ne the most potentially controversial stories in recent years was successfully nipped in the bud by the Bush White House and its ever-faithful assistant, the national news media, as the ongoing story of former Cheney Chief of Staff Lewis Libby's indictment, the first of a sitting White House official in history, was relegated to page 3 by bored news directors and other major Republican-driven news stories.

Libby, called "Scooter" by his many enemies, is the first and likely only casualty of the under-covered story of a White House leak, in which the identity of a working CIA operative, conveniently the wife of Bush opponent Joseph Wilson. Wilson's wife Valerie Plame was outed as a spy by a conservative columnist, and his source was traced back to the White House. While liberals hoped the 22-month investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would reveal the dirty tactic came from a source as high as presidential counselor Karl Rove, the most the Democrats could succeed with was a guy named Scooter. And the victory itself was short-lived.

As soon as news of the Libby indictment, a potentially president-destroying story, was announced, the Cheney Chief of Staff resigned and the White House began its onslaught of less important announcements, starting with the retraction of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, the nomination of mini-Scalia Samuel Alito, and more news from the clusterfuck in the Middle East that is Iraq. To seal the deal and firmly erase the recent memory of criminal charges against White House staff, the president released a string of obscene and bizarre comments guaranteed to push the story off the page—covered elsewhere in this edition of the commune.

Democrats and White House insiders alike were surprised by the effectiveness of the Bush administration's "Operation: Bury the Story."

DNC strategist Michael Fallusmore: "Damn, but they did it good. We were a little busy basking in the glee of what should have been a catastrophe for the Bush-ites and GOP. Then we woke the next morning and couldn't find a trace of it anywhere. The news media were suddenly much more interested in the predictable choice of a conservative white guy for the Supreme Court. Real shockaroo there. But still, you have to give them credit for weaseling out of the unweaselable. I guess all we can do now is hope some reporter finds that dead hooker in Karl Rove's Toyota."

An inside source at the White House, some Bush college buddy whose phone we tapped, agreed with the quick removal of the story.

"I totally can't believe it worked," said the source, then giggled as he did a line of blow. "I suppose it would have been a hard uphill battle if all the major media outlets hadn't bought into the importance of these other routine stories and decided to shrug off the boring details of criminal and possibly treasonous behavior inside the walls of the highest pockets of U.S Government. What? Yeah, I'm completely wasted, so what? I always talk like that."

The president did his part as leader of his party and platform to diminish the importance of the story to the news media and the American people, by dressing in ugly suits, appearing as unphotogenic as possible, and keeping his comments quite limited to make for lousy B-roll for the visually oriented media outlets. Bush responded Thursday to Libby's plea of not guilty to the charges.

"Yep, yep," said the president, quickly shuffling off to a birthday party of a friend being held at a Washington, D.C. Chuck E. Cheese.

urious French protestors continued to riot over the weekend, gently overturning traffic cones and unleashing salvos of pithy wit at assembled riot police across some of the roughest neighborhoods in all of Paris. The riots began the previous week in the Seine-Saint-Denis suburb northeast of Paris, sparked by what officials believe was a disagreement over food.

“Those incorrigible police buffoons know nothing of fine chocolate!� said impassioned teenage rioter Jean Touloc, only in French.

The urbane French police were overwhelmed almost before the rioting even began, requiring the French Army to be brought in last week. The army surrendered four hours later, and plans were being drawn up for a transitional government when some joker switched out the treaty-signing pen with a novelty model that laughs electronically when you try to write with it. The rioters, perhaps correctly believing that they were not being taken seriously, stepped up their boisterous chants of “We beg to differ!� and their disorderly milling-about.

The riots reportedly got out of hand on Saturday, when protestors began hurling water balloons in the general direction of riot police. French officials, however, claim that the reality wasn’t as bad as these reports imply, since the balloons were actually filled with a very pleasant brand of spring water flavored with a spritz of lemon.

Police attempted to crack down on the rioting Sunday, bringing out a top-secret book of salacious insults on loan from the French armed forces. The crowds were clearly humiliated by these witty rejoinders, but in response began a menacing chant that translates as “You are wrong, we are right, let’s not argue, let’s not fight,� which spread like wildfire all across the Parisian suburbs.

