s allegations and evidence continue to mount that Iraqi prisoners were subject to abuse and humiliation in U.S. military custody, the administration promised a change would come to the way prisoners were held, and that every dollar at their disposal would be used to fix or hush up the problem.

"This is a disgrace to America and all it stands for," said a current U.S. president, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "This is not the way we do things in this country—torturing prisoners, committing sexual acts with those in captivity, and getting caught in the act. It is against all we believe in. It makes a mockery of America and takes away our moral high ground. What's worse, they took pictures of it, hard evidence. What are we teaching our soldiers today?"

The president assured the media money would be thrown at the problem until it went away or was solved, and that the budget would not rest until enough green stemmed the tide of outrage.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, under fire and pressured to resign in the wake of the scandal, laid out a more specific plan of monetary problem-solving.

"Here's a fifty-dollar bill," said Rumsfeld, holding the currency up for media scrutiny. "As reparations, the U.S. government plans to give each and every victim of prison abuse one of these. That's a lot of money for an alleged terrorist or Baghdad bagman. It's in dollars, too, not drachmas or anything. And if you can prove you were sodomized, actually sodomized, not pretend, we'll make it a hundred."

Rumsfeld also said monetary reparations would be made to any prisoners who didn't survive incarceration, if their deaths could be proven with pictures. Another method of solving the problem proposed by Rumsfeld is increasing the number of military troops sent to Iraq—with more troops to supervise, it makes perfect sense less abuse would occur within the prisons.
Some critics charge the U.S. is trying to buy its way out of a bad press situation, which is something the critics say is completely unlike the United States. Kim Meducci of the Washington, D.C.-area chapter of Amnesty International, called the offer of money an insult to human rights.

"This is the kind of thing other countries do to their prisoners, not America," said Meducci. "Surely if a prisoner had ever been abused in the entire history of the United States we would have heard about it. It's a shame a few bad apples, a few rogue Americans who snuck around abusing prisoners, got caught. Which is to say, shouldn't have been doing such things in the first place. It's clearly not the way a military force occupying a hostile country behaves. And the administration should be ashamed of itself, more so, for trying to buy its way out of a scandal."

the commune only managed to end the quote by agreeing to take several pamphlets and provide a tax-deductible donation to the organization.

Some sources inside the Pentagon defended U.S. interrogation tactics, which critics have said created an atmosphere of secrecy and implied consent which tolerated and even encouraged the abuse documented in thousands of photos, video clips, and even some popular barracks songs. An anonymous Pentagon source, Col. Gerald Fetchen, spoke to the commune.

"American forces, especially the special ones, need a free hand to move as they want in protecting American concerns. If we start having to charge prisoners, to show evidence of terrorist involvement, if we have to start accounting for who we put behind bars and why they're there, we'll never get justice done."

weetie, the Food and Drug Administration went beyond its usual scope to approve abstinence last week, endorsing the political stance by rejecting over-the-counter sales of the "morning after" birth control pill known as Plan B. Plan A apparently being wait until you're married to bone.

Over-the-counter sales of Plan B were denied despite recommendation of an advisory panel, whose suggestions are almost always accepted by the FDA. The Plan B pill is a contraceptive tool intended to be taken within 72 hours after sex to prevent pregnancy, and has an 89% effectiveness. While less controversial than the more famous RU-486 contraception, which is taken orally to induce abortion, critics can be heard from their moral high horses critiquing the pill for encouraging promiscuity without the punishment of pregnancy.

Pro-Choice lawmakers and women's rights organizations have blasted the proposal's rejection, suggesting politics have guided the decision more than science, and the Bush administration has maneuvered the FDA decision to curry favor with its conservative base. The FDA claimed its decision was formed on the lack of research on girls 16 and under who take the pill, and not on cowardly bowing to special interests.

The FDA formalized its position Friday by releasing an official approval of abstinence.

"We find abstinence to be one hundred percent safe and effective at preventing pregnancy," said the decision. "All of our studies on the subject find that sex is way over-rated, and people who won't be your friend if you don't have sex aren't the kind of friend you need anyway. While some opponents say abstinence is for squares, our research shows that abstinence is the method for kids too cool to play the peer pressure game."

Critics have charged the FDA with exceeding its authority and entering the realm of politics with Friday's decision, as well of being complete dorks. The FDA ruling went on to acknowledge that while the Plan B pill's over-the-counter sales could ostensibly prevent thousands of unwanted pregnancies, that abstinence was the only sure-fire way to prevent "the bad reputations and normal feelings of guilt associated with underage pre-marital sex." Thus concluded the report: "Abstinence… yay!"

