Speaking at a joint press conference, simulcast on The Al Franken Show on Air America and in the company of world’s most exacting journalist on our favorite broadcast, The Sean Hannity Show on Fox News, the couple seemed affectionate as they held hands and made cow eyes at each other on the air. Franken and Hannity each congratulated one half of the couple and shouted epithets at the other. “In my heart of hearts,” Coulter said, “I believe that Mikey should be fragged for treason like all his liberal friends, but when we’re together I just forget all that.” Mr. Moore said that Ms. Coulter had been unfairly portrayed in the media and attacked even by some of Mr. Moore’s colleagues, unfairly in Moore’s opinion. “The truth is, Annie is really sweet and sensitive. She has this bad image just because of a few hosebag 9/11 widows who are out to take her down. They think that just because their husbands were killed by terrorists, they can say anything they want, no matter how hurtful.”

Sources close to the couple say that the announcement is not a major surprise. Ms. Coulter and Mr. Moore have been intimate for some time now and friends have noticed their burgeoning affection for each other. Holly Brodew, a close friend of Coulter’s, said that she has enjoyed watching the love grow between the two well-known figures. According to Ms. Brodew, the couple does have more in common than one might expect based on the way they are portrayed in the media. “They both love walks on the beach, Scrabble and controversy. Of course, they obviously don’t agree on everything”, Brodew added, “but love conquers all.” A friend close to Mr. Moore, who didn’t want to go on record regarding private matters out of respect for their friendship, says that Moore told him “The sex is wonderful!”

The engagement did cast doubts on the longstanding belief in some circles that Ms. Coulter and Senator Hillary Rodham-Clinton were secret lovers. Many had speculated that the reason that Senator Clinton had been able to take her husband’s infidelity in stride was because she herself was having an affair with Coulter. According to Naral Raqashwuayilw (pronounced “ROCK-uh-shwuayilw), who has followed the Clinton-Coulter story since the early days, this announcement does not really have any bearing on that story, “any more than the fact that Bill and Hillary were married indicated that Bill and Monica were not having an affair.”

President Bush addressed the nation this morning and announced that the formerly United States had declared war against Vermont and had kicked traitor state out of the Union. “This rogue state has produced noted traitors Howard Dean and Pat Leahy. We have tried to deal with Vermont through diplomatic channels and sanctions, but with the discovery of Iraqi WMD in Vermont, we have needed to progress to the next step.” The president was of course referring to Friday’s revelation that US forces had been unable to find WMD in Iraq because Iraqi WMD were in fact being stored and hidden in the rogue state of Vermont.

Yesterday, Dr Condoleeza Rice, US Secretary of State, addressed the United Nations Security Council seeking a UN resolution to impose further sanctions against Vermont and ultimately to approve UN military action against the rogue state. Dr Rice showed satellite surveillance photos of a chemical weapons facility near Waterbury, Vermont, claming that Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons would finally be located in that facility. The Vermont delegate to the UN contends that the facility is in fact an ice cream plant. Dr Rice, however, refuted that assertion and argued that classified evidence that she was unable to release to the United Nations proved that it was in fact a chemical weapons facility. Unfortunately for the Bush administration, the Security Council demurred. Members were less receptive to these allegations than they were to similar allegations Colin Powell presented to the UN in the leadup to the Iraq War. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan told journalists that members of the Security Council were simply not convinced. The big slap in the face of the day was that the Bush administration got little support from the British, despite the fact that Vermont insurgents’ had launched an unprovoked attack on a British military installation in 1775. Mr. Anan said that despite the history of the rogue state, many Security Council members, including the British, felt that Vermont should be welcome in the community of nations since that rogue state had not had any known ties with terrorists in the ensuing 231 years since the Ticondergoa attack.

President Bush said that since the United Nations was not going to reign in rogue states, the United States would “go it alone and fight the good fight” and that “a state of war currently exists between the United States and Vermont.” National Guard troops have been called up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but President Bush said that a hot war could be avoided if the state of Vermont would turn over its WMD and allow inspectors into their facilities.

