he U.S. may have a new Attorney General by this time next month, one who makes John Ashcroft seem like a reasonable candidate for the job. Alberto Gonzales, possibly the world's most Hilteresque Hispanic-American, is set for confirmation and expected to get all the votes needed for appointment, even though he has still been defending his record on human rights. On Friday, Gonzales attempted to clarify some of his previous statements, including one made in a memo from September of 2001, stating, "America will feast on terrorists' bones when the sun falls on this war."

Gonzales, nicknamed "Francisco Franco-American" by this reporter just now, has been accused of creating the Bush White House position on human rights—summed up by the statement, "Human rights? Huh?" In his former position as White House counsel, Gonzales, miraculously keeping the president out of jail for four years, challenged that prisoners taken without evidence and without due process in the War on Terror were not subject to the same protections as other soldiers imprisoned during wartime under the codes of the Geneva conventions.

In other feats of jaw-dropping "what the fuck," Gonzales challenged the very definitions of torture accepted around the world. Previous definitions, based on ideas of "cruel and unusual punishment," were replaced with the even more ambiguous definition of "excruciating and agonizing pain." At least with this definition, Ashton Kutcher movies are now officially designated torture.

"Unusual punishment? What's so bad about unusual punishment?" defended Gonzales in Friday's seven-hour testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee Friday. "If I get a bare-bottom spanking from Mamie Van Doren, it might unusual, but I say that doesn't qualify as torture. And those guys in Camp X-Ray—they got it so good it ought to be illegal. I mean, it probably would be, if it were on American soil. But you know what I mean."

Asked if the attorney's arguments against the Geneva conventions opened the door for the abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, Gonzales pretended not to hear the question. Asked again, he pretended not to know what Abu Ghraib was. After a lengthy recount of the many incidents of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Gonzales gave a more definite response.

"Nah. Probably not," said the attorney.

Gonzales then took a firmer stance, saying the pictures of abuse, which he owned plenty of in his personal collection, were "people who were morally bankrupt having fun." At least, continued Gonzales, it "looked like a lot of fun."

The attorney, who had by now pitted out his entire suit with sweat, was asked to clarify the infamous statement on eating the bones of terrorists.

"I was paraphrasing the Jolly Green Giant," answered Gonzales. "Or whoever that guy was. The one whose home was invaded by the tiny terrorist who stole his golden goose. We will use their bones, meaning the terrorists', to butter our bread. That's all I meant to say. I apologize if the meaning was taken that we will actually be eating the bones straight out of their bodies. I don't believe that would be very appetizing for most Americans. Not at all. Anyway, if we do it, nobody has to watch—is that the problem here?"

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter comically threw all his papers up in the air at that point, mugged for the grandstand, and told the people, "Well, I frankly don't see a problem here…"

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Editor's Note: Sampson L. Hartwig may be gone and presumed dead, his stuff long since passed around to the staff members who have gone through his desk, but the prolific Hartwig had oodles and oodles of remembrances we were never desperate enough to run. Until now. Enjoy!

I remember my first trip to the hospital. It was the birth of my sister, Stephanie, and I was only a little tyke. Me and my brother Goose were both five. Actually, Goose was three years older than me, but always wanted everything I had, so my dad made us both five. Come to think of it, Goose never did get those years back.

The hospital was a big, scary place for a little kid. Everything was white and sterile, people moved around gigantic electric equipment since back then everything was tubes and hand-cranks—thermometers took up whole rooms. And then there were the doctors, big old scary guys walking around with masks on their faces like bank robbers. As a kid I thought it was so nobody knew, even the nurses, who left the sponge in the guy after they sewed him up. Kind of like when they shoot a guy, there's four riflemen with one bullets. Though I guess you could bring your own bullets from home to make sure, no one's stopping you.

All I knew was Mom came in with a bellyache and a big fat stomach. I thought it was because Dad punched her there all the time, but he said he just did that so the baby would come out with good reflexes. You may scoff now, with your modern sensibilities, but back then it was common, the government even told you to do it. I remember a big poster of Teddy Roosevelt in our school telling us to "Punch one for the hun!" Man, that slogan rhymed.

