ike Nelson Mandela… like Rubin "Hurricane" Carter… like my cousin Nick who didn’t even know that somebody put that gun under his seat, professional blogger/journalist, or boggelist, as I just now coined, Josh Wolfe was held prisoner for his principles for a brutal and unforgiving 7½ months. It may not be 27 years, but how many years have you served for something you believed in, hotshot? And now that he’s a free man again, for skirting those principles just a bit, boggelist Wolfe has fought back the only way his small, spindly body knows how—a take-no-prisoners blog update.

"Prison is total crap," grumbled Wolfe, "they always tell you what to do and they never let you out. I don’t know who came up with the idea of prisons, but they… that guy just needs to be shot. Or sent to prison. Ooo, yeah, that would be ironic."

The serious burn was posted in Wolfe’s customary video format, saving the need for a spell-check, Saturday following his April 3 release from a federal prison in Dublin, California. Wolfe had been held since last August when he refused to turn over a video demanded by law enforcement they claimed might show participants in an arson attempt on a police car and a the injury of a San Francisco police officer. Tricky dick federal prosecutors got around pesky California shield laws which protect reporters, thereby denying the risky venture of having bloggers challenge they deserved protection as journalists, by claiming federal funds that bought the police car made it a federal case.

"That’s bullshit," countered Wolfe in his hot-to-the-web response. "If I give you Phish concert tickets, and you go there and get your ass kicked by a big dude for singing along during a serious jam, I don’t get to go down and sue the big dude or press criminal charges. Especially not if there’s shield laws that protect big dudes from being prosecuted for kicking ass when a guy ruins a concert. I mean, think about it—makes no sense."

Wolfe was released early from his sentence following a deal with prosecutors. The boggelist, who went to jail for refusing to turn over the video tape, turned over the video tape. In exchange, he didn’t have to go back to jail, an agreement Wolfe called "a sweet deal" for himself.

In addition, Wolfe was freed from testifying as to the contents of the video. Early testimony not released to law enforcement allegedly included such descriptions as, "That’s a guy really flipping out ’cause the cops are coming," and, "Oh, check this guy. What a prick." Apparently prosecutors decided they could do without Wolfe going on record.

Wolfe came to the attention of federal authorities when his video aired on local news, but the boggelist stood by his convictions by refusing to allow outtakes from the video to air. According to Wolfe, the outtakes were mostly when vengeful rioters protesting the G8 summit and calling for anarchy kept bursting into laughter when a few of them mispronounced the word as "annanarchy."

"Getting out of jail for giving them the video I refused to give them seven months earlier has allowed me to strike a blow for justice," Wolfe concluded in his "fuck you" to the system. "Let this stand as evidence that bloggers are as dedicated to protecting their sources as any other print or media journalist. Also, the arresting officer was a total douchebag, so I really couldn’t give up the tape until I heard they totally canned that guy’s ass."

Despite pressing pleas from commune reporters, Wolfe refused to embrace the word boggelist, so we exacted our revenge by misspelling in this article.

otes along party lines heralded the passing of Congress' new military budget, which would allow $122 billion in funding with the stipulation that all troops be removed from Iraq by the deadline of March 31, 2008. It was a critical blow to the G.O.P. and the president, who did not concede defeat but instead promised the bill, if it passes the House, would have to face the merciless wall of "White House Vito."

Presidential advisor and former CEO of the Dallas Quik-Dry Cement Company Vito Pantusi has been working closely with Bush on a compromise that will make all involved parties happy, a White House inside source says, particularly the President Bush party.

"Mr. Pantusi plans on visiting House and Senate Democrats personally with some associates to convince them they've voted improperly," said our source. "His associates are sporting enthusiasts, as anyone can tell by their baseball bats, and Mr. Pantusi is sure he can teach certain Congressmen all about fair play."

Acquitted on three different charges of influencing a congressional vote with a large tank of piranha fish, "White House Vito" has been an associate of the president since their days together in the Texas business community, and the president has brought in Pantusi as an advisor in hard negotiations in the past. In 2005, with an end-of-year deadline fast approaching, Pantusi assisted in advising the president in negotiating the Andean Free Trade agreement.

"The White House would like to consider this matter resolved-like," Pantusi said in a follow-up news conference, cracking his knuckles audibly for the press in one of his rare public appearances. Other involved parties declined comment, and quickly shrunk from reporters who approached them too fast with microphones.

Speculation has already begun as to what role Mr. Pantusi and his special "commission o' negotiatin' muscle" might play in opposition to the deadline bill. Representatives of the negotiating commission, including White House Vito standing ominously in the background, fielded a few quick questions from reporters on Friday.

"In, uh, response to the question, ah, from the ravishing lady from The Washington Post with the killer rack," replied Pantusi associate Johnny Lips, "the president is, uh, looking for an amicable solution to the, er, Iraq budgetary disagreement. The president would, uh, prefer to leave the decisions on, um, monetary needs and appropriate troop presence to the, er, military personnel in charge of that there decision."

