This Week In The News

This week, Samantha Power, an unpaid advisor to Sen. Barak Obama stepped down after calling Sen. Hillary Clinton a "monster" in a Scottish newspaper. Shortly thereafter, former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro resigned her unpaid post with the Clinton campaign after suggesting that Barak Obama would not be taken seriously if he were white. With six weeks to go before the decisive Pennsylvania primary, both campaigns seem to have time on their hands and in danger of losing all their staff. Asked what they plan to focus on in the next six weeks both campaigns were unanimous: "Mock indignation. For the next six weeks we will pretend to be appalled and deeply offended at just about everything the other side says even if it is innocuous. We are working on our looks of astonishment, our wrinkled foreheads, and our faces of grave concern. We have have faces that make it look like we are about to cry. We are also mapping out ways inwhich any comment can be transformed into a racial and gender slur. We do not know who will be the victor come Convention time, but we do know both candidates will have been credibly shocked, appalled, disgusted, and troubled by all sorts of things."

This week we learned of another enduring gift given to the country by the Bush Administration: Sexually Transmitted Infections. According to a report by the Centers for Disease Control 1 in 4 teenage girls in America have some form of sexually transmitted infection. The trend is most pronounced in African American teenagers. Many commentators blame the Administration's emphasis on "Abstinence Only" education, and opposition to contraceptives for failing to give young girls the tools and knowledge to avoid infection. Undeterred, the Department of Health and Human Services has rolled out new, more intense, abstinence curriculum. Titled, "Don't Be Such a Slut!" the curriculum emphasizes "a punitive view of human sexuality that presents disease, pregnancy, depression, alienation and 9/11 as biblical punishments for the skanky behavior of teenage girls. We will also stress the mercenary nature of teenage boys and the almost sure heartache that results from sex." Noted one DHS spokesperson, "We like to think of it as what would happen if Avril Lavigne and Jerry Falwell merged and wrote about human sexuality."

This week, the Pentagon completed its review of over 600,000 governmental documents seized after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The review concluded that there was no evidence of any operational or financial link between Saddam Hussein and the Al Queda terrorist group. The Bush Administration repeatedly claimed such a link existed and justified the invasion which ahs cost the lives of 4,000 US soldiers, at least 30,000 Iraqi civilians and costs taxpayers about $10 billion a month. Contacted for comment, Matthew Dowd, a former advisor to the President said, "To be honest, I really cannot find a damn thing funny to say about that. "