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.

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.”

“Appalled” by the “grotesque sight of naked bodies touching,” U.S. Regulators have demanded that all sex scenes in movies, TV shows, and video games be replaced with “perverse, blood-chilling violence.”

“It is well established that the human form is among the most shameful in the cosmos,” explained Los Angeles city attorney Rocky Delgadillo, who recently filed suit against Take-Two for its sexually explicit video game, Grand Theft Auto. “I thought GTA was about carjacking and random violence — so naturally, I was elated. Then I heard about the hidden ‘hot coffee’ sex mini-game. I hope Take-Two burns in hell.”

At the press conference, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin expressed similar ideas. “My favorite TV show is C.S.I. I particularly love when they show the mutilated bodies of the murder victims. My least favorite? Without question, the Janet Jackson nipple-slip incident. The loathsome sight of a woman’s bare breast made me projectile vomit straight onto my TV screen. Clean-up was a doozy.”

“Sex? Ewwwwwwww,” explained Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a date with my wife to watch ‘Kill Bill’. I just love when Uma Thurman’s sword slices off the top of Lucy Liu’s skull, revealing her brain.”

In his first encyclical letter, released today, Pope Benedict XVI described the “inescapable sense of solidarity between all peoples.”

However, the Pope stated that governments, through “subsidies or tax relief,” show “significantly” more solidarity than individuals. (With such benevolent governments, one might wonder why anyone needs tax relief in the first place.)

The Pope recently bemoaned a lack of solidarity from media outlets, who he claimed “undervalue” religious belief.¹ However, a Google News search for “pope” returns over 15,000 articles.

Pope Benedict is a former member of the Nazi Hitler Youth Militia.²

by Bertrand Russell

Click here for Russell’s complete essay.

Here there comes a practical question which has often troubled me. Whenever I go into a foreign country or a prison or any similar place they always ask me what is my religion.

I never know whether I should say “Agnostic” or whether I should say “Atheist”. It is a very difficult question and I daresay that some of you have been troubled by it. As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God.

On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.

Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line.

The first seven months Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate were a time of quite reflection. The new Pope, deep in Holy contemplation about the world’s many injustices, made not a single defining act.

But Lo!, with God’s Blessing, Benedict XVI has recently emerged with his first compassionate decree: banning homosexuals from priesthood.

Benedict XVI, the holiest former member of the Nazi Hitler Youth militia, went even farther, excluding priesthood from those who “support the so-called ‘gay culture.’”

Benedict himself once said that “Having a clear faith, according to the credo of the church, is often labeled as fundamentalism.”¹ With the Pope’s deeply humanitarian act towards homosexuals, he will once and for all put that label to rest.