Washington, DC, October 31, 2008 -- Outgoing President George W. Bush followed yesterday in the footsteps of his predecessors by applying his traditional presidential power to absolve a number of friends and supporters of their criminal convictions. Included in the last-minute mercy package, however, was a novel twist: preemptive pardons.

Washington, D.C., April 12, 2006 -- A controversial law passed yesterday by the Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives will give gun manufacturers the right to sue both perpetrators and victims of shootings for "defamatory product misuse". This new measure follows on the heels of a new "blank slate" law passed in 2005 absolving gun manufacturers of any legal liability in the event that their products, no matter how small, powerful, or easily concealed, obtained or abused, are used in the perpetration of violent crimes.

Redmond, Washington, April 29, 2006 -- Tom DeLay, the disgraced and indicted former exterminator turned former congressman who recently stepped down from his post as the disgraced former House Majority Leader in order to "spend time teaching orphans to gerrymander" has been hired by Microsoft Corp. to seek bugs in the long-awaited, cantankerous and top-heavy Microsoft Vista operating system, the long-overdue sequel to the long-despised, cantankerous and top-heavy Microsoft Windows XP.

By Raoul Thibodeaux, Avant News Staff Writer -- New York City, February 21, 2038 -- As the bell rang to close the trading session today at the New York Stock Exchange, board members of Global Earth World Planet International (GEWPI) celebrated with toasts of sparkling wine at an undisclosed location. They had reason to celebrate as their privately held consortium had just completed a two-week buying spree of all outstanding shares in every publicly traded company across the world.