Within hours, however, the chanting had escalated to the inflammatory “You’re not right, we’re not wrong, won’t you come and sing along?� and French officials were considering turning to the UN for help, the nation’s domestic situation cart-wheeling dangerously out of control.

In a last-ditch effort to salvage the French state, president Jacques Chirac went on national television late Sunday night to beg for an end to the verbal violence, acceding to the protestors’ demands and stunning the nation by admitting that yes, perhaps there are some varieties of milk chocolate that are not entirely without their charms, reversing the government’s decades-old hard line stance.

The immediate reaction to Chirac’s broadcast was a positive one, with riot officials quickly retracting a statement made my one rioter hours earlier that the hats worn by the police were neither tasteful nor well-made.

“Really, there’s rioting, and then there’s going too far,� explained riot Treasurer Philippe LaRoc. “And those hat remarks were really full-well out of line. Let’s bring this all to a close before someone says something they’re really going to regret later.�

Omar Bricks has never been afraid to get his hands dirty. On the contrary, more often than not it looks like I've been playing patty-cake with a tar baby. I consider it a badge of honor that I've always been willing to roll up my sleeves and get into shit others considered best left untouched, and have always walked on my hands where others feared to tread. But this gyro sauce is a different matter altogether. This shit makes Lava soap seem about as useless as an eight-year-old wet nap. I need some napalm, and I need it with aloe.

You truly can't understand the horrors of discrimination until you've gone through a day with your hands smelling like a Greek man's testicle cheese. People won't look you in the eye, the glove store locks their doors when they see you coming, and dogs faint when you enter the room. This is also the first time I've understood the meaning of that "People are Strange" song by the Doors, I'd always thought that guy was singing about visiting Oklahoma. Turns out his hands just smelled like the inside of a bulimic Yeti's yak bowl. No wonder that dude did enough drugs to kill a roadie.

This whole misadventure started out innocently enough, last week when I was throwing water balloons full of piss at some Mormon missionaries who made the mistake of trying to infiltrate the commune offices. Don't get me wrong, it's not the usual Omar Bricks style to be so free with the bodily fluids, but we were all out of water. The city shut our building off following Red Bagel's TV appearance when he told everyone the government was adding tooth whitener to the city's water supply. So it was either going to be piss-balloons or blood-balloons, and unfortunately for the Mormons, my bladder wasn't bursting with blood at the time.

It turned out the missionaries had been working at the commune for weeks, hatching a terrorist plan to lead us all to Heavenly Father's love. In retrospect, it should have been obvious, since they were the only two guys in the office dressed like they worked in an office, and they were the only people who didn't refer to Bagel as "Sir Fucks-It-Up."

But all in all, everybody here was too busy avoiding all awareness of work reality to pay much attention to the missionaries, that is until the tall one made the mistake of trying to convert Ivana Folger-Balzac and she hit him with the fire axe we keep in the kitchen for opening cans of food foraged from Crochet!'s food drive bin downstairs. This started some kind of unholy Mormon-on-commune rumble, which ended well for the missionary who fell out the window at first sign of trouble but poorly for the one who was left to try and Jackie Chan his way out of the office. Luckily for him, Ramrod Hurley took the brunt of the violence, and most of the piss balloons, because he made the mistake of wearing a tie into the office that day and no one likes him. At some point the missionary got away, or else was stomped into a copy machine or some dark corner of the office from where he has yet to emerge.

Either way, all the rumbling worked up a powerful appetite within yours truly, and I decided to celebrate by trying out lunch at the new Greek place down the street. I figured gyros sounded good, since I like food that spins, but unfortunately the one I got was broken. What it did do, however, was stink up my hands like goat shit in a cucumber patch. I tried washing my hands with soap, lye and banana custard, but none of it did a damn bit of good. And when I got back to the commune offices, everyone kept calling me Boris. I couldn't tell if they were being sarcastic, or were just blinded by the Boris Utzov-like frunk emanating from my own raunchy-ass hands and thought Boris had returned from wherever the hell he's been since our bus trip.

After a few days of this indignity, however, this morning I happened upon a solution that killed two birds with one stone, solving both my stank-hands problem and my I've-never-run-through-an-office-building-with-my-hands-on-fire problem in one beautiful blur of lost time. To be honest, I don't remember exactly what happened myself, but do an internet video search for "Flaming Office Mime" and you can judge for yourself.

Bricks out.

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