Authorities Nab Notorious Youth Soccer Gang After 3-0 Victory Leaves Seven with Hurt Feelings

Associated article: Pajamas Media

Obama Inspires Nation to Find "Bold New Ways to Do the Math"

Washington, D.C.--President Obama used his State of the Union Address to urge Congress to find "bold new ways to do the math" of balancing the federal budget, advocating spending even more taxpayer dollars on things like roads, cars, and high-speed rail lines while ignoring major spending cuts.

"Accountants tell us there are only two sides to a balance sheet," said Obama. "But we as a nation can do better. Much better."

The President took the opportunity to recognize several students in the audience who he said were examples of young pioneers "willing to think outside the pizza box" and find new ways to scatter numbers randomly around ledger sheets.

Associated article: Associated Press Fact Check

Jerry Brown Checks State of California Into Rehab

Los Angeles, California--After being busted for racking up tens of billions of dollars in debt above the already-existing $500 billion in unfunded public pension liabilties held by the government, Governor Jerry Brown has checked the entire State of California into rehab.

Brown was caught in the state Capitol with a bevy of environmentalists, lawyers, and public sector unions.

"He thought the prospects were poor that a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives would be willing to bail him and his state out," said a Brown spokesperson. "Voluntarily submitting to rehab was the only alternative."

Associated articles: San Francisco Chronicle; Wall Street Journal

Obama Resorts to Air Guitar

Washington, D.C.--Having run out of options to reenergize his presidency, President Obama used a televised address last night to play air guitar.

White House advisers told the president he needed to simplify his message to a few wild windmill maneuvers and a rockin' heavy metal stance, which they hoped could better further his agenda than alternative communications strategies.

"We decided it was best to let Obama be Obama," said a White House spokesperson. "And that's just what happened last night: the president struck a phony pose, engaged in some theatrics, and pumped his arms in celebration."

TV Guide

Associated article: ABC News

Headlines

EPA Regulates Vegetarians as Their Methane Emissions Rival Those of Cows

Washington, D.C.--The Environmental Protection Agency is predicting an increase in human vegetarian diets consisting of the same harder-to-digest vegetable matter that causes cows to emit large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane gas. Consequently, the EPA will begin regulating vegetarian emissions beginning next year as part of its efforts to combat global warming.

"Let me be clear," said President Obama, announcing the plan, "Vegetarians eat vegetable matter just like cows do, and the body's inability to fully digest the many complex carbohydrates in the vegetarian diet results in the excessive production of carbon dioxide and methane. Vegetarians also don't eat cows, whose similar diets produce the same gases. The result is a vicious circle in which vegetarians and cows contribute to ever greater global warming gas emissions."

Associated article: The Straight Dope

Latest Communications Rage "Twit" Limits Conversations to Four Characters or Less

Democrats Demand Stronger Microphone Control Laws and Shorter Audio Feeds Following Shooting Tragedy

Washington, D.C.--Following a tragic shooting committed by a lone deranged man whose motivation had no discernible political connection, Democrats in Congress moved to prevent "ideas from getting into the wrong hands" through stronger microphone control laws and limits on the size of television audio feeds.

"The constitutional right to bear speech has limits," said one proponent of the legislation. "Do you really need a microphone this large or an audio feed that holds more than a few minutes of sound data to shoot down a bad idea?"

Associated article: Charles Krauthammer

White House Spokesman Spins Out of Control, Lands in Press Pool, Injuring Seven

Washington, D.C.--Obama Administration press secretary Robert Gibbs "spun totally out of control" earlier today, lofting into the air and flipping over several times before finally coming to a stop in the middle of the White House press pool.

Police described the scene as "like something out of an action-comedy film," as they surveyed the damage caused by Gibbs' absurd attempt to spin yet another failed Obama Administration policy.

"Journalists understand the need for press secretaries to spin events in favor of the administration they work for," said one reporter who was injured while standing next to the pool. "But there have to be some sort of standards that keep things from getting out of hand and hurting innocent people."

Congressman Introduces Bill Based on Posts in Comments Sections of Huffington Post Site

Man in Obama T-Shirt Robs Bank Unnoticed

New Rochelle, New York--Over a dozen bank customers watched nonchalantly as a teller handed over hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to a man wearing an Obama t-shirt.

