In rulings legal experts are calling “appropriate,” two men were sentenced to jail terms today.

Sgt. Michael J. Smith, 24, tortured detainees at Abu Ghraib prison with his dog, a Belgian Shepard. (He is pictured in this famous photo.) Smith received six months jail time.

The very same day, Demetrius Frank Martinez from Washington state was convicted of selling cocaine five times to an undercover agent. Martinez received four years jail time.

“Justice — and God’s will — have been done,” stated one expert on the Fox News Channel. “My only regret is that the Mexican got off so easy. Save for keepin’ Mexicans off our shores, drugs are the biggest problem in the U.S. What Martinez did is unthinkable.”

Added the Fox News expert: “Ein Volk; Ein Reich; Ein Führer; Ein News Channel!”

So far, no senior military or Bush Administration officials have been punished for torture committed by U.S. forces.

Following a trend in corporate naming, the New York Yankees have been renamed the New York Goldman Sachses after a corporate buyout from Goldman Sachs investment bank.

“After last quarter’s record profit, we just didn’t know what to do with all our money,” Goldman Sachs CEO Hank Paulson explained at a press conference. “We saw what happened with Red Bull and the Metro Stars soccer team. So we bought and renamed what was then called the New York Yankees.”

“We had jokingly considered donating to charities that would help starving African majorities gain control over their local economies. Boy did we have a good laugh about that one. Let’s just say that buying and renaming the Yankees was a no-brainer.”

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner welcomed the move, citing “the profound importance of global marketing.” “We need to synergize our corporate interests to increase profitability and shareholder value,” he said.

But not everyone was happy with the name change. “This is really a shame,” said one analyst. “A more targeted name would have been better. Something like ‘The New York Goldman Sachs Trading and Principle Investments Divisions.’ The chosen name may increase brand awareness, but it may have a harder time reaching some of Goldman Sachs’s core clients.”

In an event being described as “civil,” Democrat U.S. Senator Hilary Clinton and The Dark Lord Satan debated the subtleties of the Iraq war yesterday, on the third anniversary of the U.S. invasion.

Satan began by expressing his unrelenting support for the war. “We must continue to fight the War On Terror. Freedom is on the march. The enemy is in retreat. But there are new challenges, and we must be ever vigilant.”

Satan added that he also “strongly supports” all other wars, “until a nuclear holocaust causes the Final Apocalypse for the human species, and the Endless Night of the Dark Lord will Descend Upon the Earth.”

In her rebuttal, Hilary Clinton expressed general agreement with Satan, but disagreed over the current strategy used by the Bush Administration.

“The War On Terror is a Glorious War,” she stated. “But for highly subtle reasons I won’t get into, we need a new administration running it — a Clinton administration, to be specific. But until it’s politically savvy, I’m going to refrain from discussing the war altogether, instead calling for small-scale domestic reform.”

Satan thanked Clinton for her candor, but insisted that the Bush administration was “perfect” for the job of creating “Lakes of Hell-Fire” throughout the Middle East.

“Your argument is sound,” Clinton responded directly to Satan, “but it’s slightly off with the specifics. We’ve killed tens or hundreds of thousands of terrorists — that is, Iraqi men, women, and children — so far, and that’s an important step towards reducing violence. But we simply need to be more subtle about it.”

Neither side seemed swayed by the end of the debate, at which point the two shook hands, and Satan disappeared into a ball of red fire.

Media analysts are divided on who won the debate. Some claim Clinton’s use of nuance was too much for Satan, while others say The Dark Lord’s “purist” approach gave Him the upper hand.

In a public battle revolving around the inherent obscenity of women’s breasts, Google today was ordered to give a list of 50,000 web sites to the Bush administration.

Google recently made headlines for refusing to give the U.S. government a random sampling of 1 million Internet addresses accessible through its search engine and a random sampling of 1 million search queries submitted over a one-week period. Google simultaneously created a censored version of Google for all Chinese viewers.¹

Media pundits were up in arms, confused about whether Google was a privacy rights hero or a capitulator to totalitarian repression. But the underlying issue wasn’t about privacy or free speech — it was, of course, about women’s breasts.

