US special forces have been in Afghanistan searching cave-to-cave for Osama bin Laden. So far, no luck -- although recent intelligence suggests that if they find Jerry Falwell and take a very soft right they should run right into bin Laden.

If they come across Ann Coulter, they've gone too far.

The Special Forces knew they had just missed bin Laden the other day when they found a sure sign of him: some curdled Milk of Human Kindness.

Thousands of Americans have responded to Court-appointed President Bush's request that they begin flying again by following his good example and booking flights to Omaha.

First W. OK's military shoot-downs of commercial planes, then he suggests we should all begin flying again. He's not subtle but you certainly have to admire his chutzpah.

At Chicago's O'Hare airport on Thursday, Bush said, "We will not surrender our freedom to travel. We will, however, surrender our freedoms."

Freedoms may be dropped off at the Office of Homeland Security during normal business hours.

bin Laden severely damaged an already faltering U.S. economy and the U.S. has responded by freezing his assets. Who believes the funds he got for the airline stock he liquidated were put back into U.S. treasury bills . You don't suppose just maybe he has a few bucks stashed outside the United States?

You know, just enough to blow body and soul apart.

Overworked, stressed-out pilots want to carry guns; the spiritual heirs of Curtis LeMay have a green light to shoot down jetliners; passengers are being asked to arrive at airports early enough to walk to their destinations and W can't figure why people are a tad sheepish about flying to Disneyworld.

If it gets any worse, the government will start doing cavity searches of flags before they are allowed to fly.

Glad to see Chris Hitchens has looked past all the distracting fluff and gotten after the true culprits in the World Trade center bombings: Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.

Any minute now Hitchens will be coming forward with damning information on Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair --like proof that they have a much better website than Vanity Fair.

The White House has now backed off a claim press secretary Ari Fleischer made that a coded call had been received disclosing that Bush was a target for attack in Air Force One on September 11. It's nice to learn they only used the Big Lie long enough to cover Bush's retreat from facing heat about his Don Knotts-like response in the face a bona fide national emergence. So what if critical administration personnel neglected more important duties during the first day after the attacks so they could concoct and disseminate the mother of all whoppers? So what if his people went so far as to lie and call the stricken Pentagon a "secondary target?" What's a little insult to wounded and murdered American soldiers when the image of a beady-eyed, election-stealing, intellectually-vacant weasel is in jeopardy? First things first!

New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani broke down at a press conference yesterday and pleaded "COME ON, MAN, JUST ONE MORE TASTE. I GOTTA HAVE IT. YOU KNOW I'M GOOD FOR IT, JUST GIVE ME THREE EXTRA MONTHS, THAT'S ALL I'M ASKING, PLEASE, DON'T MAKE ME BEG!!! JUST 90 DAYS OF SPECIAL EXTENDED POWER. THAT'S ALL. COME ON, YOU OWE ME!!! I DIDN'T WANT IT TO COME TO THIS BUT IF THIS IS HOW IT'S GOING TO BE ........

EITHER GO ALONG WITH ME NOW OR I'LL HAVE TO HAVE YOU SHOT AS LOOTERS."

The US paid the Taliban 43 million as a reward for curtailing this year's poppy crop. This spiked the worldwide price of heroin and prompted increased poppy production in Columbia, where the US wants plenty of drug activity so it has an alibi for increased military presence in the region. This means American taxpayers are being charged for poppies not grown that will result in price leaps that will make junkies more desperate and violent in America . This will also provide the US with an excuse to step up violent assaults on Colombian peasants. So much for moral opposition to terrorism.

I keep hearing that it is no longer possible to do political satire. I guess that means I'm now a magician and these quips and comments are just illusions.

For those of you who don't know what the claims that political satire is dead really mean, let me explain. They mean that now that our airways, newspapers and websites are rife with some of the lamest and most hypocritical jingoism in memory, political satirists are supposed to self-censor themselves from commenting or risk being labeled as disloyal to their country and disrespectful to the victims. The victim part, in particular, is hooey. The only way to disrespect victims is to collaborate in silence with any effort that might take more innocent lives. And the only loyalty worth respecting is loyalty to the truth.