he White House announced a daring new plan this week to address the nation's ballooning health care costs, which are crippling employers and causing otherwise sensible Americans to talk about national health care like dirty fucking socialists. By making poor health a law-enforcement issue, Washington hopes to get tough on the sick with bold mandatory sentencing for citizens convicted of harboring cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

"It's time to stamp out this national cancer," announced President Bush to a menagerie of stuffed animals standing in for reporters who thought the subject of the press conference tipped off an obvious gag invite. "And that's a convenient metaphor, or Similac, because I'm actually talking about cancer. And diabetes. Uh, heart disease… what are some of the other ones? The shits. Definitely got to stamp out the shits."

The new "War on Illness" will integrate aspects of several national programs aimed at ending GDP-draining sickness, including "Get Tough on Cancer," "Zero Tolerance for Juvenile Diabetes" and "Not in My Neighborhood: StrokeBusters." Supporters hope the new initiatives will sweep America's streets clean of the sickly and infirm, and keep future generations safe from the social decay caused by sick people.

"If you choose to get terminally ill, well, that's a mistake you're going to regret," crowed Judge Thomas Redbone in support of the plan, posing with an impressively oversized gavel. "No longer can we tolerate this blight on our neighborhoods or the threat it poses to our children."

Under the guidelines of the new plan, a first offense for harboring cancer, diabetes, pneumonia or other Class 5 controlled illnesses will trigger a mandatory five-year sentence, with repeat offenders coming out of cancer remission to receive life without the possibility of parole. The death penalty remains a possibility should the disease be diagnosed as fatal. Even more controversial is the plan's call for strict "Three Strikes and You're Out" sentencing for perpetrators of mental illness, to deal with wayward individuals lacking the willpower or strength of character to stay sane.

While predictably receiving criticism from the sick and terminally liberal, Bush's plan is already garnering widespread support from Americans tired of worrying about their kids falling victim to this societal scourge, and those who worry they themselves could one day be robbed by a sick person desperate for health care.

"It's a tough law, but fair," conceded June Striber, a former cancer sufferer now in remission. June hopes that with God's help, she'll remain on the right side of the law.

Critics question how Bush intends to implement the plan without addressing the problem of our nation's already overcrowded prisons. The president quelled these concerns with news that the incarceration overflow will be handled by converting schools closed due to recent education cutbacks into prisons, as well as GM factories shuttered due to overseas outsourcing and museums no one was visiting anyway. According to the president, even further room for sickly inmates can easily be found in abandoned K-Marts and in failed dot-com office space nationwide.

he world of professional spelling garnered national attention this week, as well as controversy, when under-age spelling wunderkind Anurag Kashyap went first in the National Spelling League draft to the Anaheim Syllables. Kashyap is the youngest wordsmith to ever skip college and high school to go straight to the pros.

Pro spelling has had to face criticism from those who claim the major leagues have gone after younger and younger wordsmiths ever since the formation of the National Spelling League in 1998. Detractors claim the NSL is luring away some of America's brightest young minds from academic careers that could help them in the non-spelling world.

Mere mortal Kashyap was selected from among 150 other stellar spellers for a lead position on California's Anaheim Syllables, a major contender in the Eastern division of national spellers. In previous drafts, students as young as 15 have skipped completion of high school and college to enter professional league spelling, but Kashyap, a "spelling monster," according to sports writers, will be foregoing high school and college in entirety for a 3-year $18 million contract.

"People raise hell when an athlete, or even a mathlete skip college to go pro," said Kashyap's coach, Oxford Associate Professor of Spelling Chip Bustero, "but these are Anurag's prime spelling years. He's only got another few years of language mastery before the memory starts to go. Every year he puts off going pro he not only loses that salary, but all the lucrative endorsement deals. Nike is thinking about going into notebook and paper production—Anurag's just the kind of brainiac they're looking for to promote those products. And we're already in talks with Bic and Pilot. Whoever's got the deeper pockets can lock in a deal now, before he really puts professional spelling on the map."

