I tried to line the thing up so it was picking the other guy's nose, but I couldn't get it to look right. So you get this.

Last Week in Weird

You have the obligation to remain silent

Ah, America. Land of the free! Home of the Barves! Where the only thing more cherished than apple pie, baseball, and motherhood is the absolute, rock-solid, George Washington-approved, First Amendment-guaranteed right to free speech. I’m sure you know it by heart:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Of course, as any fule kno, the Constitution is a "living document." What necromantic rites were involved in this black sorcery your humble narrator shudders to think, but apparently the Constitution, quite unlike every other piece of paper in the history of the world, has the power to update itself whenever the disembodied flying devil head of Uncle Sam wills it to be. And, in an astonishing turn of events, He communicates His grand design to us through the federal judiciary. Last week, the holy judiciary handed down the magical new text of the First Amendment, which has apparently been updated with a rider adding "… unless minor bureaucrats don’t like it."

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OG Trollface

Last Week in Weird

Trick or treat

It’s been a rough week for the future president of the United States Penitentiary Hazelton. It began with the comically phony ABC poll showing Her Majesty up by twelve points, which is just about bang-on twice Barack Obama’s advantage over John McCain when he won in a landslide in 2008, and would require an entirely impossible pattern of votes in order to be true. ABC walked this poll back in a hurry, and we were once again reassured that only horrible conspiracy theorists could possibly think anything was funny about it.

Then Wikileaks delivered this delightful gem from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails, in which the chairman and his associates discuss exactly how they intend to rig the polls. Turns out I was right all along!

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