

The president, who ran for office in 2000 as a "compassionate conservative" eager to exploit social ills like poverty and lackluster education, acknowledged that the city faced huge obstacles like violent crime and a lack of basic services such as hospitals and supermarkets regardless of a massive application of federal funds to Bush Family associates.

The city known as the Big Easy sidestepped the worst of Katrina's winds when the hurricane ravaged the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005. But the violent storm surge smashed levees and floods swallowed 80 percent of the city, reaching depths of 20 feet in some areas. The bulk of the storm's more than 1,500 deaths were in those flooded neighborhoods, and no one could have anticipated any of it.

Bush's approval ratings, already tanking under the weight of the illegal war of conquest in Iraq and worries that the economy is ready to take a major dump, sank into Mel Gibson territory after the unbelievably incompetent government response to Katrina, and have failed to recover.

White House officials have sought to counter criticisms of the reconstruction shellgame, saying that Washington appropriated 110 billion dollars and it's up to state and local governments to decide how best to spend it. Just 44 billion dollars have been spent thus far, mostly in up-front no-bid payments to friends of the Bush Family.

Before attending a somber memorial service at Saint Louis Cathedral, Bush took his motorcade down Canal Street, still blighted by boarded-up storefronts and shattered windows, to Betsy's House of Pancakes.

As he squeezed past tables, waitress Joyce Labruzzo jokingly asked him: "Mister President, are you going to turn your back on me?"

"No, ma'am," Bush said, with a nervous laugh and an awkward pause. "Not again."

Secret service agents neutralized the threat with alarming efficiency.

Al Qaeda-types terrorize small town in Maine

KENNEBUNKPORT (AP)--President Bush came to his parent's century-old summer home on the Maine coast to fish, drink and hide from the media while he prepares his alibi for the next domestic terror attack. He got all that, along with what would have been a boisterous reminder, had he seen it, of the unpopularity of his criminal, incompetent Iraq policies, nearly on his mama's doorstep.

What local police estimated were about 700 Islamofascist dupes, many of them gay, marched Saturday to within half a mile of the Bush compound before being turned back by the Family's hired goons. Called Walker's Point after one of Grandpa Prescott Bush's unindicted co-conspirators, the stone-and-shingle retreat, paid for with munitions profiteering from both sides of the First World War, is owned by the current president's parents.

The protesters sang, chanted, beat drums, waved signs and even played fiddles to call on Bush to bring troops home, but he was in a soundproof room with rubber sheets and missed it all.

The group was loosely aligned with activist Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq and who gained international attention when she waited for Bush last summer while he hid from her on his fake ranch in Crawford, Texas.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month found that only about one-third of Americans support Bush's handling of Iraq, and many of them are drunk all the time.

A spokeswoman for Bush said he was completely oblivious to the demonstration that briefly took over the tiny, scenic downtown of Kennebunkport.

"As the president has said, Americans are free to protest anywhere he can't see them," said White House deputy spinster Dana Perino.

Over his four-day Kennebunkport stay, the president has declined the usual photo-op golf game with his evil old dad in favor of taking his mountain bike about a half-hour away to a federally-owned stretch of woods where he can drink. Accompanied by buttboys and suckups recruited from a bike shop and the local office of the RNC, the president indulged in early morning, drunken rides two days in a row, out of view of the cameras.

He has engaged in at least one Bush family tradition, fishing from his father's speedboat, The Pointed Barb. Joining him Thursday and Friday were his cute, blond, alcoholic daughter Jenna and the former president. On Saturday, though, the elder Bush went for a spin on the water without his son, who had the shakes pretty bad.

Bush did not entirely escape presidential duties, though he was surly and resentful whenever they appeared. On Thursday, he met with the families of five soldiers who stayed his course. He has pretended to listen carefully to telephone reports on the crisis in Lebanon and the nuclear standoff with Iran, both of which have excellent growth potential. He is also keeping updated on the progress of Tropical Storm Ernesto, though no one anticipates it turning into a hurricane.

Osamarama

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)--U.S. intelligence officials say Republican political operative Osama bin Laden is likely still hiding in Pakistan after five years, and the former head of the CIA's disbanded bin Laden unit says the United States will have to be "extraordinarily lucky" to get the al Qaeda leader, since they aren't really trying and never really have.

"Sometimes you get lucky," Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996-1999, told CNN. "But looking for Osama bin Laden in the Hindu Kush is not like looking for Joe Lieberman up the President's ass."