The new president of the Republic of Vermont, Ben Cohen, said that they had been offering free tours of the chemical weapons/ice cream plant in question for many years now. He said that inspectors were welcome at any time except Christmas and Thanksgiving and that tours/inspections leave every hour on the hour, 10:00am to 4:00pm. As for turning over their chemical weapons, Mr Cohen noted that every inspector/visitor is offered a free sample straight from the vats after every tour/inspection. He noted that while the Republic of Vermont would not be blackmailed by the superpower that engulfs it, Mr Cohen said that if it would avert a war, the Republic of Vermont was willing to offer Mr Bush “a lifetime supply of weapons-grade Chunky Monkey in return for a promise to keep US troops and Karl Rove out of Vermont.” A response is expected from the Bush administration sometime late in the day tomorrow.

The mystery of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of the mass destruction (WMD) has finally been solved. Operatives from the Central Intelligence Agency with the help of Karl Rove and Ann Coulter (recently engaged to Michael Moore, as reported exclusively on TFR), have recently uncovered evidence that Iraqi WMD had in fact been housed largely in Vermont, which explains why UN inspectors and US forces have been unable to find any trace of them in Iraq. Early yesterday morning, General Michael V. Hayden, Acting Director of Intelligence, made the initial announcement to an excited press corps in the CIA press room at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. General Hayden had few details to give out, but indicated that the president would address the press later in the day once Mr. Bush had the time to be fully briefed on the implications of the discovery .

President Bush gave a follow-up press conference 3:00pm EDT in which he said that this discovery finally vindicated his Iraq strategy. “We’ve had some detractators, some people who didn’t like, who felt we made the wrong decision in Iraq,” said the President, “but this cache of Iraqi WMD in Vermont shows that we have been on the, that the tack we took, that we were right to attack Saddam. The incredible work by the CIA, Karl Rove and Ms. Coulter has finally vindicated our strategy and I think we can all sleep better at night knowing that these weapons have finally been found and the Vermont traitors uncovered. Over the next days we will be talking to the leaders of Vermont and the UN to try to bring this to a peaceful resolution.”

Asked whether or not there were any major intelligence lapses in light of the fact that it took two years to find weapons that were right in our backyard, the president insisted that his intelligence had been good, but conceded that “Thanks to the excellent work by Ms. Coutler, we have known that Vermont housed a large number of hostile forces, but the truth is that we may not have investigated this possibility as aggressively as we could have. I want to stress however, that it it is impossible to investigate every possibility. There are known knowns and unknown knowns and known unknows or something like that. Anyway, you can’t know everything.” The president refused to elaborate, but analysts said that despite intensive training by evil, crazy bitch utter nutcase well-known commentator Ann Coulter, author of “How to Talk to a Liberal”, the administration and the intelligence services did not have enough analysts and translators capable of speaking liberal. Therefore intelligence coverage of Vermont has been lacking since roughly 2000.

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is scheduled to speak to the UN on Tuesday and present evidence against Vermont in hopes of creating an international coalition to bring the rogue state into compliance with international American Karl Rove’s rulings. Mr. Bush said that the UN had offered to let Secretary Rice speak on Monday, but the administration refused to accept that date in protest over the anti-Americanism of the Unitied Nations as evidenced by its choice to celebrate Labor Day not in September like it should, but on May 1 like every other country in the world.

Related: US declares war on Vermont

[note: in recent months, the percentage of Americans believing that Iraq had WMD has actually been rising despite the fact that no new evidence has surfaced]

The break in the case came during a routine traffic stop for drunk driving. When stopped, Mr. Gibson, slurring his speech, said that “The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world, just like that kike bastard Jimmy Hoffa. That’s why I offed him.” Informed that Mr. Hoffa was not Jewish, Mr Gibson said “Well, he’s from New York. They’re all Jews there.” Informed that Mr. Hoffa was not from New York, Mr. Gibson said “Well, it was an honest mistake. I guess I was drunk at the time.”

