Senate debates weird juju

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AFP)--The U.S. Senate on Monday proved they're worth the pay raises they're always giving themselves by debating legislation on a bullshit election-year constitutional change that would make it a crime to destroy the American flag or otherwise harm democracy through an act of voodoo.

The proposed amendment would "prohibit the physical desecration" of the flag "on pain of death" and has the best chance in several years of being approved due to the preponderance of craven wingnuts currently seeking re-election in a country that has grown sick of them.

Over the past decade and a half, since the radical left-wing judicial activists on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that flag desecration was a protected form of speech no matter how much domestic real estate or abstract virtue is destroyed as a result, Congress has repeatedly attempted to approve a flag desecration ban, but only in even-numbered years when their numbers are low and nobody much cares about faggots or wetbacks.

The amendment reads: "The Congress shall have power to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag of the United States and shall not suffer a witch to live."

Supporters of the amendment say a ban would ensure that the American standard, mostly manufactured in Pakistan, is treated like a sacred object with magical powers far outstripping its simple symbolic value, and that there are many ways of expressing dissent without angering the spirits of our forefathers and endangering freedom itself by defacing our company's corporate logo.

Senator Richard Durbin, (D-IL) said the debate distracts from more important policy matters, like protecting America's highways by outlawing map desecration.

"There are scarcely any instances across America where people are burning the flag for the purpose of harming the country for which it stands.

"And yet, now we want to set aside the important business of the Senate, health care and energy policy and education and pay raises and debate for an entire week this concept of amending our Bill of Rights for the first time in our history," said Durbin. "I mean, what the fuck?"

Some lawmakers, including Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), have taken a middle ground position, saying they are opposed to flag desecration, but also against revising the constitution. They are called "centrists" because they refuse to call bullshit when they see it, even when it is obvious to the meanest intelligence that there is bullshit present.

A poll one year ago by the non-partisan First Amendment Center showed 63 percent of Americans did not favor a flag-burning amendment or any more pay raises for Congress.

King: Stop the presses!

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee urged the Bush Crime Family on Sunday to unleash jackbooted vandals in red ski-masks against newspapers that give aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom by revealing that their financial transactions may not be secure.

Representative Peter King (R-NY ) said he would write Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urging that the nation's chief law enforcer "begin selectively harassing the Islamofascist dupes infesting the newsroom at The New York Times--the reporters, the editors and the publisher should all be lined up and shot for revealing the secrets of our glorious leaders."

"We're at war, and for the Times to release information about secret operations and methods is treasonous," King told The Associated Press. He was unclear on how they got the information in the first place, or whose job it was to keep it secret.

King's rabid call to action was not endorsed by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a known pinko raghead dupe.

"On the basis of the newspaper article, I think it's premature to call for a prosecution of the New York Times, just like I think it's premature to say that the administration is entirely correct," the mealy-mouthed Specter told Fox News Sunday.

Stories about the money-monitoring program also appeared last week in The Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times. King said he thought investigators should intimidate those publications, but that the greater focus should be on The New York Times because they're already on the GOP shitlist for treasonously revealing the president's illegal and unconstitutional secret domestic wiretapping program.

He charged that the paper was "more concerned about a left-wing elitist agenda than it is about the security of the American people," and also complained about the lack of a comics page.

When the paper chose to shamelessly flaunt their First Amendment protections by publishing the story, it quoted the executive editor, left-wing elitist and terrorist sympathizer Bill Keller, as saying editors had listened closely to the government's hysterical arguments for withholding the information, but that they were mostly just the same old bullshit.

Keller wrote that the Treasury Department has been bragging since 9/11 that "the U.S. makes every effort to track international financing of terror. Terror financiers know this, which is why they have already moved as much as they can to cruder methods. But they also continue to use the international banking system, because it is immeasurably more efficient than toting suitcases of cash around like they're Jack Abramoff or someone."

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, Treasury officials obtained access to a vast database called Swift--the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. The Belgium-based database handles financial message traffic from thousands of financial institutions in more than 200 countries and now everyone knows about it, thanks to those liberal elite bastards at the Times.

Democrats and civil libertarians are questioning whether the program violated privacy rights because they hate America.

Gonzales said last month that he believes journalists can be tortured for publishing classified information, citing an obligation to Bush Family secrecy. He also said the government would not hesitate to stalk or intimidate reporters as part of his program to criminalize the press.