When asked why by local police, the teller said "It's gotten to the point where I didn't think anything of it. Of course someone associated with the Obama campaign is going to demand hundreds of thousands of dollars in other people's money."

The responses of other witnesses were much the same.

"With government takeovers of health care, home loans, banks, and energy," said one customer, "I just assumed along with everyone else that a guy with an Obama t-shirt wanted lots of taxpayer money, and they were going to do whatever it took to get it."

The man in the t-shirt was quickly apprehended, after which he told police "I didn't say anything to the teller. She just handed me the money and I took it."

"I'm used to the Obama shirt giving me a kind of moral authority like that," he said.

Associated articles: Washington Examiner; Wall Street Journal; Washington Post

Very Short Story: The Three "I's"

The Three sat motionless, their black robes hanging straight down as if weighted at the seams, as rigid as the tunics on the marble statues that lined the dais.

They were sometimes compared to the Sun, around which everything moved in precisely predictable orbits.  But after clerking for them, the Three seemed more than ever like a trio of black holes, toward which everything inevitably fell.

Nothing escaped the reach of their opinions.  And so it was a citizen’s prime duty to understand them.

Long before the Three, judges had based their conclusions on general rules, couching them in the language of universal principles applied to the particular circumstances at hand.

The country was a bustling place then, where people interacted under a regime of mutual freedom.  But that freedom led to many different kinds of legal proceedings.

And as the number of judicial decisions grew, the larger became the palate from which the Three could choose the colors with which to draw their decisions that would bind us all on their canvas.  And so their decisions came to resemble portraits of themselves more closely than ever.  The Three became the Law.

This was to the benefit of all, we were taught.  No longer would citizens have to stake their liberty on predictions based on the application of abstract principle.  Now they could focus their attention on adhering to the decisions of the Three alone.

The bailiff called the court to order.

Today’s trial began as usual.  The claims were brought against the defendants under the Article of the three I’s, each “I” representing one of the Three and symbolizing their collective expression of societal will.

There were two defendants, both wearing the traditional white jumpsuits that symbolize their appearance as two blank slates on which the Three would write their will.

The Three recognized the Citers of Precedent, a corps of professionals dedicated to reminding each of the Three of their previous opinions.  The Citers studied in grand universities, and were tasked with memorizing the Three’s written decisions and contributing toward the Great Academic Project: the synthesis of each of the Three’s opinions into a unified theory capable of predicting their future will, and thereby charting a path within which the citizenry could safely walk.

One of the Citers stated the facts of the case: the defendants considered themselves to be married, and bound by their own vows.

A collective gasp rippled like a gas leak through the spectator galleries.

The two people before the court, said the Citer, were found holding themselves out to their fellow citizens as being bound by their own commitments to each other, when the Precedents had long been understood to negate the practice.  In the estimation of the Three, marriage was an archaic commitment to maintain rules that their own personal experience had revealed to be unwise over time.

“We shall consider the precedents,” said the three in unison, and they retired to their chambers.

We clerks gathered in the library to collect the precedents on which the Three’s decisions would be rendered.

The rows of precedent books wound their way through the library.  The newer volumes, bound in moist shiny leather, gradually gave way to the much older tomes, whose dried covers had wilted whole pages of parched paper, littering the floor in forgotten corners of the building.

I walked over to return some of the fallen pages, and happened to glance at what they contained.  I had apparently found some very early precedent that appeared to cite an Article that preceded the Article of the Three “I’s.”

It was the Article of the One “I.”

I brought the page back to my fellow clerks and asked them if we should include these older precedents in our recommendation to the Three, as it might nudge them into upholding the marriage of the committed couple whose fate the Three held in their hands.

Indeed, the old precedents I had found seemed to resonate with the married couples’ notion that they had built their own household on a foundation that only they could alter -- not the Three or anyone else.  These precedents described how this Article of the One “I” was once part of a larger plan agreed to many years ago.  Under this long-forgotten “Article I,” the laws would be made by those in a “House” composed of “Representatives” chosen by “the People.”  The people in the House would agree on the laws, and those laws would bind everyone until the people in the House agreed to change them.  Not the Three.  The People.

My fellow clerks laughed.  I chuckled, too, and returned the page to its long-forgotten tome.