Uncommon Sense 

Pataphysical MetaNews Service 

Oct 16 2001 01:01:33AM

WASHINGTON (PMS) — Declaring that preparations undertaken to combat bioterrorism and nuclear annihilation are no joking matter, Herr UnterFuhrer Jurgen Asscough said Tuesday that those who laugh about anthrax or other government sponsored terrorist scares will face federal execution. He announced the surgical removal of one such man in Connecticut. 

Minimizing the credibility of NSA-fabricated anthrax attacks are “grotesque transgressions of the rule of law," Asscough said at a junior news conference, where two yearling journalists were arrested for smiling and another was pummeled into submission by military police after emitting a sound that Asscough interpreted to be a guffaw. 

Witnesses disputed Asscough's account and variously described the noise as “fulsome,” “flatulent,” “deep-seated,” or “thud-like.” Field tests of the sound weren't conclusive, and tapes of the incident have been sent to the Frunobulax Resonant Research Center in Culpepper, Virginia for further study. 

The incident involving the suspected guffaw followed a chortling episode that erupted when a student reporter from the Clemson University Tiger newsrag interrupted the news conference to ask why President Goober W. Bush had refused the Taliban's offer to turn Osama bin Laden over to an impartial nation to stand trial. Rampant chuckling broke out when Herr Asscough repeated Goober's official position that “Because we already know that guilty man is an evil one. They should just cough him up. We don't negotiate with terrorists. This will not stand. That's the rule of law.” 

Howls of delight briefly met the brutal execration issuing from the maw of America’s latest not-so-grand inquisitor as he sought to deflect attention from the current administration’s reliance on the rule of law to maintain power after disenfranchising nearly a million opposition voters in the last election. 

Asscough said that necessary governmental hoaxes and warnings about terrorist activities have already taxed the resources of an overburdened law enforcement system that has nearly bankrupted the American economy in a little more than eight months. 

“The disregard of bioterrorism awareness and preparation is no joking matter,” the America’s Supreme Shyster said, “and don't make me come down from this mountain and wipe the grin off the face of every man, woman, and homosexual in this room myself with these latex-encrusted hands.”  Ashkroft then detailed the identification, capture, and extermination of a Connecticut state employee who called authorities to report that he had watched FBI investigators scatter a carpet deodorant in the lobby of the Motor Vehicle Confiscation Department before ordering the building evacuated. 

Such reporting of government involvement in these hoaxes has become a serious headache for rule of law reeducation specialists, who are increasingly alarmed by ordinary Americans who would rather get on with their real lives.