The State of California is getting ready to spend $20 billion, which we don't happen to have, but never mind that, on (hold your breath) freeway expansion! We don't have enough of them, and they're not wide enough.

If you happen to like to drive, or just be in...

This was news to me. I thought we already knew how well it worked: we discovered, by torturing people, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and we had to invade right away!

Then, by torturing more people, many of whom we later discovered were not terrorists, we got...

Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa, and now Vermont. It's spreading like a malignant cancer, the results evident all around us. My neighbors, Bob and Alice, are seeing their own, 25-year marriage breaking under the strain.

I knew something was wrong as soon as I walked in the door, their once pristine living...

Bankers, investors, and bond holders are breathing easier now that mark-to-market accounting rules have been eased and some hard-to-value assets that were collateralized by the Brooklyn bridge can be pegged to their long-term potential. It was only recently discovered that some bond bundles held by Citigroup and other big banks...

Two words: sex scandal. I'll come back to that but first, while his departure may not be necessary to save Obama, Geithner is beginning to look like a guy with an overloaded cart at the baggage claim area, scampering alongside of it as the bags on top of the pile...

We've moved beyond that musty, picked-over document, the Constitution, and are now basing our human rights policy on a bad TV drama.

This was confirmed by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in a recent BBC radio interview, in which he explained that it would be OK to torture prisoners...

Must we look back on 2007? Can't we just get drunk? OK: it was a godawful year. All the years since Bush was elected and reelected (forgive us, Lord) have been awful. Was 2007 any worse? Can't we just have another cup of eggnog?

How about: let's look ahead! Another...

The NEA's recently-released study on the state of book reading today is laced with glass-half-empty charts tracking declines in reading for all but the oldest and frailest among us. But the good news is that people are still buying books. They're just not reading them anymore, a minor detail.

Welcome, all, including ex-wives and mistresses. I know it must be a wonderful experience for you to see me again. Here are my rules:

1. Everybody has to take off their shoes at the front door security screening. If Pat Robertson is given a waiver, everyone will want...

The debate about warterboarding is dumb. Any idiot knows it's torture. But since we've embraced torture, let's do it right. The rack is a vastly superior instrument. It's so dramatic it would make an excellent backdrop for a presidential address on the War on Terror, or perhaps Our Precious Freedoms....

October 22 kicks off Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, time to take a hard look in the mirror and ask, "Am I an Islamo-Fascist and just not aware of it?"

If you're not sure, get out your copy of The Ultimate Counterterrorist Home Companion (or buy one) and turn to Chapter...

If you don't go out and buy The Ultimate Counterterrorist Home Companion, Americans will die. The satirical techniques we've used in the book, which we're not at liberty to divulge, have already saved American lives, and this is documented. Also, these techniques, while harsh, are well within acceptable boundaries of...

Assistant U.S. Atty. Richard Gregorie said in his opening statement in the trial of seven homeless men in Miami that they had planned attacks to trigger chaos which would allow them to take over the country and eventually the world. This case proves that it's impossible to satirize the Bush...

The WWF will feature a series of grudge matches between Rudy Giuliani and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this fall--if the Republican candidate can squeeze the appearances in between other campaign events. At least his opponent will look very much like the Iranian president, though it may be difficult to verify his identity...

According to Reuters, exciting, just-published research has raised hopes for an anti-aging pill, which will lead to a nation overrun with seniors, sucking the lifeblood from their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, while constantly criticizing them and complaining about pretty much everything. Personally, I look forward to this.

After...

If we were really serious about fighting terrorism in this country, everybody in a public space would be naked. Then terrorists could not conceal bombs under their clothes, anybody wearing clothes would be easily spotted and arrested, and we'd all be safe.

Oh, I've heard the excuses. Cold weather,...

That was the take-away sound bite, thanks to Hillary Clinton, of last night's debate.

Now there are some words to live by. Heck, you shouldn't always say everything you think if you want to get through a family dinner. Not to your spouse, not to your parents, not to your...

Now that the RAND corporation has given a new branding idea to the U.S. military to make us more popular in the world ("We Will Help You"), it's time for the think tank to turn its attention to the local image problem suffered by the Catholic Church in Los Angeles....

The Bush administration is trying to lower the public's expectations on Iraq ahead of the September evaluation. Mine can't be lowered. They rest on the floor of the sub-basement of the High Rise of Expectations, where they've been since forever. But now, I have a lot of company.

According...

According to the BBC, the US Air Force Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio proposed a gay bomb research project, which was (darn!) rejected by the Pentagon in 1994. If the project had been funded, (at a modest $7.5 million) we might now be in possession of such a weapon,...