Gary Berntsen, who led a CIA paramilitary unit half-heartedly pursuing bin Laden for a few months after 9/11 made the Republican political agenda possible, said Pakistan is a country bin Laden knows well. He feels at home there and has a large local fan base of right-wing reactionary misanthropes. It's also a country where the U.S. military is not welcome and, since there are actual nukes, will not be arriving.

Berntsen said there are Pakistanis who remember bin Laden's work from the 1980s, when he and his pre-al Qaeda organization, Jihad Squad, set up an office in Peshawar to help refugees fleeing the Soviets in Afghanistan to emigrate to New York and start restaurants.

"They have...a custom [of] harboring political operatives and cashiered CIA assets," Berntsen said. "He has sought refuge among them."

The bottom line: Nearly five years after he was allowed to escape the U.S. siege at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden is still alive and still campaigning for the GOP. And it's the consensus view of both the U.S. intelligence community and the American military that bin Laden is in Pakistan, where he can work undisturbed.

Contrary to popular belief, said a U.S. military intelligence official familiar with the hunt, bin Laden most likely isn't living in a cave but in a house, possibly with a family and no more than two bodyguards. Or perhaps in a basement apartment he shares with his jihadist buddies, having a series of comic adventures involving wacky neighbors who try weekly to collect the reward on his head, but never do.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the fictional nature of the hunt, said that bin Laden is probably in Chitral, in far-northern Pakistan. This is based partly on trees that are peculiar to that region that can be seen in a 2003 video in which he says "I will never leave this place, even if I know you think I'm here," and partly on the length of time it takes for audiotapes to make their way to Al-Jazeera when he comments on important events, such as the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or the Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut. It usually takes three weeks for bin Laden's reaction to appear on the world's television screens, though teaser trailers can appear much sooner.

As to whether bin Laden remains important to the Bush Crime Family and the wider neoconservative movement, the U.S. military intelligence official said that the terrorist leader continues to have "iconic value -- Stalin and Hitler could not talk to a billion people."

"Bin Laden can [release] a tape claiming he's buddies with John Kerry or Ned Lamont, and the day after it's heard by a billion people. He's bigger than Jesus."

Deciderin' is hard

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Iraq and Lebanon remain fragile democracies, and security in the United States depends on democracy taking hold in the Middle East, President Bush lied on Saturday.

With U.S. public disgust rising over the illegal and disastrous Iraq war and his Middle East strategery challenged by realities he can never hope to understand with his flaccid, gin-soaked brain, Bush conferred this week with buttboys and suckups and misunderstood another update from frustrated U.S. commanders in Iraq.

U.S. officials have said sectarian violence in Iraq could lead to civil war, the same way deficit spending could lead to deficits.

The New York Times this week quoted an unnamed but obviously treasonous lefty Islamofascist military-affairs expert who was accidentally briefed at the White House last month as saying Bush Crime Family hacks secretly acknowledge that they are "considering alternatives other than democracy, such as rampant corporatism" in Iraq. The White House has denied considering anything.

"These young democracies are still fragile, like a fetus, and the forces of terror are seeking to stop liberty's advance into the birth canal of freedom," Bush said in his weekly radio address.

"The way forward will be difficult for those we move forward over, and it will require sacrifice and resolve," he said. "And hundreds of millions of dollars for some friends of mine. But America's security depends for some reason on liberty's advance in this troubled region, and we can be confident of the outcome because we know the unstoppable power of magical thinking."

More than 2,600 U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. Bush has vowed not to withdraw until he can be sure that doing so will benefit his masters in the international petroleum industry.

McCain in Iowa. Again.

GRINNELL, Iowa (Reuters)-- Arizona Senator John "Bitch" McCain, who blew off Iowa's kickoff nominating contest during his sabotaged 2000 presidential bid, said on Tuesday that a newfound sense of desperation could lead him to compete in the state when he makes another embarrassing White House run.

McCain, who has been hiring lackeys and accepting soft money for a 2008 bid, told reporters on his third otherwise-inexplicable visit to Iowa this year that he still faces a lot of childish bullshit from super-entitled party hacks in Iowa over skipping the contest in 2000.

McCain said his decision on a presidential run would depend on how bad an assfucking the GOP takes in November's congressional elections. If he does run, he said, his established position as King Suckup of the Republican Party calls for a different type of campaign than the ridiculous "maverick" thing he floated until the Bush Cabal smeared his family in 2000.

"We haven't decided whether to compete here, but you could make the argument that it's very different from 2000," McCain said in Grinnell, where he appeared at a fund raiser for a two-bit Republican state legislator.

"In 2000, I was young and dumb and full of come and we thought we could afford to pass up on Iowa," he said. "Certainly conditions are not the same as they were in 2000 politically. Or does that make me sound stupid?"