Bush’s demand relates to the so-called Child Online Protection Act (COPA), which requires restricted access (i.e. a login ID and password) for commercial sites not meeting “‘contemporary community standards’ … and that showed sexual acts or nudity (including female breasts).”² By getting a random sampling of Google’s search queries and sites, the administration wanted to demonstrate that the web was saturated with vile breasts, and that people under 18 — say, 17.5 — are seeing them.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The dispute drew considerable attention from … legal scholars, who alternatively praised Google for defending Internet privacy and accused it of protecting smut peddlers” — such as those who show breasts on their site. But along with misusing the word “alternatively,” the Chronicle offers no evidence of an even balance of opinion among so-called “scholars.”

It appears both the Bush Administration and Google have lost this battle. The judge drastically reduced what Google had to provide, but Google still may be seen as giving in on important privacy issues.

Ironically, even if COPA becomes permanent, it may still have a negligible effect on internet breast availability. The ruling will only apply to web sites hosted in the U.S.

The Child Online Protection Act is part of a long Bush administration tradition of Orwellian naming, including, notably, the Patriot Act, Healthy Forests Initiative, No Child Left Behind Act, and the Clear Skies Initiative.

In a recent interview with the Jarusalem Post, Israeli Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated that “Whoever is involved personally and directly in terror is a [military] target.” His comments were directed towards Ismael Haniya, leader of the recently elected Hamas party in Palestine.

“Moreover,” Olmert continued, “you may be aware that I recently ordered an airstrike that killed two Palestinian children. For that reason, the Israeli military must also be prepared to take action against me, for national security reasons.

“We must ensure that I am a target if I continue my violence towards civilians,” Olmert added.

But Middle-Eastern affairs experts were skeptical that Olmert would actually launch a strike against himself. “It’s absurd, really,” said one Harvard professor. “Olmert’s got a nuclear armed military protecting him from attack. If Olmert tries to attack him [Olmert], he’ll be in for a big surprise.”

But U.S. President George Bush expressed support for the statement. “Olmert cannot be a partner in peace with perpetrators of terror, i.e., himself.”

Architect Richard Rogers was slated to design the absurdly expensive expansion of Manhattan’s Jacob Javitz convention center.

But then Rogers did the unthinkable.

According to Reuters, the architect hosted a meeting of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, a newly formed group. The group later decided to call for a boycott of Israel. (Among other atrocities, Israel has been illegally occupying Palestine for nearly half a century, causing formal condemnation on several occasions by the UN General Assembly and the World Court.)

An architect with controversial political views was too much for NY politicians to handle, so they sought to remove him from the project.

However, all was resolved in the end. Rogers distanced himself from the justice organization during a meeting with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner. Now we can rest knowing Rogers doesn’t really want justice for Palestinians, and progress can continue on the $1.7 billion expansion of that Javitz center.

The College Of New Jersey Ayn Rand Society, dedicated to promoting the works of ultra-capitalist Ayn Rand, has an extensive web page. The site details information on the group and provides links to other ultra-capitalists.

But there’s just one problem: the organization has no members.

“I’d love to join the TCNJ Ayn Rand Society,” explained one student. “It’s just that I don’t have a psychotic political philosophy.”

Ayn Rand, the late author, is famous for her so-called “objectivist” philosophy, which scorns the poor and handicapped while praising the dollar above all else.

Others were also disappointed in the low membership levels. According to one Junior, “if building giant dollar signs and then passionately worshipping them were my bag, then I totally would have signed up Freshman year. As it stands, I think I’ll join the acting club instead.”

The New York Times is confused about who elected Hamas to govern the Palestinians. In an article today, the Times identifies Hamas as “the Islamic militant group elected to govern the Palestinians.”

One might have a difficult time imagining the Times identifying Israel’s governing Likud party as “the Jewish nuclear-armed group elected to govern the Israelis.”

Instead, the Times identifies Likud simply as “right-wing.”¹ Ironically, the title of the article about Israel article is: “[Likud Leader] Olmert Orders ‘Iron Fist’ Against Militants,” referring to Palestinians.

With its strange passive-voice identification, the Times seems confused as to who elected this “militant group,” Hamas, to power. They must have forgotten how the Palestinians voted Hamas to a sweeping victory a couple months ago in a high-turnout, internationally monitored democratic election.