In recent months, journalists have been called into court to testify as part of investigations into leaks, including the unauthorized disclosure of a CIA operative's name by the vice-president's office.

He said the First Amendment right of a free press should probably be looked into.

Levin: Amnesty for insurgents "bogus"

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--Members of Congress on Sunday denounced any Republican-sponsored "Iraqi" plan that would grant amnesty to insurgents responsible for the deaths of U.S. troops.

As part of a plan to kiss the ass that moons him, Iraq's prime minister has proposed extending amnesty to insurgents and opposition figures who are willing to say they have not been involved in terrorist activities, such as mailmen and talk show hosts.

Lawmakers are still trying to ascertain the details of the reconciliation plan that Nouri al-Maliki released on Sunday, but the guy who reads Arabic got canned for being queer, so it takes some time. The plan came out in spite of a week of irrelevant debate in Washington over the allocation of Halliburton collateral assets and whorish political posturing on the Republican war intended to provide sound-bites for November's elections.

Michigan Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said extending amnesty to anyone responsible for killing U.S. troops was "bogus."

"For heaven's sake, we liberated that country from the puppet ruler we installed there," Levin said on Fox News Sunday. "We got rid of a horrific dictator whose usefulness to us was over. We've paid a tremendous price. More than 2,500 Americans have given up their lives, that we know of. The idea that they should even consider talking about amnesty for people who have killed people who killed people to liberate their country from the people we killed who were killing people is totally bogus."

Senator John Warner (R-VA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that while he technically opposes amnesty, the United States must respect Iraq's sovereign right to decide its own future all of a sudden.

He said the U.S. government will not outright dictate, but will subtly interfere with Iraqi officials on all aspects of the plan.

"I want the Iraqi people to take this decision unto themselves and make it correctly the way we tell them to," Warner said. "And I hope it comes out...what was the vote? No? No amnesty for anyone who committed an act of violence, of war crimes."

In presenting the plan to the Iraqi parliament, al-Maliki said Sunday that insurgent killers would not escape justice regardless of whether their victims were Iraqis or U.S.-led coalition forces, but that it was open season on cash-heavy mercenaries.

"The launch of this national reconciliation initiative should not be read as a reward for the killers and criminals or acceptance of their actions," he said. "Although I see how it could look that way."

The White House welcomed the initiative while condemning it, and did not comment specifically on Iraqi plans to embrace certain insurgents on the U.S. payroll, saying the plan was still being developed in Dick Cheney's Fortress of Solitude.

"Reconciliation must be an Iraqi process, led by Iraqis," White House spokesweasel Ken Lisaius said. "We, of course, stand by--which is not really standing down--ready to assist in this effort to stand up, if the Iraqis request our help, as always. But it's important to note that this is the first step to the next corner, and it's a process that will take time to fully develop, like freedom or breasts."

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), appearing on ABC's This Week, said he does not believe the Iraqi government intends to grant amnesty to people who killed Americans, or that the earth is a sphere.

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) said if there is to be peace in Iraq, al-Maliki must find a formula for moving forward that is acceptable to all, which will never happen. "I'm hopeful that one of the elements of the formula that he presents to the Sunnis is not amnesty because that is going to run into solid opposition, obviously, from Democrats," Lugar, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told CBS' Face the Nation.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) urged President Bush to get a commitment from al-Maliki that there will be no amnesty for anyone who has killed U.S. troops, but Bush ignored him like an urgent PDB.

Pentagon hallucinates new, better physics

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--The Bush Crime Family is huffing glue in response to a possible North Korean missile test, defense officials told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Because North Korea is a paranoid, secretive police state with no regard for world opinion, the way America would like to be, U.S. officials say they must consider the possibility that they are batshit insane enough to launch an actual attack. Thus, the Pentagon is considering the possibility of attempting an interception, two defense officials said, even though it would probably fail miserably and embarrass everyone involved.

The officials agreed to discuss the matter only on condition of anonymity because Donald Rumsfeld would have a shit hemorrhage if he knew.

Pentagon spokesweasel Bryan Whitman said he could not say whether the useless multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile defense system might be deployed in the event of a North Korean missile launch. That system, which includes a handful of missiles to be fired into the stratosphere at random from launch pads in Alaska and California, has never worked properly and never will.