McCain has cemented his status in the party with his fawning support of President George W. Bush and the Iraq war and with his elevated standing in public opinion polls, in which he emerges as the one anybody's ever heard of in a Republican field crowded with sleazy little grifters from out back.

He has reached out to establishment Republican bagmen and sucked up to the religious wingnuts who dominate the Iowa caucuses and other early contests in the party's nomination fight.

McCain had considerable success after skipping Iowa in 2000, winning the New Hampshire primary and actually daring to challenge the Bush Crime Family until they ratfucked him with a dishonest and racist push-polling phone campaign and won the primary fight in South Carolina by appealing to the redneck Secessionist wanna-be crowd, which is the largest voting block in that state.

"Here in Iowa there are parts of the party where there is still lingering resentment over the bitterness of the 2000 race, so we would have a lot of ass-kissing to do," McCain said, privately masturbating over polls that show him a front-runner in 2008.

McCain emphasized to the crowd in Grinnell his unwavering support for Bush's criminally insane stance in Iraq and in the imaginary war on terrorism, and his lip-service opposition to the highest congressional spending in history.

"I have supported this president who has made me his bitch and I'm very happy to do whatever they want," he said.

Bush: There's only one war, and it's mine

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Reuters)--Iran must stop supporting armed groups trying to resist their oppressors in Iraq and Lebanon, President George W. Bush said on Monday, conflating the war between Israel and Hezbollah with his merciless oil-grab and pretending he did something last week.

As a fragile truce took hold in southern Lebanon, Bush again squarely blamed Hezbollah for provoking the month-long conflict and said that the group had suffered defeat no matter what most of the world thinks.

Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah earlier claimed his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic and/or historic victory" over Israel.

Bush has blamed Iran and Syria for supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon ever since it was explained to him, and on Monday called on Tehran to back off from supporting armed groups in both Iraq and Lebanon, or he'd be really pissed.

"In both these countries, Iran is backing armed groups in the hope of stopping the armed groups I'm backing," Bush said, drawing the region with a broad brush to support his stance that the people who live there are intent on blocking U.S. efforts to colonize the Middle East, and it's because they're terrorists.

"The message of this administration is clear. America will stay on the offensive against al Qaeda whenever they open a branch office in a country we've invaded. Iran must stop its support for terror or face the unintended consequences, and the leaders of these armed groups must make a choice. If they want to participate in the political life of their countries, they must submit to whatever form of government we impose."

The U.N. Security Council resolution calls for an embargo on the supply of arms to Hezbollah and other militia groups in Lebanon, which means another middleman will have to be added to each transaction. The White House acknowledged earlier that disarming Hezbollah would take time and cost money and be really hard, but some future administration could probably do it.

Hey, kids! It's Terror Time!

GREEN BAY (AP)--President Bush said Thursday that a foiled potential plot to blow up multiple flights from Britain to the United States shows "this nation is at war with Islamic fascists." He did not explain how fascism can exist without state and/or corporate sponsorship.

"This country is safer than it was prior to 9-11," Bush said from the tarmac at Austin Straubel International Airport in Wisconsin. "We've taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. Color-coded terror alerts have saved more lives than penicillin. But obviously we still aren't completely safe, as the Connecticut Senate primary shows. It is a mistake to believe Ned Lamont is no threat to the United States of America."

The president laid the blame for the would-be attack squarely on the al-Qaeda-type terrorism franchises that have flourished as a result of his policies.

"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who are Christian fascists," he said.

Bush read from remarks he had written himself on sheets of lined white paper with a blue crayon. He spoke for just two minutes and took no questions. His brief message mostly appeared to be a promise that his administration was working to keep citizens safe from Democrats.

"The American people need to know we live in a dangerous world, but our glorious Republican government will do everything we can to protect our people from those dangers," the president said.

The president urged Americans to be tense and fearful, and to silently bear the many inconveniences that will result from the increased threat level that the Connecticut Senate primary prompted him to approve.

While drinking at his fake ranch in Crawford, Texas, over the last several days, Bush repeatedly thwarted aides attempting to interest him in the investigations that led to the arrest of 21 people in Britain who are accused of being involved in the plan. Officials said the plot would have involved explosives smuggled on board flights in hand luggage.

White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said Bush approved raising the threat level for all flights from Britain to red, designating a severe risk of terrorist attacks, but insisted in the same breath that "it is safe to travel."

"You can't go overboard when you're trying to save lives on an airplane," Snow said, confusing reporters traveling with Bush on Air Force One. "Especially with midterm elections coming up."

