<This Month>

2 Palin declares health reform a failure
6 Long lines mean Soviet-style shortages are here, Tea Party blogger says
12 Ultraviolent Mexican drug cartel to close health insurance division
15 Strict construction makes Supreme Court unnecessary, Bachmann says
19 Palin criticizes space plan
26 Hawking warns of alien danger
27 Girl from Nantucket looks forward to end of National Poetry Month
29 Oil company worried sea water could get into Gulf of Mexico

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BP is warning of another potential disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, six days after an oil rig sank 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. This time the danger comes from Atlantic Ocean water that could leak into the Gulf, contaminating one of the United States' major oil reserves.

"The ocean contains a lot of material we don't want polluting our pristine sea of oil," said BP spokesman Ollie Sheen.

"Unfiltered ocean water contains marine life and plants, as well as litter and toxic chemicals -- all of which could damage expensive refinery equipment."

Taking refineries off line to repair water damage could cause gas prices to rise this summer, Sheen added, "at least that's what we would tell the public."

But Sheen stressed there were environmental concerns as well. "Keeping water from getting into the oil is important for public relations reasons, especially since this is Earth Month," he said.

Sheen said BP's plan to prevent disaster involves working with the Coast Guard to set fire to a small amount of oil.

"The burning oil will evaporate the water," Sheen explained.

Rear Admiral Roger MacAnally of the 8th Coast Guard district invited the public and media to a celebratory dinner that will be held after the end of the burn operation. Braised and roasted marine birds will be served.

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A Nantucket Island woman is speaking out today in an attempt to raise awareness about a little known negative of National Poetry Month.

"Thank god it's almost over," said Regina Fouquet of Madaket, a village at the western end of the popular tourist destination.

Fouquet, 34, says she has been subjected to rhyming harassment every year since the Academy of American Poets started the annual celebration in 1996.

"Starting April Fool's Day every Tom, Dick, and Whitman thinks they're a poet," said Fouquet, "but they're idiots, so of course the only form they know about is the dirty limerick. 'Dah-dah dah dah-dah from Nantucket, dah-dah dah dah rhymes with Nantucket'."

"Soon, people start sending postcards and calling or emailing all hours of the day and night with their stupid limericks," she said.

"I don't find anything remotely funny about the names Regina and Fouquet, or that I'm from Nantucket," added Fouquet.

And she wants amateur poets to know, "it's pronounced Re-jeena Foo-kay."

But what rankles Fouquet most of all is being referred to as a girl: "I'm a woman, not a girl -- it says so on my NOW membership card." This year she prepared for National Poetry Month by retaining legal counsel, and is already preparing papers for harassment suits against more than 100 limericists in nine countries.

"Call me a girl again, and you'll be hearing from my new attorney -- Gloria Allred. She'll kick your ass all the way to Limerick," Fouquet said.

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Physicist made honorary citizen of Arizona

(Phoenix) The state of Arizona has honored one of the world's leading scientists. Governor Jan Brewer issued a proclamation today making renowned physicist Stephen Hawking an honorary citizen of Arizona.

"Normally we Arizonans don't have time for education except for collegiate football and basketball, but Professor Hawking's recent warnings against making contact with aliens reverberated with many in the Grand Canyon State who share his concerns," Brewer told reporters after signing the proclamation.

Brewer said she is worried about the effect on public education if there were to be enrollment of small, spindly aliens depicted in movies such as ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. "Children of more advanced species would drive drive test scores through the roof, human children wouldn't be able to compete," said Brewer.

"Why, our university football and basketball programs would have fewer in-state recruits who could play against teams from states with fewer aliens," she said.

The governor also said Hawking's observations had implications for the economy. "Professor Hawking's warning about huge spaceships is also very concerning. Those ships could have technology capable of trimming hedges, skimming swimming pools, cleaning hotel rooms, and preparing food for almost no cost -- meaning they'll be able to take jobs away from human Arizonans," she explained.

"It is for these reasons I am recognizing this great man. By making Stephen Hawking an honorary Arizonan his ideas are no longer strange and foreign, so Americans can feel free to study them without feeling like a European intellectual."

Reached for comment by the BBC, Hawking thanked Brewer for the honor. "I am looking forward to visiting Arizona some day. It would be interesting to meet politicians who are so dumb their IQs can't be calculated -- but I could give it a try," Hawking said.

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Accuses Obama of pallin' around with Martians

Sarah Palin spoke out forcefully today against Barack Obama's plan to change the direction of the U.S. space program. "The red planet is red because it's socialist," she said of the president's decision to have NASA undertake a mission to Mars by the 2030s. The charge came as the former Alaska governor campaigned for Senator John McCain's reelection bid.

Palin's extensive knowledge of Mars was on display, telling a rally of admirers in the town of Cuello Muy Rojo, Arizona: "As governor of Alaska I could see Mars from Alaska at certain times in the evening."

"Plus, what I remember from auditing Western Civ at one of those colleges is that Mars is the god of war. Sounds like the sort of place we shouldn't be sending unarmed space ships," Palin said.

Noting that another name for Mars is Ares, Palin said the President's Mars plan is the latest in a pattern of questionable associations, which she first spoke about as McCain's vice presidential running mate in 2008. "First he was pallin' around with terrorists like Bill Ayers, which sounds like Ares, so Obama is probably now pallin' around with Martian terrorists too," she told the cheering crowd.

Palin said that if Republicans take control of Congress in the fall midterm elections, GOP leaders would seek to replace the Mars plan with one that stresses vigilance over discovery. "Unless we're talking about discovery of illegal Martian socialists living among us -- Bill Ayers -- America shouldn't be trying to go there, we should be stopping them from coming here."