At his arraignment, Mr. Gibson told the judge that he had a disease and was seeking treatment. He begged forgiveness from the Jewish community, the Teamsters, New Yorkers, and the Hoffa family. “I know my actions and words have been truly hurtful,” said Mr. Gibson, “but I believe in a loving God, who loves all people, Christians, kikes and Teamsters alike, and I hope that God will forgive me. I cannot expect the kikes, the Teamsters and the Hoffas to forgive or forget, but I hope they will understand that I am deeply regretful and that I only said those hurtful words and killed that guy because I was drunk at the time. This is not the way I comport myself on those rare occasions when I am not drunk.” Authorities are still uncertain regarding the veracity of Mr. Gibson’s confession. Stated Moshe Greebaum, a profiler with the Anti-Defamation League: “Serial anti-Semites often lie about their crimes, exaggerating the number of anti-Semitic acts committed in order to increase their prestige with other anti-Semites. We’re still trying to verify that Mr. Gibson did indeed commit the crimes that he claims he committed. If the allegations are verified, we categorically reject the ‘I was drunk at the time’ defense.”

Assuming that the allegations are proved to be true, Teamster spokesman John Redgraf said that Mr. Gibson’s apology did not go far enough. “It’s really not okay to kill the leader of the second largest union in the nation, mistakenly thinking he’s Jewish, and then say you’re sorry and you only did it because you were drunk at the time.” Christian leaders, on the other hand, were divided. Ray Carlson of the Ecumenical Council of Fundamentalist Southern Baptist Churches said that he thought Mr. Gibson’s actions and remarks might be forgiven by God, but could not be excused by man and that Gibson should be punished to the full extent of the law. Father Carl Raymond of the Saint Agatha Catholic Church, which belongs to the same offshoot of Catholicism as Gibson’s church, which has been excommunicated by Rome, said “Mel really doesn’t mean those things he says and does when he is drunk. I have counseled him and know him to be truly, truly sorry. All men are sinners and all men make mistakes. The mark of our humanity is our ability to forgive.”

Los Angeles County District Attorney Ron Melmink said “We’ll see what the evidence shows, but as for what action we might take, let’s put it this way. The ‘ability to forgive’ is not in my job description.”

Consumer protection advocates have released a study today showing that bowling-related deaths have seen a 100 percent increase through the first half of 2006 compared to the same period last year. From January 1, 2005 until June 30, 2005, combined data from the International Bowling Federation (IBF), the Consumer Protection Agency (CPA), the American Council of Surgeons (ACS) and Manny Kowalski from Beloit Lanes in Beloit, Wisconsin (Manny) record two bowling deaths whose primary cause was bowling or bowling equipment. The figure does not include deaths due to natural causes while bowling, deaths due to fights while bowling, or deaths due to bowling equipment while not bowling. Over the same period this year, there have been four bowling deaths due to bowling or bowling equipment.

IBF president Jim Karlin assured the public that bowling is as safe for the average person this year as it was last year. According to Mr. Karlin, “The rise in bowling deaths can be attributed to a small group of individuals engaging in the relatively new and largely unregulated sport of extreme bowling. The risks associated with extreme bowling are indeed higher than what we see with traditional bowling, but this in no way affects the safety of the average family down at their local lanes.” Karlin went on to say that whereas the 2005 deaths at Beloit Lanes, a traditional bowling venue, were caused when Manny accidentally turned the power back on while Chris Withers, 32, and Virkam Rashana, 19, were cleaning the pin setting equipment, tragically crushing the victims, this year only one of the deaths took place in a traditional lane. “Of this year’s four deaths,” Karlin specified, “three have taken place in the half pipe at extreme bowling lanes, so in that sense, we have seen a 50% decrease in deaths at traditional bowling lanes.” Karlin admitted that it may be time to look into regulating extreme bowling facilities, but that remains outside the purview of his organization as few extreme bowling lanes are IBF members. He underscored the fact that there is no reason to believe that this year’s massive rise in fatalities indicates that bowling at large has become unsafe and said he still bowls with his family two or three times a week. “As with any sport, however safe,” he added, “one should nevertheless always take appropriate safety measures.”