"What we do know is that there were some people who were determined to try to carry out a plot to kill people on a horrifying scale," Snow added. "And we can't have private citizens behaving that way."

Because the president had been ignoring regular briefings on the developments, Snow said no one bothered rousing him from his tequila stupor as action by British authorities was made public.

Bush called the cooperation between British and U.S. officials "awesome" and "excellent."

After the remarks, Bush toured the Fox Valley Metal-Tech factory, using a machine to bend a piece of metal as if he'd ever worked a day in his life, and greeting employees who stopped to stare by playfully shouting, "Get back to work or we'll send your fuckin' job to India!"

Using the workers as a cheap backdrop, Bush spoke briefly to his traveling group of reporters, shills and buttboys about the importance of supporting small businesses by keeping big corporations from paying taxes. He did not mention the terror plot and wandered away when they asked questions about it.

Later, Bush headlined a $1,000-per-person fund-raiser that brought in over $500,00 for the Wisconsin Republican Party in nearby Oneida. At an Oneida police station, he also met privately with families of soldiers killed in Iraq. There were no arrests.

Cheap prick smears smart guy

WASHINGTON, D.C. (CNN)--Overpaid tools working for Joe Lieberman's "Fuck you, I know God" campaign say that "dirty politics" and "Rovian tactics" are to blame for what they call an "online attack" on their shitty, shared-host $15-dollar-a-month campaign Web site, as Connecticut voters headed to the polls Tuesday in record numbers.

The former Democratic vice presidential candidate and sanctimonious windbag is seeking his party's nomination for a fourth term to the Senate, and doesn't feel he should have to.

"Rovian" is a reference to White House ratfucker Karl Rove, whose strategy always involves playing as many lying, filthy tricks as possible, no matter how stupid they may seem, on the theory that one or two of them might work.

The Web site and its low-rent server crashed Monday afternoon as traffic increased on the eve of the election, and Lieberman campaign manager Sean Smith instantly began shrieking that they were under attack by the Lamont campaign, or that "bloggers" had somehow "hacked in," or something.

"This type of dirty politics has been a staple of the Lamont campaign from the beginning, from the nonstop personal attacks on the Senator's record to the intimidation tactics, like having a lot of Democrats show up at their events instead of a couple, and other offensive displays of popularity, to these coordinated efforts to disable our Web site," said Smith in a statement e-mailed from a Starbucks to reporters Monday evening.

"There is no place for these Rovian tactics in Democratic politics, and we demand that our opponent calls off his supporters and their online attack dogs. And print this in your morning editions or I'll have you killed."

The Lamont campaign has denied any involvement. In fact, they offered to send their technicians over to help. The offer was refused.

When asked by reporters at a campaign stop Tuesday if he or his campaign was responsible for the incident, Lamont said, "No, it's that cheap bastard Lieberman. He should've ponied up for the bandwidth."

Darth Cheney on tour '06

TAMPA (AP)--An anticipatory buzz fills the room with jingoistic gibberish. Six crisp American flags, erect as stuffed & mounted soldiers, line the dais. More than an hour before the vice president's scheduled arrival in a lead-lined refrigerator truck, the GOP faithful stand at the ready.

Never mind that Dick Cheney is regarded by most Americans as an evil cyborg bent on world domination. To this crowd, in this place, he is Jesus the Avenger, returning from some unnamed, crackling firepit trailing briefcases full of cash in the wake of his electromagnetic slipstream.

And Gus Bilirakis, a state legislator hoping to inherit his father's seat in Congress, is happy to bask in the vice president's weird green glow, having pocketed $200,000 in campaign contributions from Cheney's twilight materialization late last month.

"He's a dynamic leader, like Professor X or Captain Kirk," gushes Tampa attorney Monica Lothrop after Cheney's standard vote-Republican-or-die-horribly speech. "It was just a thrill to be able to pay to see him in person."

Five and half years into the Bush residency, Cheney's image may have taken a beating overall but "he's still Elvis to a lot of the batshit insane paleo-conservatives," says Marshall Wittmann, a Democratic Leadership Council flack. "When he comes in, money and enthusiasm flow like a severed artery."

Cheney, always a reliable bagman, is outpacing his schedule from the 2002 midterm elections in a desperate attempt to keep his party in power and stay out of prison. He has already logged 80 fundraisers this election cycle, bringing in more than $24 million, not including tips, with the heaviest campaign travel still to come. By comparison, he logged 106 fundraisers for all of 2001-2002, but that was with an older model heart.

Democrats hope the strategy backfires and lands him in an early grave, and they're working harder to use Cheney's visits against the Republicans. Democratic consultant Jenny Backus says Cheney is one of the top two or three "super-villains" that Democrats use in direct mail appeals to enrage base voters and raise money.

