Washington, D.C., March 12, 2006 -- Vice President Dick Cheney, a leading advocate of the use of torture in the so-called "war on terror", successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of the technique this month by allowing himself to personally undergo a one-week program of "coerced interrogation", the compassionately conservative term for the practice. During the week, the Vice President proved the value of torture by unwillingly confessing to a wide range of infractions, some of them quite surprising.

Los Angeles, March 19, 2010 -- Andy Warhol's famous phrase, “In the future, everyone will be fat and slightly stupid,” correctly prognosticated two alarming social trends that have led to a sharp rise in the incidences of heart disease, diabetes, right-wing talk radio and other obesity-related maladies among the ever-larger American populace.

What the eccentric 1960s pop artist failed to predict, however, is another trend that now has sociological statisticians scratching their unkempt scalps: the remarkable rise in short-term celebrity status among citizens from all walks of life.

Pyongyang, North Korea, November 5, 2006 -- A jubilant U.S. State Department announced today that the Halliburton subsidiary of Buhn & Dogale, a small ceramic figurine manufacturing firm located in the Cayman Islands, has been granted a coveted $3.2 billion no-bid contract to construct North Korea's first light-water nuclear reactor.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said key officials associated with the contract award, an important component of the recently signed North Korean Now You See Them Now You Don't Strategic Nuclear Arms Limitation Treaty, were "elated".

Mission, Texas, June 19, 2011 -- The Mexican border fence approved by President Bush in October, 2006 is now complete, but accolades for the project are few and far between.

Portion of Mexican border fence

The Secure Fence Act, which was touted by Republicans as a major border security initiative in the weeks leading up to the 2006 mid-term elections, is now viewed by many as a fiasco of the first order.