.S. District Judge Myron Thompson shocked the nation Friday, ruling that the entire South was in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s principle of separation of church and state, and ordering that all nine Southern states be removed from the Union immediately. Thompson, who incited national controversy the previous week when he ordered the removal of a 2.6-ton granite Ten Commandments monument from Alabama's state judicial building, defended his unprecedented action as merely a logical extension of federal law, dictated by the U.S. Constitution.

“South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee have for years stood in clear violation of the separation of religion and government, a basic concept upon which America was founded. From the highest levels of state government down to local law enforcement, Christianity has not only been favored, but has virtually stood as the law of the land for generations,� said Thompson, explaining his ruling. As of press time, it was unclear whether all Southern residents would be required to leave the country, or if the U.S. would cut its chigger-infested losses and draw up new borders.

With the nine Southern states understandably resistant to the order, Thompson has threatened each state with a $5 billion fine per day until they comply with the order and presumably pack up their shit. While the fines are expected to wipe out most Southern states in the first fifteen minutes, Arkansas has already defiantly suggested that it will pay the fine, just as soon as its luck evens out on the pull-tabs.

“This ruling is an outrage!� shouted Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, to no one in particular. “The South has just as much right to be in this country as all those uppity pagan states that follow the Constitution. Besides, where are we supposed to go? Mexico? Those bean-burners is all godless Catholics, ain’t they?�

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, who came to local fame and prominence as the “Ten Commandments Judge� after refusing to remove a huge view-obstructing Ten Commandments bumpersticker from the windshield of his car, is credited with having sparked this series of events when he installed the offending monument in his courthouse. Moore took a break from selling homemade “I’m with Stupid & the Ten Commandments� t-shirts at local rock shows to organize several Constitution-burnings throughout the South this week.

“Yeah, this is a violation of our right to free speech, or something,� claimed a befuddled Moore. “Wait, can we go back to the Ten Commandments thing? I’m still pissed about that. This country’s laws were based on those Commandments! Mostly. And now we’ve got to hide ‘em in some back toilet? Sickening! No one can hide from that truth. ‘Thou shalt not kill?’ We got that law, don’t we? ‘Thou shalt not steal?’ Got that one too. ‘Thou shalt not…uh… fornicate… with… thy neighbor’s… uh, something…’ Anyway, you know where I’m going with this! Sickening!�

“And what about Kentucky, what’d they ever do that was so Constitutional?� questioned Gov. Riley when he realized the microphone was still on. “I always ‘spected they weren’t as God-fearing as the rest of us, and this just proves it. Well I hope you can have fun in your nice fancy country, Kentucky, when you’re burning in hell! Ha! Gotta admit I gotcha there.�

Despite an overabundance of spunk, legal experts agree that the Southern states are still likely to be evicted.

“Well, I guess on the bright side this means we can put our monument back,� mused Moore, looking around for a dolly.

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A Washington bookseller I'd never heard of announced a couple of weeks ago they would purge details of a buyer's purchase upon request. This was in response to one of those 500 quickly-passed 9/11 laws which says the government can go through your sock drawer if they smell the stink of fear on you. I, for one, applaud the move. A lazy golf clap applause because even if it's a noble gesture it doesn't make a damn difference in the long run.

Just when I think people have accepted the government can get you no matter what you do, they show signs of struggling, thinking they can actually escape the Web—that's what I call it. That's mine, by the way, intellectual property.

Yes, the Web—part U.S. government, part Illuminati, all encompassing terror. Like the many-fingered centipede, the Web can put a pincer on you at any moment. The only reason you're walking around right now is because they don't give a damn if you're dead or alive. Occasionally, they think it's funny when you bitch about where the remote is because Baywatch is on in 5 minutes, but otherwise you're insignificant. Don't feel bad; so am I. Just slightly more significant at best.

If you think the government is closing its FBI file on you just because they have no store record of your recent purchase of Ass Monsters magazine, I'd love a toke of whatever you're smoking. You're delusional, Poncho. Store records are a tiny, tiny fraction of all the information they've already got on you.

Of course the government tracks everywhere you go on the Internet. If you need me to tell you that, go back to Conspiracy 101—hell, go back and your G.E.D. first, you're clearly a mook. And they don't care if you're checking out www.gayblackdicks.com, even if your wife would; they're more worried about your visits to the commune, folks. If I were you and totally lacked a spine I wouldn't come here again. Still here? I'm glad, even if I lost a bet.

