n exasperated federal appeals court dealt a severe setback to the Bush administration this week, should they decide to obey it, by mandating the president could not arbitrarily label foreigners on U.S. soil enemies of the state and imprison them without due process. The court officials also implored the president, "Please, for the sake of everybody in the world, quit doing whatever you want just because you feel like it."

It was a major change in recent legal policy. Riding the coattails of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, most courts and other administrative officials have endorsed a policy of "let the baby have his bottle," (Supreme Court v. ACLU, 7281). In the past year, especially around the second anniversary of the infamous terrorist incidents, the legal wind began blowing in another direction. The president has been losing ground on his doing-whatever-he-wants agenda.

Court decisions have been turning against the president as early as May, when following the end of formal hostilities the president sought to throw a "victory kegger" in the former palatial estate of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. The court sided with congress that the palace party would violate international war time code of conduct, infuriate U.S. allies, and be distinctly unpresidential.

The court also intervened when Bush declared several of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners guilty of heresy, and wanted them put to death on national television by celebrity executioner Lee Majors, the Six-Million Dollar Man. Bush attorneys, when defeated in the federal court, addressed reporters on the courthouse steps: "It seems to me like the courts aren't as against terrorism as they claim to be."

The latest defeat is the most serious, and it appears to legal analysts we didn't bother to consult that the tide is turning against the president in the long wake after Sept. 11. In a case brought by a brother of one of the alleged terrorist suspects, the constitutionality of keeping prisoners without due process for two years was challenged and the federal courts sided with the family. According to the justices, the president cannot go around all "willy-nilly" and hold people for years at a time without the benefit of counsel. The "willy-nilly" was added by the commune, for effect.

The court, in a written decision, also implored the president to take his authority seriously and stop misjudging the limits of his power.

"We understand the need for alacrity and effectiveness in dealing with terrorist bodies," said the decision, apparently misreading the president's mastery of the language, "but the president would do well to see his presidential powers more realistically. He should read the constitution, or have a friend read it to him. He may not have been elected by the populace, but he is still not a dictator for life, and should consider his powers accordingly."

The president reportedly did not take the defeat well, and insiders say he is consulting attorneys and historians about a plan to replace all current federal and Supreme Court justices with former frat buddies. White House press secretary Scott McClellan played it close to vest when addressing reporters.

"The West Wing made this job look like so much fun," said McClellan, shaking his head and lost in thought. "All I can say is, fuck that show."

edia bitch and shameless self-promoter Red Bagel surprised retards everywhere with a "shock and awe" sweep of his own commune awards, the "You the Man of the Year" things. Even my own surprised ass could not be reached for comment, it was that unexpected.

In addition to his regular "Yitmotty," which already had his name engraved on it before the voting started, Bagel swept all the extended bullshit categories and ended up taking home several of the awards, although all others were smaller, like if you got them in a Happy Meal or something. Those other categories included "Conspiracy Cracking," "Website Publishing," "Brave Adventurer," "Girl Beddin'," and every other thing Bagel thinks he does reasonably well except farting the Macarena song.

"It was a great honor, and a privilege, to be recognized in so many different areas," Bagel might have said, had I interviewed him. "Lord knows a man is only as good as his staff, and anyone can tell you I'm no good. It's lucky I took this thing home without somehow impaling on it or winding up in an emergency room with it shoved half up my ass.

"In conclusion, I am a blithering idiot."

Quite an impressive list of nominees were submitted by commune staff members this year, including George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Legalos the Elf, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Jackson, Great White, Jared the Subway Queer, Roy Horn, Arnold Schwarzenfelder, and Howard Dean. From the confidential vote tallying sheet, lifted from Bagel's office while he was off taking a dump, we can see Bagel voted for no one other than himself for any category. Big shockeraroo there.

"I don't know, Ted, is it just me? Has there never been a worse boss in the history of the world?" said an inside source at the commune. "The guy is just apeshit crazy and I think it's time someone did something about it. If we were in Nam or a Nam movie, we'd have fragged him years ago. Either way, I can't believe I'm still working here. Let's face it: Log any time at the commune—you know this—and you might as well put 'Unhireable' on the top of your resume. This entire office is like riding a Slip 'N' Slide to hell."

In response, I assured him, "At least you don't have to write the friggin' 'Yitmotty' shit again this year, Raoul Dunkin."