The doctor tried to tell me exactly what was happening. Mom and Dad had decided to have a baby together, and they laid down in a bed, and nine months later came along a baby, which would be a little boy or girl. He said "the stork" was just a myth, and that baby's come out because of complicated biology.

Well, obviously, Goose and I beat the hell out of him, held him down, and threatened to cut out his tongue with a broken bottle if he started telling people such lies. Our Mom and Dad never laid down in a bed together in their lives. That was something foreigners did maybe, but not Mom and Dad.

Come to think of it, I never did really figure out how Mom got the baby out. You'd think I'd have picked that up over the years by now. I always just assumed it ripped its way out of the front of her stomach and that's why Mom never wore a two-piece bathing suit.

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Well, I'm not quite sure how it happened, but another baseball season is upon us. It keeps coming back, like crabs, or that movie about the dog and cat that got lost and came back like crabs. But however it came about, we have to deal with it now, and the best way I know how is in detailing how much everyone is going to suck this year.

Let me get my first 2006 prediction out of the way early: Everybody is going to lose a lot of games this year. Take that to the bank. Even the best team in the league is going to have their pants handed to them at least sixty painful times this season. Sixty long, excruciating, face-first swan dives into mountains of Chihuahua shit, guaranteed. That's the dirty little secret about baseball that the league doesn't want you to know: Everybody stinks.

So the real debate is over who's going to be the least embarrassing team to follow this season, pretending like you've been a fan for years while your hometown nine brings new levels of meaning to the phrase "forcefully violated."

For starters, everyone's favorite dickweed, A.J. Pierzynski, hopes to lead his Chicago White Sox to a repeat of last season's improbable championship run, a feat made more difficult by the unlikelihood of the stars being lined up in asshole favor two years in a row. My prediction is the Bite Sox win six games all year. Some may find this unrealistically pessimistic, but they just don't play the Royals enough times for me to hope for better. Sorry, Sox fans, I'd fear your reaction if most of you weren't already safely behind bars.

Then of course there's the Yankees, but like I said, the assholes of the world used up all their good karma last year, which also bodes poorly for the White House in 2006. Once the Yankees' old-as-Moses rotation goes down in flames by mid-season, Yankee fans will be wishing for Small Wang, and that's never a good thing. Better to cut your losses and start rooting against the Mets now, Yankee fans.

Everybody loves the Cardinals, of course, and by that I mean everyone in St. Louis, by decree of the king. Didn't know St. Louis had a king? They're lousy with kings down there, so much so that they have to start handing out qualifiers, like "King of Beers" and "King of March-June." Slavish devotion to the Cards is required of everyone in St. Louis, as their city crumbles around them, but nobody in the rest of the country gives two shits on a bun. The rest of us settle in to watch the Cardinals stomp so much ass during the regular season that by the playoffs they're tired and roll over like Beethoven on recalled vertigo medication.

The Red Sox replaced a guy who looks like Jesus with a guy who sounds like cereal, which is only a good trade if the Jesus-looking guy is the dude from Blind Melon. Spoiler: It wasn't. While they were at it they tarred and feathered Edgar Renteria and smuggled him out of the city in a burlap sack, all for playing shortstop the whole of last season with a catcher's mitt. They brought in Josh Beckett to complete their impressive collection of "pitchers who once stomped the shit out of the Yankees but aren't that good any more." And as a final touch, they were able to trade the guy from Linkin Park to the Reds for Willy Mo Pena, all because some guy from the Twins doesn't like hitting.

As a side note, I'm sure the thought has crossed all of your minds that they should just fold the Twins and Reds together, either ending up with an unstoppable juggernaut or else a team that can't pitch or hit, depending on how the meld works out. Entertaining either way, I say: Either we get a team that will pants the Yankees big-time or somebody to fool the Marlins into thinking they have a chance, which would be funny in its own way.

So who wins this year? What's the name of that minor league team that started selling those bacon cheeseburgers on a donut? No, I'm not avoiding the question, I'm just hoping to convince my heart to put me out of my misery before I have to sit through another entire goddamned 12,078 game season. Seriously? You want a straight answer? All right: Barry Bonds wins, at least until a vain, insufferable steroid monster bursts out of his chest five years from now and starts talking about OBP and bitching about the media. Already happened? Well then, I guess we all lose.

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