News in a nutshell: Aug. 22-28

Sound smart
By the time you read this, Hurricane Katrina, a category 5 storm, will have made landfall in New Orleans. The city and much of the Gulf Shore have mandatory evacuations in effect, but the damage could be catastrophic. Oil prices have also skyrocketed because of the storm, meaning you can be pretty sure the U.S. will be announcing a War on Hurricanes any day now.

Pat Robertson sparked an international furor Tuesday after calling for the assassination of Venezuela's democratically elected president. He said (and I'm not making this up): "You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war."
You know, before we get all uppity about putting the Ten Commandments in the classrooms and courthouses, maybe we should think about putting more of them in the CHURCHES -- because clearly the whole "thou shall not kill" thing isn't really getting through.


Boring, but important
After turning in a draft constitution just under the extended deadline, only to extend it again to "work out some kinks," Iraqi officials submitted a draft constitution to the parliament. Of course the Sunnis hate it and so the big document that was supposed to bring the entire nation together is actually causing even more tension. I don't get it -- I mean they had TWO extensions, and they still can solve the problems that have been plaguing the various factions for centuries?!?
That's just laziness...

What the ...?!?
The student-run newspaper of the Southern Illinois University discovered it had been the victim of a very elaborate hoax that involved actors and years of stories and columns about a little girl who's dad was a soldier who was killed in Iraq. Except the soldier never actually existed, and the columns are thought to have been written by a woman pretending to be the daughter. The jury is still out on if the student who first started writing about the girl was in on the hoax or not. The whole thing is totally bizarre and unfortunate, though.

Good old Fox News decided to make a public service announcement by airing a guy who gave the California street address of a man he said was a terrorist. Why he would do this in the first place (and why Fox would air it) is questionable enough, but it didn't help matters that the supposed terrorist moved out about three years ago. Thus, a family of five has been terrorized themselves by all the good citizens who thought they would pay the house a visit and spray paint graffiti and harass them. But I don't see the problem, because if we can pick fights with other people in their own backyard, it'll keep them from coming into mine.

Researchers have discovered that monkeys like to gamble. This is bad news for Nevada, because I'm pretty sure that once those monkeys are done taking over Puerto Rico, they're headed to Vegas, baby! I wonder if you can cash out your chips in bananas...

The Miss America pageant is leaving Atlantic City, where it began 84 years ago. It's looking for another host city in the hopes that it will help turn around the financial problems it's had after ABC dropped the program because of low ratings. But the pageant left Atlantic City with poise, its head held high, and waving -- elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist ...

Kenya's ambitious plan to relocate 400 elephants was put on hold indefinitely after the trailer used to transport the first elephant collapsed under the weight. Apparently they didn't realize it would weigh as much as ... well, an elephant.