Some have called for the resignation of acting Commissioner Lester Crawford and acting director for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Dr. Steve Galson, or at least signed confirmation the decision wasn't politically motivated. Galson previously headed a research group for the Abstinence Foundation performing a study on how the use of condoms reduced all feeling in the penis and the connection between teen-age sex and the holding of low-income jobs.

While the FDA has not closed the door to approving the over-the-counter sales of Plan B, it has significantly stalled the approval until, say, after the November election. If political motivation can be proven in the case, it will be more hard times for the FDA. The agency has faced recent scandal for letting so many male enhancement commercials ruin dinnertime television and approving over-the-counter sales of Placebo, the world's wonderful cure-all pill.

From the first day I pulled Nevil out of my duffel bag and locked him in the trophy case in my living room, I thought that I was pretty damn clever for acquiring a midget. I pictured all kinds of everyday tasks that he could perform for me; it would be like having my own butler, only puntable and hilarious. Who wouldn't want a comically undersized sidekick to make their bed, brush their teeth, or stand in for them as a real life stunt double in situations they personally didn't want to be associated with, like work, paying taxes, going to jail, or being gang fucked in a dark alley by a group of Hell's Angels hopped up on PCP?

Fate, it seems, has a cruel way of twisting your dreams into reality.

It seems like I cater to that fucking midget more then he ever waits on me. For the longest time I couldn't even take him on a walk through a decent neighborhood without him darting off and humping somebody's front yard gnomes. I can't count the number of times we would've both been arrested if it weren't for my quick thinking, drop-kicking Nevil into the hedges and soaking up the accolades from homeowners who thought I'd just saved their landscaping from some kind of demented, randy troll.

Eventually I had to solve this problem by stealing one of those remote control shock collars. It didn't seem to be doing the trick at first, if anything the shocks just got Nevil excited, but after I replaced that pussy-assed 9V battery with a Sears DieHard he started singing a different tune. I'm not sure what, it sounded like "Greensleeves" but it's hard to scream in tune when you're on fire. The shock from that car battery is so strong it'll blow a midget clean across the street, and he'll shit his pants in mid-air or your money back. That little fucker even stopped biting, hissing and spitting. I'm telling you, a shock collar is the gift that keeps on giving. Remember that come Christmastime, especially if anyone on your list owns a midget or an ornery dwarf.

In the end, I guess my biggest midget-owning gripe is still maintenance. I had a big problem with him drinking out of the toilet in my apartment, which sounds funny until you get up in the middle of the night to take a crap and realize you've just shit up the back of a midget's jammies. Trust me, that makes leaving the toilet seat up seem like no big deal. So after I got the collar, I decided to hide in the bathroom closet and wait until Nevil got his tongue in the water before I hit the button. Holy shit! Now he won't even go near the fuckin' bathroom.

So what does he do? He shits in the bottom drawer of my fridge. I should have gotten a hamster.

The vet says that Nevil doesn't have any hair anymore due to the hundreds of thousands of volts that I run through him on a daily basis, and that I should find other ways to discipline my midget. Yadda yadda yadda. But I'm nothing if not a humanitarian, so for a week I took the damned collar off. Every time he did something that I didn't like, picking at the paint on the walls, trying on my clothes, trying to escape, or pissing in my closet, I would beat him shitty with a pick-ax handle instead. Trust me, it was good exercise, but nowhere near as convenient. That and my neighbors were always complaining about the noise and asking if they could borrow my croquet set.

Communication is a big problem too. It would be so much easier if Nevil could talk. All he ever does is grunt and growl. Why can't midgets ever talk? You'd think they'd be great at it, since they constantly need help when they can't reach things. I'd expect a midget kid to be able to say "Hey bitch, hand me that sammich!" by the time they're two. Of course, maybe at one time he could talk. But when I found him, in order to subdue the little bastard enough to get him into my bag I had to stab Nevil in the throat with a piece of splintered wood, then tape the wound shut with duct tape so he wouldn't die. I wasn't worried about it at the time, since I already knew that midgets can't feel pain. So don't say I never learned anything in school. But I think that might have had something to do with his lack of conversation skills.

So a word to the wise, for those of you who are thinking about getting a midget: Think twice, because it will be more of you taking care of them, and not the other way around.

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