I claim this land for Italy, despite the nauseous gas

Evidently the word “homosexual” is no longer allowed. Gays, pardon me, people with “orientation towards people of the same sex” in Britain insisted the government no longer use that term, but the overly long one I just quoted.

And in Scotland, you evidently can’t call striking firefighters fascist bastards, as the deputy justice minister has discovered (and been fired for).

And Chrétien has fired his communications director after all. What a moron.

The latest Pentagon brain-storm: self-healing mine fields, that resist efforts to clear them, redistributing themselves to fill the gaps (the mines can hop, evidently).

Rehnquist death watch: the chief justice fell down and had to be hospitalized this week. He is 78. And I’ve decided that I actually want Bush to do what he’s probably going to do when Old Stripey retires or snuffs it, replace him with Scalia. Why would Scalia be good for our side? Because he’s insane, the other justices hate him, and he couldn’t hold together the right-wing coalition that currently makes court-watching so nauseating. Sure there’d still be awful 5-4 and 6-3 decisions, but I think we’d see a lot more multiple majority arguments, where 1 or 2 or 3 justices insist on writing separate explanations for why they voted as they did. This would make it hard for the decisions to turn into precedents, which is all to the good. See, I’ve finally found a silver lining!

Austria’s Freedom Party is undergoing a lovely fratricidal purge. I have heard the words iron fist and execution squad to describe the operation, which is just what you want to hear from a neo-fascist party.

That poor fashion reporter who wrote the article that set off the Miss World rioting in Nigeria? The authorities--and note, it is the government, not the mullahs like one site said--of a Nigerian state have issued a fatwah for her to be killed on sight. She has fled to the US.

Italian semi-fascist Prime Minister Berlusconi takes the Fifth in the trial of a mafia associate of his. The Italian people must be so proud.