News With a Difference

EDINBURG, Texas -- Firefighters who spent half an hour fighting a blaze in which 2,000 pounds of marijuana went up in smoke breathed so much of it that they would have failed a drug test, a fire chief said. It took more than 35 firefighters, 1,000 gallons of water and five gallons of chemical suppressant to extinguish the warehouse blaze on Wednesday, Fire Chief Shawn Snider said. He told the Doom Brothers on the scene, “Like, man, it was beautiful. Golden flames licking the clouds. Smoke reaching to the sky like it was angels, man. Angels! Shit! You got anything to eat, man. I’m so damned hungry. Watch out for that helicopter by your ear.” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were investigating the origin of the drugs. The Hidalgo County fire marshal was investigating whether arson was the cause. Police had to cordon off the area from a larger than usual collection of firewatchers who gathered. The Doom Brothers reported that the crowd took on a festive air as a hard metal band materialized miraculously and everyone started smiling. . . .

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- Ecuador says tourism is threatening the Galapagos Islands and has asked UNESCO to add the habitat that inspired the theory of evolution to its endangered list, the culture agency said Friday. A spokesman for the group, Dr. I. Mary Frieburder, said, “With the rise of fundamentalism all over the world: this place has become the holy grail of diversity. Half of the people in the world want to raise it to the level of proof of the existence of evolution and the other half would just as soon have Galapagos Island Turtle Soup for supper every night. So, at the crossroads between the world of science and the nutcases it is best to simply keep the amount of people visiting to a minimum. And deny any requests for field trips from the Creationist Museum in Kentucky.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- The Bush administration on Thursday asked a federal judge to toss out lawsuits seeking to unearth information about the U.S. telecommunications industry's alleged participation in a warrantless government eavesdropping program.Five states want consumer records the telecommunications companies allegedly turned over to the National Security Administration as part of a domestic eavesdropping program President Bush authorized after Sept. 11, 2001.Lawyers for New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Missouri and Connecticut argued that they are pursuing complaints by consumers that their privacy rights may have been violated if phone records were turned over to the NSA without their consent.Department of Justice lawyers argued Thursday in U.S. District Court that such disclosures would harm national security and foreign affairs.''It's plain what they are seeking is information about the intelligence-gathering of the NSA,'' Deputy Assistant Attorney General Carl Nichols told Judge Vaughn Walker “And we simply cannot have that. I mean, we are the NSA and they are pitiful citizens of this country. Who do they think they are? They are nobodies. It is not like the Constitution gives our citizens the right to privacy from unlawful searches and seizures, is it? And the right to privacy from electronic eavesdropping when done by a government agency without meaningful oversight: where does it prohibit that in the Constitution? It does not. These people are just terrorists!”

WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney called for ''new course'' in the fight against terrorists on Thursday and, in a swipe at Democrat John Edwards, said: ''The war on terror is not a bumper sticker.'' Speaking to a conservative group, Romney argued that ''there is a real war being waged by violent jihadists. I have been to temple and Moroni told me what to do in a vision. We must organize the lost tribe of Israel and arm them with our best weapons and prepare to meet them on the plain of Armageddon for the final battle. These people are the children of the devil and are being led by the Anti-Christ. The final battle is at hand and I have been chosen above all others to lead God’s nation against the infidels. So purify yourselves and gird your loins, mortify your flesh, and join us as we battle for the Lord.”

WASHINGTON -- House Democrats on Thursday denounced Vice President Dick Cheney's idea of abolishing a government office charged with safeguarding national security information -- and criticized him for refusing to cooperate with the agency. The Doom Brothers would just like to offer a little advice to Chairman Waxman. Look, Mr. Waxman, Mr. Cheney is a junior college graduate from Wyoming. He obviously has never had a class in Civics. He simply does not realize that he sounds like an idiot when he starts talking like this. I think a visit from someone who can speak his language to tell him to cool his jets will solve this problem. Particularly when they explain that if he declares himself to be not of the executive branch he can not longer claim executive privilege. And besides, Chairman Waxman, he is batshit crazy.

MIAMI (Reuters) - Prosecutors can show most of a videotaped interview with Osama bin Laden to jurors in the terrorism trial of former "dirty bomber" suspect Jose Padilla, even though there is no evidence Padilla ever saw it, a judge ruled on Thursday Prosecutors sought to play the CNN interview for the jury because they said Padilla's co-defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, discussed and praised it on wiretapped phone calls after it aired in May 1997. They are planning on introducing, as further evidence of the two men’s guilt, the book, Mein Kampf as well as The Manifesto of the Unabomber and the Diaries of Charles Manson since they never had anything to do with these either.