ritain entertained quite a flap in legislative quarters last week, as Prime Minister Tony Blair met resistance in the passage of his Prevention of Terrorism Bill that would suspend the right to a fair trial. However, the law did successfully pass both Houses, effectively working against 800 years of British legal tradition established in the Magna Carta.

"Thank you," said the Prime Minster, rather politely tipping his hat to the legislative body. "You have aided the efforts against terrorism. The more people we have locked up, the fewer terrorists we will have on the street." Blair then ended the 30-hour legislative session by courteously shaking hands with everyone in the hall.

The legal match came as P.M. Blair sought approval of the new anti-terrorism bill to replace laws established after 11 September, 2001, hastily pushed through the legislative process in an effort to adapt to the new terror-mad world. Those laws would have expired soon, forcing the Prime Minister to pursue a new bill. Even Blair's own Labor party showed some resistance to details of the legislation, but through a series of concessions, Blair reached approval of the bill with the House of Commons, only to be surprised by the House of Lords, who customarily concede to the will of the Commons. Further debate over the bill continued for a record-matching 30-hour battle, until Blair made concessions to Conservative party leader Michael Howard and met a consensus.

Among the harshest responses to suspected criminals is the return of the medieval dungeon for long-term housing of those awaiting trial. The bill would call for £250 million in dungeon construction, surely good news for the freemasons. The P.M. admitted the incarceration of suspects in medieval-era dungeons would cost more, not less, but would "certainly put the fear of England into them."

The contests over England's tradition of due process to the accused mirrors the turmoil President Bush has surfed through in the United States as his own post-9/11 laws draw criticism from liberals, a dying breed in America. However, as P.M. Blair faces a greater opposition to the occupation of Iraq in his own country, Conservative leaders are seeking a weakness to exploit in this election year, and the law could come back to haunt the P.M. later. Some speculation exists Blair's motivation for following Bush's lead, even to his political doom, has been the president's overbearing personality is too strong for kind, mannered Blair to reject, with his cultured background. Members of the Labor party have even tried plying Blair with beer in hopes of him calling the U.S. president at 4 a.m. in Washington and telling him to go fuck himself… no luck as yet.

Ideally, according to proponents of the measure, suspected terrorists could be held for longer terms as the government built a case against them and exploited information gained from them to prevent potential terrorist attacks. The adapted law has been expanded to include Britons (the previous law applied only to foreign suspects); and of course, there's the dungeon, manacles and bread/water meals still being optional depending on local authorities.

Not everyone in the House of Lords opposed the new law, however, despite the upset caused by their attempt to block the bill's passage. In fact, the oldest of the legal bluebloods, Lord Philip Smudbury, applauded the bill's approval, in particular the return of the dungeon.

"Many of the younger legislators are not old enough to recall the firm discipline of the dungeon," said 97-year-old Smudbury, a member of the House of Lords since 1949. "In fact, I'm not old enough to remember it. But I had been locked up quite a bit in dungeon-like quarters by my emotionally-abusive parents. And I can say with conviction it did marvelous in shaping my respectability. You would do well to impose such an experience on many of your own on your side of the pond. That president of yours, for one. Such a rascal would certainly benefit from a ten- to fifteen-year stretch in the dungeon. No more of this mangling of the queen's English."

Lord Smudbury then graciously shared the afternoon with this Americanized reporter, a memorable period of time spent smoking home-grown pipeweed and poking the help.

ith the Michael Jackson sex scandal capturing the imagination of America, news organizations at last have gotten over the post-election blues with some impressive ratings. The more ingenious networks have even overcome a ban on cameras in the courtroom by using actors or drawings to interpret the images of the trial for viewers, opening a lucrative new area for television: Reenactment news directors.

As theater directors already know, just because Othello has been performed hundreds of times doesn’t mean you can’t distinguish yourself and leave your own stamp on Shakespeare. The E! Entertainment Network were first out of the gate, with their very straightforward, set-thin adaptation of the Michael Jackson daily drama, nabbing austere actors Jack Donner and Rigg Kennedy, as well as much-sought Jackson impersonator Edward Moss in the title role. But first isn’t finest, as many know.

Other Jackson trial interpretations sprung up immediately, the most lavish among them at NBC news, under the guidance of legendary Broadway stage director Fischer Todland. The production immediately went after George Clooney for the part of defense attorney Thomas Mesereau and Renee Zelleweger as Michael Jackson, but found the actors too busy for the project. The roles were more quickly cast with Billy Baldwin and Fran Drescher, who weren’t doing much. The cost has already exceeded $12 million, but the network says no expense can be spared when going for a hell of a lot more money in advertising revenue.

Literal interpretations are not the only ones to make their debuts in the weeks of the trial. Among the more daring is Bravo’s rendition of the trial, filled with sharp zooms, color-drenched scenes, and elaborate dialogue based loosely on the actual trial transcripts. While it may not have the journalistic integrity of E!’s coverage, it’s received rave reviews from many television critics for its cutting-edge language and daring employment of nudity.

Unsurprisingly, VH-1 has found success by reenacting the trial as a musical, with songs featuring lyrics by Paul Simon and music by Philip Glass. Much of the production is overstated and purposelessly bizarre, but TV Guide praised Pink’s “heartbreaking� portrayal of Jackson, particularly for the song “(Why Do You Need) Photos of My Penis.�

One of the most abstract interpretations of the trial is BET’s all-black reenactment, with half-insane Jackson sister LaToya playing the role of the king of pop.

Media sourpusses have called the reenactments shameless sensationalism, but who cares what they say? Network executives are pleasantly surprised by the response to the creative interpretations and even see a future for other reenactments, with the possibility of extending them into hour-long shows, which might at least prevent yet another version of C.S.I. or Law & Order.