Although shooting down a North Korean missile is a possibility, like monkeys shooting out the president's butt or Jesus returning, the Pentagon must also consider factors that would argue against such a response, such as the near-certainty of missing.

Bush Family button men have urged the North Koreans publicly and privately not to conduct the missile test, which would end a self-imposed moratorium in place since 1999. That ban was adopted after Japan and other nations pitched a fit over an August 1998 launch in which a North Korean missile flew briefly over northern Japan before stalling out and plummeting into the sea.

At the time of the 1998 launch, the United States had no system capable of shooting down a long-range missile in flight, even though the Reagan administration created a permanent homeless underclass paying for one a decade earlier. Since then, the Pentagon has cobbed together something it says is capable of defending against a limited number of missiles as long as we know where they're headed and have plenty of warning and they don't fly too fast or work too well.

The Government Accountability Office says the Pentagon has spent $91 billion on missile defense over the past two decades, some of it on actual equipment.

The 1998 event turned out to be a space launch rather than a missile test; U.S. officials said the satellite failed to reach orbit, and everyone had a good laugh.

U.S. and international concern about North Korea's missile capability is heightened by its claims to have developed nuclear weapons and its fuck-all-of-you rhetoric. It is not known whether they can build a nuclear warhead small enough to fit a long-range missile, although in April 2005 the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, told Congress that those people have tiny hands and therefore probably use tiny screwdrivers. U.S. officials have since called it a "theoretical capability, much like our ability to shoot it down in flight."

No administration official has publicly raised the possibility of bombing the North Korean missile before it can be launched, but it's only a matter of time. Jan Lodel, a senior Pentagon policy wonk during the Clinton administration, said in an interview Tuesday that given the paranoia inherent to the Age of Bush, he would not rule out a pre-emptive strike. He said it would be the surest away of eliminating the threat of being surprised by the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile that some believe has enough range to reach U.S. territory, if Alaska counts.

David Wright, a senior scientist at the private Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the Bush cabal's claims of having the capability to shoot down a North Korean missile were "bullshit."

The last time the Pentagon registered a successful test in intercepting a mock warhead in flight was in October 2002. Since then, there have been three unsuccessful attempted intercepts, resulting in the mock destruction of New York, Los Angeles and Colorado Springs.

Snow: Bush doesn't care what you think

WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP)--President Bush understands there is growing U.S. horror over his criminally insane handling of the Iraq war but will not rely on polls of the peasant masses to determine when to withdraw his army men, his celebrity spokesman said Sunday.

"The president understands how a war can burn a nation out," White House Channel anchorman Tony Snow said. "Whatever the bummer is, whatever the facts being fabricated on the ground are, you figure out how to win by staying the course and turning a corner in six months. You can't do that by reading polls."

"Most people realize simply pulling out would be an absolute unmitigated disaster," Snow said, in spite of polls showing most people wish we would.

Meanwhile, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said she and other America-hating Democrats with Jewish-sounding names would introduce a resolution this week calling for a phased withdrawal, noting that Bush signed a defense bill last year calling for exactly that in 2006, though secret amendments may have been added later.

"We want to see an end to this thing. We want to transition the mission. That isn't cutting and running, dickhead," Feinstein said on CNN's "Late Edition."

Last week, both the House and Senate wasted valuable time debating and rejecting a non-binding referendum on a non-existent timetable for pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq. It came after a bullshit parliamentary move engineered by GOP leaders to provide for it/against it sound-bites for the festival of partisan mud-slinging that defines a congressional election year.

After three years of war, approval of Bush's handling of Iraq has dipped to 33 percent and his overall job approval rating was 35 percent in a new AP-Ipsos poll, but he doesn't care. The war has brought a U.S. death toll of 2,500, which is irrelevant to those of the president's class, and a price tag of $320 billion, which is peanuts compared to what the president's Saudi friends can make if Iraq's oil production remains at historic lows.

Snow, speaking on three Sunday talk shows, said Bush has confidence the new Iraqi government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will take on a greater role in the coming months to deal with their civil war, possibly by outsourcing security to mercenary death squad sub-contractors already working in the area.

"The United States is not going to leave until the job of making sure the president's partners in Saudi Arabia will always be able to out-produce Iraq is done," Snow said. "As the Iraqis become more able, the Americans are going to move back into covert roles and at some point, we are going to be able to leave Iraq a broken, futureless tribal shithole with nothing but U.S. military bases driving the economy."