Palin took the opportunity to voice support for Arizona's new draconian immigration law, calling the measure long overdue. "The police now have more and stronger tools to stop Draconians from landing on Earth and find the ones who are already here," she said.

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Even as President Obama weighs potential nominees to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a growing number of conservative lawmakers say the high court itself is unnecessary and ought to be abolished.

Among them is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who today called the Supreme Court nothing more than an expensive bureaucracy. "Strict construction means the Constitution doesn't change from its original meaning, so we don't need to maintain a court to interpret it," asserted Bachmann, "especially expensive lawyer types and the bureaucracy that goes with them."

"And make no mistake -- they are bureaucrats. In fact the entire federal court system is unelected and inaccessible to everyone but other lawyers," said Bachmann, a tax attorney.

The Minnesota lawmaker said her vision of a future without a federal judiciary would mean a chance to explore alternative forms of dispute resolution, such as found in the Second Amendment: "Americans don't want the courts coming between them and their vengeance."

Bachmann also doesn't expect eliminating the Supreme Court will have much of an impact on the other two branches of government. "Congress and the White House function just fine, even though the Supreme Court for many years has had fewer than nine justices," she elaborated.

"Under the original language of the Constitution as written by the framers, Clarence Thomas is only three-fifths of a justice, Ginsburg and Sotomayor are husbands' property, and so was Sandra Day O'Connor," Bachmann explained.

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A ruthless and violent Mexican drug cartel has been driven out of the United States, a spokesman for the criminal organization said today.

In an exclusive phone interview with CNN, the spokesman, identifying himself only as "Caballero Uno," announced the cartel known as La Organizacion has decided to end operations of Meditrolex Insurance, a Connecticut company specializing in the individual health insurance market.

An estimated 2,500 Meditrolex bosses, underbosses, enforcers, and claims reviewers will lose their jobs.

Caballero Uno said the decision to shutter Meditrolex "is because of American socialism."

"We decided to invest in America because we thought it was a good place to do business," said Caballero Uno. "And we prospered. We lived the American dream, jacking up insurance rates 20, 30, even 39% in a year, then refusing to pay."

"But now your Comrade Obama has ended free market capitalism. He is going to make us post our balance sheet online, and spend at least 85% on patient care instead of mistresses, yachts, firepower, and executive bonuses," he said.

"Obamacare also interferes in the most fundamental nature of our business -- telling us we can't cut off people we think are bad risks. Well it's just unacceptable, we're pulling out and heading back to Mexico to focus on our core business," Caballero Uno said.

Republicans seized on today's news as proof the new national health overhaul is bad for the economy. "It's a narco-jobs killer," declared a visibly emotional Congressman John Boehner, the House minority leader.

Boehner said he plans to press La Organizacion to stay in the U.S., and intends to travel to Mexico for talks. "I hear they have excellent tanning there," Boehner said.

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President Obama is creating an economic disaster, a prominent Tea Party activist said today.

"Long lines for bread, clothing and toilet paper were common in the Soviet Union and now we're seeing the same sort of thing here -- long Apple Store lines means socialism has arrived," movement leader Mike Vanderfrandle wrote in his well-known blog Americans Seeing Socialism Everywhere in Society (A.S.S.E.S.).

Interviewed by PC Üser Alles magazine, Vanderfrandle cited recent occurrences of long store lines in many parts of the country as evidence of shortages.

Vanderfrandle said he had a realization when he saw TV news coverage of customers waiting all night outside Apple Stores for the introduction of the company's highly anticipated iPad tablet computer.

"I realized it had to have been caused by the Obama Administration's tax and health care policies," said Vanderfrandle, "a socialist, big-government fascist conspiracy against us in the Tea Party who only learned to type with two fingers."

Explaining that he currently dictates his blog to a third grader from his neighborhood public school, Vanderfrandle said a touchscreen computer would make A.S.S.E.S. and other right-wing bloggers more self-reliant. "An iPad just needs one finger to use, so obviously the Democrat Party has to prevent us from getting our hands on iPads," he said.

Vanderfrandle doesn't believe claims that lines at Apple Stores are long only because the iPad is so popular. "If it's so popular why didn't they simply make more of them in the first place? No, it can't be a coincidence that this so-called shortage happened right after passage of Obamacare."

And has Vanderfrandle ordered an iPad himself?

"Are you crazy? I'm on Social Security disability and Food Stamps, I can't afford an iPad."

In a closely related story, Vanderfrandle has blogged that all Tea Party bloggers should get iPads to replace their harder to use PCs. "Break Dell, Gateway, and HP! Break their Windows 7. Break them NOW. Reboot and break them again," he wrote.

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"Obamacare hasn't conquered death"

Sarah Palin continued on the attack against President Obama's health care reform law today, declaring the week-old overhaul a failure.

The former Alaska Governor made her comments as she made a quick visit to Westmost, North Carolina, to see examples of the effect health care reform is having on businesses there.

"The proof that reform is a failure can be seen in the very real fact that Obamacare hasn't conquered death," Palin said during a stop at Frandle Brothers Funeral Home.

Palin found a receptive audience for her views in Frandle Brothers' customers, who did not interrupt as she made a few remarks during a tour of the busy facility.

"Look at all these fine Americans who died during the first week of Obamacare," said Palin.

"You can't have health if you're not alive, yet Barack Obama has totally failed to provide these good people with something so basic," she said, and asked the deceased whether they are better off now than under President George W. Bush.

Palin did not get an argument from anyone in the room, including the late Mort L. Coyle, 86, who voted for President Obama, according to relatives.

"How's that breathe-y, pulse-y thing going for ya?" Palin asked Coyle.

Mr. Coyle had no comment.

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