“Can you envision what this might mean for the future of network news?� asked E! News Director Vanessa Holmes, who obviously could, judging by the visible nipple outlines. “No longer would the news be limited to delivering long, in-depth trial coverage of famous people—we could suck in the audiences by casting famous people as nobody criminals! Like that guy who murdered everybody in the courtroom today. Think of all that sweet action, as directed by John Woo! If we had it on tape, some clumsy, shaky footage, we might get an art-house crowd—yuck! But cast Ving Rhames as the defendant, and Robert Duvall as the dead judge. Now that’s real news!�

While most people question from time to time the history of this or the history of that, few ever dislodge their heads from the collective bunghole long enough to ponder the history of history itself. How did we remember the past in the past, and why? The answer may rip your head off and crap down your throat.

The first histories on record were verbal, stories passed down from generation to generation like the one about the time uncle Henry beaned that hooker with a croquet mallet. This system worked fairly well for centuries, in spite of the complete lack of accuracy inherent in passing along history through a gigantic game of "telephone." Stories morphed over time until they bore no resemblance whatsoever to the originals, usually picking up fire-breathing dragons, large-breasted women and leprechauns along the way.

Then came pictographs, first in prehistoric, then in Egyptian times. These didn't help at all, and actually set the cause of history back 500 years because most people drew like shit. The ancient Sumerians actually believed that their ancestors rode around on giant dogs, just because their ancestors were so lousy at drawing horses.

Eventually, history yielded to the forces of progress and drawings were phased out in favor of songs. This ended up being only a marginal improvement, however, when it turned out that most people were lousy at writing songs as well. Most of the recorded history of ancient France has to do with cold-hearted women who up and left their men. In all likelihood, great wars were fought, technologies advanced, and other hard-to-rhyme subjects of note came up during this era, but we'll always have to guess at the details since no one could come up with any catchy songs commemorating these events.

Song-recorded history also posed the problem of popularity, as people often knew a great deal about the history behind songs they liked and wanted to hear again and again, but very little about the lame or sappy songs they thought blew. As a result, children in China in the 18th century B.C. knew everything there was to know about the time Willie Finch nailed his pecker to a tree, but next to nothing about the fall of the Xia dynasty. The dynasty's fall certainly made its way into a fair number of songs, but since the best of these was the bloated, pretentious "Tall Fall," the children never really had a chance.

Of course, similar problems exist today, since most American schoolchildren are at a loss to explain the purpose of the Bill of Rights, but have completely memorized the Meow Mix commercial and are quite familiar with Snoop Dogg's favorite sexual position.

By 1700 B.C. writing had been invented, which helped matters greatly except in areas afflicted by messy handwriting. Most of the history of Persia pre-600 B.C. remains a mystery due to the sloppy, lackadaisical hand of the day. Early writing was merely a streamlined version of pictographs strung together in sentences like "Me you seagulls two dogs fucking house buffalo."

Even after writing-down had become the widely accepted standard for historical recording, there still remained the question of how to store what had been written for the ages. The early practice of tattooing historical texts onto fat people gave way after it was realized that these corpulent canvases were literally taking history with them to their graves, and paper was adopted around 12oo B.C. But this helped matters little as historians discovered that books are heavy, and usually get lost every time you move. Also, paper was considered a delicacy by deer and the undereducated, so keeping starving people and wildlife out of your library became a full-time occupation.

Finally, someone realized you could just write history on a slip of paper, drop it into a bottle, and huck it into the ocean, at which point someone would eventually find it and learn about history. This solved several problems since deer can't operate bottle openers and starving people don't float. This practice exploded soon after the invention of the bottle in China in 12 A.D. The bottle was originally created as a musical instrument, before first being used to hold beverages in 13 A.D., after an extremely drunk man accidentally drank the spit collected at the bottom of a bottle-player's instrument after a particularly spirited performance. In spite of this experience, people somehow still decided to use bottles for drinking.

The first "message in a bottle" was invented after an unnamed Chinese man, who for some reason was carrying his grocery list in his mouth, accidentally dropped it into a half-full bottle of beer and couldn't get it back out. In frustration, he hurled the bottle into the ocean, where it remained until washing up on shore two years later. The man who found it, Yung Si-Bong, took his discovery as a message from God that he should go out into the world and find two-dozen eggs and a quart of goat milk. He told friends and family the story of his message from God, and before the day was done, the entire village was hucking message-filled bottles into the sea, hoping to hilariously fool morons like Yung Si-Bong.

Gradually, historians would migrate back to books, after the entire Pacific Ocean became clogged with bottles around 200 A.D. and swimmers had to wear chain mail to keep from being torn to shreds by all the broken glass, which incidentally contributed to China's 100% drowning rate in those days. But the main driving factor in the move back to book-written history was the development of new inks that didn't smell like a dying frog's balls. China's original inks were made from a blend of soot from pine smoke and fish-egg lamp oil mixed with the gelatin of donkey skin and wolverine musk. Around 230 A.D., the Chinese discovered that you could make ink out of soot alone, and that all the other ingredients had been thrown in originally just to get them out of the house.

Sadly, paper wouldn't make its debut in Europe until the fifteenth century, when Europeans were finally able to end the laborious practice of finger-painting their history on the walls with baked monkey feces. The Europeans were at first resistant to give up their shit-smearing ways, but quickly relented when they discovered that paper is delicious.

In modern days, thanks to the advent of the Internet, we've done away with paper altogether and have returned to the ways of our forefathers with a verbal history tradition, usually carried on something like "I read on the Internet that they've still got Napoleon's dong in a jar inside somebody's freezer in Hoboken." But you know what they say about being doomed to repeat history. I'm just kidding, I know you don't.

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