Every time you go into your gym, even if it's just once a year, they have a recorder that keeps track of it. Every time you cross the street against the light or run a stop sign, there are built in sensors recording your license number (or DNA pattern) and reporting it to Washington. There's a chip under the counter at McDonald's that keeps track of how many hamburgers you've ordered—you didn't think McDonald's counted all those burgers themselves, did you? From all that information they can know everything from your political views to the estimated date of death from cholesterol-blocked arteries. But that's not all.

Okay with all that, as long as they don't know your purchases? The important stuff? Try this on for size—it's a reality suit, one size chafes all. The government has specific machines that can sort your trash, record who owned it and categorize it by importance. You think your garbage is in a landfill deep in the earth somewhere? Dream on, buddy. It's in a file cabinet in Wyoming. After all, something has to be taking up all that space, right? Your garbage is alive, well, and waiting to show up as evidence in your trial if it's ever needed by Uncle Sam.

So what are your options? You don't have any. Are you going to burn every piece of garbage? They'll be able to reconstitute it in original form, I'd guess. Or they will be soon, maybe before the end of this article. Well, I'm doing my part to thwart them as best I can—this article ends now! Boo-ya!

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As you can tell, sir, the commune is back and better than nothing. Also, better than we previously were. I for one am quite chagrinned at our long absence from the Internet, and anyone who knows me can tell you it's very difficult for me to be chagrinned because of how much I hate using the word "grin" in a sentence. And now I've used it three times. I won't need to use it again until 2010, and I make that pledge to myself now.

Many of you are undoubtedly wondering what happened. Or, speaking completely honestly, most of you are wondering how you got here from your friend's blog, just because you clicked on the underlined words "cheap imitation" or the like. I know, though, that commune fan Emil Zender and his many followers are asking what the hell happened to us last year, and I haven't been sleeping on the job in finding out either. Honestly, I haven't slept since maybe November, and then it was only a quick nap. You'll all be happy to know, those who care, that my thousands of dollars invested in discovering the problem have discovered the problem. It's a fine feeling, like when you go looking for your car keys and you find them in the last place you look—usually for me the bathtub, where they were playing stand-in for the sailboat.

I had the good fortune to hire renowned private investigator Pierre Banjo. If you haven't heard of him, I'm not surprised, he's not that kind of renowned. He's only renowned with the people he tells about his illustrious career, and I was fortunate enough to meet him in a bar and ply him with alcohol until he revealed his fame to me. This was circa June, which happens about a month after regular June, and I was well in the throes of panic about the many emails I received regarding the missing updates of the commune. All from Emil Zender. If we didn't get issues of the commune up and running again, we would have to return all our sponsor money to our sponsors. Assuming they ever found the website and realized we weren't updating.

It was an expensive quest, let me tell you that, but no problem is too big for me to throw money at. Finally, just before Christmas, Dr. Banjo called to inform me he had discovered the problem in our missing new editions. He had actually uncovered the source of the problem during a visit to my home office several months earlier, circa July proper, but did several months worth of follow-up investigation at my expense just to be sure he found the right problem.

You see, as part of my investment into the 2006 commune improvements, I bought myself a laptop. I forewent the expensive iMacs I had heard so much about and bought a iRoc. I thought it would help support the poor Iraq terrorist cells our government has had on the run for long months, but it turns out they're called iRocs because they're all using the licensed image of actor Charles S. Dutton. But all this is only column filler. While the iRoc laptop helped me work from home and connect to the internet, I still didn't have the expertise to put it all on the Internet the hard way—not much of a web-designer, doesn't run in the Bagel blood. And driving to the office once a week seemed like a complete waste. Fortunately, the man who sold me the iRoc also sold me a Magic Internet Scanner—you plug it in and scan the printed columns in and they automatically go onto the Internet! In retrospect I probably should have checked out the website to make sure they were updating when I used the machine, but thatseemed like a lot of extra time, and I've had trouble finding the commune on the Net. Like all our readers.

So as you may have guessed, the Magic Internet Scanner didn't work right. It was instead shredding our columns into confetti each time I ran one through. The word "shredder" on the top turned out not to be an affectionate nickname for the machine. I'm also starting to doubt I had it hooked up correctly and thinking maybe Tony Z. sold me a terrible bit of goods.

But even the best of us—me—can fall for a conman occasionally. Now that we've crossed that dark period for the commune, I look forward to spearheading the best year yet for the little news site that could. Expect the best in 2007. I even met a guy in a bar yesterday who swears he can get our White House press room credentials back for only $5,000. How can you not put your faith in a man named Smitty?

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