Among Bagel's other accomplishments in 2003, he exposed the conspiracy behind 64-bit processors, Kim Jong Il, the Columbia disaster, and SARS. Not stopping there, Bagel also printed extremely humiliating information about his staff, including a drag queen site featuring once-beloved commune reporter Ted Ted. Not that Bagel or anybody else has a spot-clean record and has never done anything at all embarrassing in their past, and a little heads up would have been nice so all friends outside of the commune could have been warned and shit. But thank you, Red Bagel, for fucking up so many lives with so few words. Imagine what the esteemed commune Editor could have done if he hadn't been gone for half the year on some pseudo-homosexual frolic with missing-and-assumed-dead columnist Sampson L. Hartwig.

"Yeah," added Ted Ted, "you the fuckin' man."

"You down wit OCD?"

"Hold on, I'm washing my hands!"

Ah yes, here we find ourselves again, another day, another Dolf Lundgren. I sit here, striking a dashing pose, young restaurateur (that means brave, right?) with a devil-may-care grimace and a flinty stare that reminds many of the unbridled Amazonian beauty of Larry Flint himself. You, I can just picture you there, commune readers. Sitting in class (not to mention in school), dreamily scratching your rump in a way that reminds many onlookers of Katherine Hepburn, when her ass itched. These are the draconian days of our lives.

"You down wit Oppenheimer Pension Plan?"

"Yes, you are familiar with my customary mode of behavior."

If I could save time in a bottle, I'd probably forget to poke holes in the lid and it would end up dying, its lifeless corpse lying there, feet up, staring accusatorily for weeks until I remembered that oh yeah, I saved time in a bottle, and went to check on how it was doing. That's probably why you can't do it.

Some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered conference calls. Some hillrod told me that once.

BTW, I've come to be mildly obsessed by the term "hillrod" lately. Since moving to New Mexico my speech is frequently punctuated with phrases like "Hillrods! Twelve o'clock!" and "Arrr, there be hillrods afoot." The hillrods down in shipping are busy making voodoo dolls out of mud and chocolate, they don't find this sort of thing the slightest bit amusing. They also say "nuclear" funny.

I went to a day spa the other day, I thought it was a brothel but they waxed my Mason-Dixon line instead. That's between your toes, commune readers, you sick and physiologically challenged individuals. I'd hoped deep in the deepest recesses of my elementary school education that the place's design ("De sign, boss! De sign!" "That's right, Tattoo, my troll-like friend. It says 'Keep your midgets leashed'." "I no like puns, boss!") was merely a novel backdrop for exotic Korean handjobs, but by the time the big hand said six and the little hand said six too I had to give up the ghost on that expensive little fantasy and swallow the hard truth that I'd just dropped a hundred bucks to have my face wrapped in avocado and bacon.

When that bill comes due, you'll come over and find me perched on top of the coffee table, floating in a sea of tears that has nothing at all to do with the fact that I tried to flush a cowboy hat down the toilet. I look forward to it; I'll be waiting with Belgians.

Did I mention my apartment is also serving as a half-way house for mice? Even in the desert, you'd think I would have scorpions or Spaniards or something instead. My landlord may be a Spaniard, there's no question he's a worthless turd, which rhymes, sort of. He still doesn't believe I have mice, in spite of the perfect arc-shaped hole at the base of the wall in my kitchen, the "Home Sweet Home" mat which sits just outside that hole, and also the cat-face-shaped dent in my big frying pan.

I've been trying to smoke the little bastard out by blowing second-hand cigarette smoke into the hole every time I remember to do so. At this point it may just be a race to see which one of us gets cancer first, but I heard something about second-hand smoke being more deadly, so I think Vegas should favor my odds. Plus with his small size I'd have to be smoking like one of the Golden Girls to get the same cancer-causing effect per capita.

Truth be told, I'm not sure how many mice are in there, or how I'll even know if they've passed on to Mousehalla. When I go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I swear I can hear them scattering in the kitchen, yelling "SHIT! IT'S THE FARMER'S WIFE!" in their little high-pitched voices. Could that really just be a dream? Maybe I dreamt it all; maybe I don't really have any mice.

Badgers, on the other hand. We're thick with badgers.

All right commune readers, it's time for Stu Umbrage to duck off into the belfry to lunch upon sweet artichoke-hearts and New-Mexican-grown peaches. The Democratic Party keeps calling in an attempt to get me out to the polls this year, and I no longer feel safe downstairs. Could this be yet another sly ploy to get me under a tuna net? We shall see...

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