Washington, D.C., February 12, 2008 -- An unusually somber and introspective President George W. Bush, presenting the details of his $3.1 trillion fiscal year 2009 budget proposal for members of the American Plutocrats Union, a conservative group, lamented that the budget proposal represents his “last chance to shaft the poor.”

He urged the assembled audience to do “everything in their powers” to convince their elected representatives that the budget proposal represented an historic opportunity that may not return for a decade or more.

Reno, September 22, 2155 -- The festivities were frolicsome, the conversation frivolous, and as the last of the guests slip one by one through the vapor-lock and into their plasma cubes for the bounce home, the hosts sigh at the hurricane-like swath of residue left by the merriment: glass shards, cracker crumbs, innumerable dribblings of hors d'oeuvres. But do they don decontaminant apparel and reach for broom and dustpan?

Individual NannoGoat (shown in front of a half-inch $500 coin)

Fort Meade, Maryland, August 12, 2006 -- With all the controversy surrounding President Bush's illegal NSA (National Security Agency) wiretap surveillance program, some of the benefits and the remarkable technological successes brought into being by the admittedly unconstitutional operation can be easily overlooked. One of these unheralded achievements carries attributes that many will find surprising: namely, four legs and a tail. Meet Mother, the NSA's router-sniffing spy dog.

Ottawa, Canada, February 5, 2008 -- Late into Super Tuesday primary election voting today, two intrepid investigative journalists with the Washington Post revealed that Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for president, has for over two years also been the Canadian Prime Minister. The discovery is expected to throw some doubt on the future of Mr. Romney's campaign.

“We'd been checking out Mitt Romney's background as part of our routine reporting ahead of the Republican primary elections,” Robert Hoffman, one of the Washington Post reporters who made the surprising Romney discovery, said.