Industry critics charge that the industry response has not gone far enough. A spokesman for the Citizen’s Ad Hoc Committee for Bowling Safety (CAHCBS) refuted Karlin’s contentions. “The bowling industry has swept this under the rug for long enough because they don’t want to spend the money to make the lanes safe” said Terry Withers, brother of last year’s victim Chris Withers. “It’s time that the industry step up to the plate with motion-controlled power cutoffs in the pin setting machines, with hand guards on the ball returns, and bowling shoes with anti-bacterial linings. If they are unwilling to do so, we will have to take this to our state and federal legislators and impose a legislative solution, and nobody really wants that.” Mr. Withers said that according to CAHCBS calculations, if deaths continue to double every year, in 12 years, deaths due to bowling and bowling equipment will outnumber deaths on our nation’s highways. “It may not seem like much, but at the current rate, we’re on pace for eight deaths this year, 16 next year, 32 the year after that and 32,768 deaths twelve years from now. That should worry every parent, every consumer, every bowler” Withers said.

Google Inc, of some place in California, announced today that it would release a new service, Google Washington, as a complement to its Google Earth service. Ron Elway, a spokesman for the somewhere-in-California-based company said “Given the popularity of our Google Earth product, we have decided to cover other regions of the known universe. We have chosen to roll out Google Washington this year, and will building other services in the new future.” Speaking off the record, a highly-placed employee at Google said that depending on the success of Google Washington, the company would develop similar applications for Google Fairyland, Google Wonderland and Google Never Never Land.

According to Elway, the service has been in the works for quite some time, but Google faced technical challenges due to certain physical laws that function differently in Washington than in the rest of the universe. “It turns out that while arsenic in the water is bad for you on planet earth, it appears not to be the case in Washington. Furthermore, while carbon dioxide emissions from human activity causes global temperatures to rise on earth, neither CO2 emissions nor the direct addition of massive quantities of hot air have any effect on climate on planet Washington according to what our sources could gather.” Elway went on to say that although neither of these physical anomalies affect mapping directly, the Google team needed to verify that there were no other physical differences that would cause problems with the mapping application. Elway also noted that apparently observations of planet earth from Washington are similarly difficult to make. “We keep picking up communications from Washington that say that based on their data, the war in Iraq is going well. This leads us to believe that some people in Washington have difficulty making accurate observations of planet earth, so we were worried that the reverse might be true. This is especially true since the Google astronomers who identified those who are currently in power in Washington were unable to determine what planet they are currently on. This should absolutely be considered beta software” Elway added in closing.

The Google Washington service will allow every earthling with an internet connection to get 3D views of Washington down to the street level with enhancements for some areas such as popup numbers for lobbying dollars that have been consecrated to programs housed in a given building. Google also hopes to integrate this service with Google Maps so that visitors to the site could get travel distances from Washington to planet earth.

Neither the President Bush nor Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has spoken in public about Switzerland’s action. State Department spokesman Rick Stivits stated that the administration was still analyzing the implications of today’s announcement, but for the time being they were baffled and uncertain why a nation would declare neutrality. “We are still gathering intelligence and trying to understand what Switzerland is trying to accomplish through neutrality and whether or not this action poses a threat to the United States. In the meantime, we urge Americans to stay calm.” Mr Stivits when on to add that analysts in the Department of State and the Pentagon were still trying to determine whether this action had any impact on the Unites States or whether we could continue to ignore insignificant nations of no strategic importance. Asked under what circumstances the United States might declare neutrality on a sovereign foreign power, Mr. Stivits said that he was not at liberty to speculate on future actions, but did clarify that neutrality has not been a traditional US strategy and he knew of no plans to change that. He added that at 3:00pm EDT Mr. Bush is not expected to address the nation from the Oval Office on this matter.