The Daily Me - Mungo Germaine

SOURCE: aye Weakly

An Iranian court acquitted the man charged with murdering Zahra Kazemi, an Iranian-Canadian journalist and civil rights proponent. "It's obvious what happened," the court ruled. "Kazemi ran into the wall of her cell repeatedly at high speeds, despite the best efforts of intelligence ministry agent Mohammad Reza Aqhdam Ahmadi to restrain her. Stomach injuries came from bumping into the side of a desk - some people are awfully clumsy. As for the cigarette burns on her chest, well, some people aren't very careful where they drop their ashes. Kazemi would have died in her sleep in the middle of a house fire if she hadn't died in an Iranian prison!"

Incoming Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew says he plans on sending a seriously worded warning to the Iranian government that he wants to see justice done. If that doesn't work, he intends to follow up on it with a sternly worded warning, followed by a harshly worded warning. "We still have options," Pettigrew stated.

SOURCE: Glob and Maul

Woof. Woof woof woof woof woof. Woof Woof. Bark? Whine whine whine whine whiiiiiiiiiiine. Woof Woof. Woof Woof Woof!

SOURCE: Celebrity Dog Blogs

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has allowed Arab news network Al-Jazeera to be broadcast over Canadian cable systems, but with some conditions. These include:

• The cable operators must monitor the station 24 hours a day for negative comments about Liz Frulla.
• They must also digitally draw moustaches onto the faces of anybody on the American list of terrorists or terrorist supporters every time they appear on the network.
• All correspondents must get sensitivity training from Don Cherry.

Supporters of Al-Jazeera claim that these conditions are too onerous, and that no cable operator will carry the news network because of them. They also claim that there is a double standard at work, since they do not expect the American Fox News Network to have any conditions put on it when it is approved for cable viewing in Canada. For there to be parity, the Fox News Network could only be carried under the following conditions:

• The cable operators must monitor the station 24 hours a day for negative comments about Canadian teenagers.
• They must also digitally draw moustaches onto the faces of neoconservatives every time they appear on the network.
• All correspondents must get sensitivity training from Don Cherry.

Critics of the CRTC are not holding their breath.

In other Al-Jazeera news, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari suggested that the network incited violence and could be stopped from operating in the country. Yep - Iraq is definitely developing along the lines of a North American democracy...unfortunately.

SOURCE: Toronto Startle

Republican pundits are trying to convince people that Meryl Streep's Machiavellian Senator Eleanor Prentiss Shaw in the remake of The Manchurian Candidate was based on former first lady Hilary Clinton. Streep herself tells reporters that the pearls she wears are indicative of who she really based the character on: former first lady Barbara Bush. The Republicans shoot back that artists don't necessarily know their own intentions, and that it's the audience's interpretation that creates the work of art - so Shaw was Clinton and Streep should just shut up about it. When did they become so...postmodern?

SOURCE: Entertainment Right Now

George Lucas announced the name of the sixth and final installment of the Star Wars series: Revenge of the Sith. Millions of members of the Geek Nation held hands and chanted "Jedi. Jedi. Jedi." for 10 minutes. And, the world went on as usual for everybody else.

SOURCE: Geekly News & World Report

President George W. Bush took a tumble off his bicycle at his Texas ranch yesterday. We have medical experts standing by to discuss the nature of the scrapes on his knees from the accident, and what they mean to his overall health. Later in the broadcast, we'll have a feature on presidential mishaps throughout the history of the republic. First, though, political pundits grapple with the question on everybody's mind: how will Bush's tumble affect his image as a strong leader?

Oh, yeah, and the Democratic National Leadership Convention happened, too.

SOURCE: Deadline News Network

A court ruling that Ontario's "focused" environmental assessments trampled on the rights of opponents of a landfill have thrown into doubt many of the projects that have gone through the simplified assessment procedure. Toronto Councillor Brian Ashton, critical of the court's ruling, said, "If god had to go through Ontario's environmental assessment process, he wouldn't have made the world."

In response, Gabriel, a representative of the deity, released a written statement that read, in part: "The amount of paperwork surrounding the creation of the universe far surpasses anything the province of Ontario could impose. Keep in mind that the lord has to fill out a T-157 Periwinkle for the falling of every sparrow. A job as large as the making of the heavens and the earth, with its tight deadline and inevitable overtime expenses - generated at least three infinitely long filing cabinets full of documents. If the lord, in his infinite wisdom, could handle the assessment process, Ontario companies should be able to suck it up."

SOURCE: The Non-existent Pages

At least 39 American prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq have died and there are 94 cases of proven or suspected prisoner abuse, according to the US Army. While the misconduct was often condoned by superiors, it does not constitute systemic abuse because, according to the Army, "no flow charts were involved."

SOURCE: Late Tonight with David Lenoman

Canada's Premiers want Ottawa to pony up health care funds without strings attached. Apparently, they can't understand why the federal government would object to giving them money for more doctors and hospital beds, only to find the money going to tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy. Let me try to explain it in a way they would understand.

Suppose you're the CEO of a large corporation. You authorize funds for a subsidiary to produce a product necessary to your main product. However, the head of the subsidiary decides to use the money to increase executive salaries. Wouldn't you be pissed? Umm...okay...in this economic climate, maybe not. Let me try again.

Suppose you're the head of a large household. You agree to increase your teenage son's allowance if he will use the money to buy books. Instead, he uses the money to buy crack. Umm...okay...you were planning on disowning him when he turned 18 anyway. No, no, give me another chance - I know there's a way to explain this that you will understand.

Okay, say you buy a diamond necklace for your wife in order to mollify her suspicions that you're fooling around on her. You'd be in pretty hot water if the company delivered a shipment of broken glass to your door, wouldn't you? What? You eat broken glass for breakfast?

You people are hard cases.

SOURCE: Politics For Dummies