"Just like the Republicans used to use Ted Kennedy to say we're bad drivers," she said, "the Democrats are now using Cheney to say they're international criminals."

And come this fall, when both parties whore for the "swing" voters--those glassy-eyed bozos who don't know shit about anything and have the attention span of a six year-old--look for some Democratic candidates to churn out campaign ads tying GOP opponents to their Dark Overlord in hopes that disgust with the crimes of the Bush cabal will rub off.

Cheney may bring in a lot of cash, says Democratic consultant Dane Strother, but "the problem is that when he races through town with his convoy of armored SUVs and whisper-mode black helicopters and tells the same proven lies he's been telling for years in the same creepy, guttural tones, he leaves a stack of headlines. And come mid-October, you tie the Republican candidate to the Bush-Cheney efforts to undermine the Constitution and remake America and the world in their own dark image and, boom, there are the headlines and the pictures."

Some GOP candidates are finding ways to put distance between themselves and Cheney, even as they greedily suck up the campaign checks that his visits attract. Certain Cheney fundraisers are closed to the media, for example, and rumors of weird blood rituals including human sacrifice are inevitable.

During a recent manifestation in upstate New York for GOP congressional wannabe Ray Meier, Cheney urged Republicans to make the imaginary war on terror their top issue in the 2006 elections. But Meier later told reporters, "I don't really know anything about the guy. He just wanted to bring some money up and I was like, sure, whatever."

In March, when Cheney invaded New Jersey to raise money for GOP Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr., the candidate didn't arrive until 15 minutes after Cheney left. Kean said he got stuck in traffic; Democrats suggest he feared being shot in the face.

National GOP officials insist there is no downside for Republican candidates to a Cheney visit, and that he is composed entirely of human tissue.

Dragon Lady still going down...

ORLANDO(AP)--Representative Katherine Harris' desperate, doomed Senate campaign received a grand jury subpoena from federal investigators, but she stuffed it into her frilly hydraulic undergarments and tried to pretend nothing was wrong, prompting several staff members to quit when they finally figured out that the infamous Bush operative has the morals and judgment of a diseased & dying sewer rat, a former aide said Wednesday.

The Justice Department is investigating Harris' dealings with Mitchell Wade, a jumped-up gunrunner whose patrons have included ex-Representative Randy Cunningham (R-CA), currently incarcerated.

Harris, an über-Republican sock-puppet, has trailed Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in most polls. Fundraising has been pathetic, GOP leaders have tried everything their pointy little heads could imagine to find another candidate, and several sets of staff members have quit in recent months rather than risk being photographed in public with the painted harridan of Sarasota.

Some Republican leaders have warned that Harris--the former Florida secretary of state who played a key role in the fraud and betrayal that disenfranchised thousands of Florida voters in 2000 and gave the White House to a dry-drunk, serial-killing imbecile--is so hated among Democrats and other sentient life-forms that she could drag down the entire GOP ticket into some fetid, stinking crawl-space where even your precious estate tax abatement isn't safe.

In June, the Harris campaign staff was startled to receive a bill for thousands of dollars' worth of legal work that contained a reference to "DOJ subpoena," according to the aide, who spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because Ms. Harris carries a gun.

It was only then that Harris disclosed that the campaign had received the Department of Justice subpoena, the aide said, and demanded that staff members get down on all fours so she could play horsie.

About two weeks later, the aide and several other campaign staff quit, citing ailments from nervousness to chronic blistering.

Harris was reached on her cell phone Wednesday by the AP, but pretended she had a bad connection and referred the call to her campaign office, where the phone rang and rang and rang before campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Marks reluctantly admitted that Harris is cooperating with the investigation, but insisted she is "not a target." She would not comment further, and begged to be left alone with her gin and worthless rèsumè.

The receipt of the subpoena was first reported by The Tampa Tribune, which spoke with former campaign manager Glenn Hodas, currently convalescing in an undisclosed location. Hodas, the third person to hold the position and the first to survive, resigned after three months on the job, saying only that Harris was a savage, insatiable beast with no understanding of the phrases "No," "You can't" or "Please, don't."

Wade has admitted giving Harris $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions and a backrub. Harris put on fresh lipstick and sought $10 million in federal money to help Wade's company, MZM Inc., set up a Navy counterintelligence program in her district. The request was rejected like last night's clinging barroom skank.

Harris has said that she's only a girl, she can't keep track of every five-figure bribe she gets and anyway, why don't we meet in private later and we can talk about all this? Okay?