Pantuis himself only responded to one question, when a reporter from CNN asked if the president had any doubts about pursuing a war the public increasingly opposes. To which White House Vito answered by throwing his cigar at the trembling reporter and shouting over the microphone, "You want me to come down there and show you some fucking opposition? You like that, tough guy? I should smack your fucking glasses off, numbnuts."

If the White House chooses to pass the bill, the new budget requires Bush to start bringing troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan within 120 days. If negotiations go roughly with Vito Pantusi, 120 days is also the average length of hospital stay expected for congressmen who have enjoyed a difficult compromise with Bush's advisor. The Democratic majority in the Senate, however, warned that they would not be scared by White House intimidation.

"It's the president's right to respond with Vito to any legislation he disagrees with," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "but Congress is not without its own powers. If the president tries to force through his own Iraq budget through the Senate after rejecting ours, we're always willing to respond with Philly Buster."

The Senator gestured to a husky Samoan page standing behind the speaking Democrats, scratching his goatee and nodding his head ominously.

I've put up with a lot over our many years of marriage, Deidrebane my dear. Your incessant coupon-clipping, child-rearing and flair with culinary dishes of all varieties. Your sunnily upbeat manner, and troubling habit of treating the neighbors with civility and respect. Your distaste for NASCAR. Your charity work for the betwetting orphans of Botswana, and your pitiable need to stay abreast of world events. It's been a long, tough slog up a rain-soaked hill, my dear, but only this last bit has been intolerable. With all of our servants as my witnesses, let there be no mistake about it: You WILL take back what you said this morning about Dokken.

The day started out innocently enough, at least for those of us who harbored no venom in our souls, waiting for the slightest Dokken-related opportunity to spit it free. I rose at noon, after a refreshing fourteen hours of sleep, and proceeded to peruse the Journal for its most salient feature: Get Fuzzy. As you can imagine, I breakfasted on a hearty bowl of disappointment. Apparently the volatility of soybean futures means more to some depraved individuals than the slice-of-life adventures of Satchel and Bucky. I feign no supernatural ability to explain these things, my dear.

Turned away coldly by the inky black indifference of the Journal, I opted instead to soothe my soul with a little skeet shooting from the bedroom window, with neighborhood birds standing in for skeet. Don't get started about my habit of ridding our neighborhood of incessantly inconsiderate songbirds, my dear, if they had the good sense not to side with morning folk they'd still be alive and in one compact, non-shotgunned piece. I shed not a tear, after their daily double-insult of leaving the late-night hours to the shrill noodling of crickets, in addition to polluting my restful morn with their whistling farts.

As you well know, my dear, for I have explained it in detail on several occasions, nothing elevates a reflective noontime skeet-shooting spree from a pleasant diversion to the realm of the sublime like the thundering hair rock of Los Angeles natives Dokken.

The moment is crystallized in my mind like a dog trapped in amber, my dear. I had just winged a squirrel that had picked a poor time to attempt traversing the power lines spanning our property, and was marveling my shotgunmanship when you burst in, as if my privacy were nothing to be taken any more seriously than the word of a Scotsman. You burst in shouting some nonsense about orphans sleeping downstairs and the weak heart trapped within the chest of our frail, elderly, taking-her-sweet-time-to-die neighbor Mrs Weatherborrow. Most of this was drowned out by the blast of the shotgun as I spied a child's kite hovering tantalizingly just over our property line, but what you said next I will take with me to my grave, possibly on a Post-It note. Turn down that noise? That noise? Oh, my dearest Deidrebane. How you seek to wound me so, and my, how you've learned just where to stick the blade.

It would have been one thing if the racket in question had been Winger, Deidrebane. They're hardly worthy of your polite attention, my dear, say nothing of your rapture. Or if it had been a guilty pleasure like Slaughter pummeling from the speakers this morning, shaking the very air and vibrating the bathtub down the hall with each well-placed bass note. Referring to the work of those gentlemen as noise could be forgiven, albeit with a healthy slathering of condescension on the part of yours truly. But no, my wife of many a year, it had to be Dokken. It's as if the very Gods themselves have chosen the method of my slow undoing.

Have you learned nothing from my frequent lectures concerning the mannered vocal stylings of Don Dokken, my dear? Have my haikus addressing George Lynch's heavenly fretwork fallen upon deaf ears? Am I the only on in this house whose very dreams echo to the strains of "Alone Again"? Please, tell me you at least remember the driving force of "The Dream Warriors" from that Nightmare on Elm Street movie we watched. You didn't think I keep renting it again and again for the filmic content, did you? I swear, Deidrebane, sometimes it's like I'm married to a total stranger.

It's fortunate for you our neighbor to the East just put up that giant birdfeeder. Some things cannot be forgiven, my dear, but given enough concussive shotgun blasts in close proximity to one's head, it's entirely possible they may be forgotten.

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