However, opponents among the living argue that word jockeys like Kashyap not only lose college opportunities and training for careers outside the spelling world, but other prospects, like being a part of the 2008 Olympics spelling team. Spelling Coach to the American Olympic team Ruben Fartstarter expressed worry about the future of Olympic spelling if other star Englishologists like Kashyap lose eligibility.

"We were beginning to make real headway in the 2004 Olympiad. Then Hattie Page and Yukio Konichi both go for top dollar to the Seattle Suffixes and the Pittsburgh Homonyms, respectively. We're losing top talent and the word nerds of tomorrow aren't even going to college teams anymore. We were ranked third to England and Australia last time, which means we're only beating countries that don't speak English. Can you imagine a few under-scoring amateurs getting up on a stage in front of the whole world and misspelling 'misspell'? We'll look quite the fools."

The potential scandal comes at the worst time for the new professional sport, following accusations over the last few months that some of the sport's most notable stars have been taking spelling-enhancing drugs. The damaging allegations came in the form of a book by 19-year-old retired San Francisco Palindromes speller Anita Watt, I Before E Except After Steroids. Also in the book are damning accusations of excessive alcohol use and well-known spellers taking cocaine, even during the 2004 Olympics, including harrowing descriptions of all-night "speed-spelling" matches.

Everyone I know in the conspiracy community and the Niluminati were, of course, stunned by the big bomb drop this week. And you can hardly blame us, it has to be the news everybody has been wanting to hear for years. Paris Hilton marrying Paris ???? That's insanity. Two people with the same first name can't marry each other. That's the whole reason our country has stood fast against gay marriage for so long. The notion of a Steve marrying a Steve… brr! I'm chilled to the bone just thinking about it.

Imagine all the potential disasters that would happen in that household. A man calls there, asking for Paris, and the husband flips out, yelling and screaming and threatening violence, only to find out the caller was his best friend, Buddy. Plus, think about how gross it is to get out of the shower and use your wife, Paris', monogrammed towel. Dammit! If only the two of us didn't share the same name. What I'm mainly worried about, though, is the next time I download a bootleg video of Paris having sex with someone, it better be the female one. That's all I'm saying.

I can understand her wanting to settle down, though. Her movie career is finally starting to take off, what with that Carl Jr.'s commercial getting her such fantastic acting notice. She's apparently broken ties once and for all with that troublemaker Nicole Richie, and it's about time. I'm hoping she'll do the wise thing for the next season of The Simple Life, and get a reliable new influence like Kelly Clarkson to co-star. And, this is neither here nor there, but they should have to work in a Denny's all season. I have a hunch that would be classic TV in the making.

I have additional worries about Paris Hilton settling down once and for all, even though I think it might be in her best interest. I hope she doesn't balloon up like Elle MacPherson once she's married. A lot of super-models just let themselves go and lose their classic toothpick shape. But with a husband sharing the same name, plus him not being famous and multi-talented like her, that has to cause some torment, which always causes heavy drinking, which causes great preservation of eternal thinness. So that's working for her.

Interesting about this "Deep Throat" thing, too. Some people may have guessed Paris Hilton was actually Deep Throat, but that was another video entirely, rest assured. Plus, I don't think she knows anything about Washington politics, part of that younger generation that thinks politics are queer. I was surprised by Felt's admission, I had always suspected Linda Lovelace, Misty Sugar, or White House Counsel John Dean. Actually, I really wanted it to be Jimmy Dean, just for a real twist, but that wasn't too likely. I'm not sure how an actor and sausage magnate would be privilege to such information, but as I said, it was more a fantasy than anything else.

We in the conspiracy-cracking business owe a real debt to Mark Felt, not only for expanding our sexual consciousness, but for helping to bring down a president and making us feel, at last, like we could break some of these conspiracies, if we stayed on them long enough. I was a young cub reporter at the time, and I wish Felt had had enough confidence to come to me with the story, instead of Joanne Woodward and Leonard Bernstein. They should give him the biggest tribute of all, since bringing down the president helped launch Woodward's acting career, and Bernstein spent the rest of his life recording the tales of the Watergate conspiracy in his successful series of Bernstein Bears books. What I couldn't have done with such information.

Let's just say it would have been me in that Paris Hilton video then, not some jackass with a camera.

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