This is rich. Our infamous Mr. Yoo, America's poster boy for torture, has come out against Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayer to the U.S. Supreme Court. Why? Get this garbage:

Conservatives should defend the Supreme Court as a place where cases are decided by a faithful application of the Constitution, not personal politics, backgrounds, and feelings. Republican senators will have to conduct thorough questioning in the confirmation hearings to make sure that she will not be a results-oriented voter, voting her emotions and politics rather than the law.

Mr. Yoo should know all about that. It had to be "emotion and politics" that allowed him to write the justification for Bush administration torture. It couldn't have been the Constitution, because torture is clearly against U.S. law. In fact, it's a matter of public record that the United States handed down the death penalty to Japanese officers who conducted waterboarding on captured American military personnel. Funny how that works. Torture is okay if you're American.

Know what? John Yoo should be fired from whatever jobs he has right now. The unmitigated gall of any university to put this clown on their staff to teach — of all things — THE LAW is a disgrace. He should be fired from Berkeley. He should be dis-barred from practicing law anywhere, and he should be indicted for war crimes along with his boss and his boss's White House buddies (including the illustrious George W. Bush, the war and torture president).

And as far as the conservatives worrying about faithful application of the Constitution, think again. They spent eight years rendering the U.S. Constitution useless. They're not interested in the Constitution or the law. They've had eight years to run this country. Take a look around at the mess we are in, and tell me if you trust the conservatives in this country with your government anymore.

John Yoo defines the word "hypocrite." In fact, when you open the dictionary, his face should be next to the word. He blatantly ignored the document that he now insists the GOP must defend. He has no business opening his big, fat yap on this one. Someone better tell him he has to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. There's this thing called credibility, and Yoo simply doesn't have any.

Ado, ado, ado.

And now, without further ado, here is All the News That’s Fit to Fake.

Missing link found in Germany! Darwin confirmed! Archeologists triumphantly announced the discovery of “Ida,” a 47 million year old fossil that didn’t have the good manners to turn itself into oil. Dubbed “The First Aryan” by the German press, the early primate was found facing east, apparently seeking lebensraum.

Nancy Pelosi leveled new accusations at the CIA today, saying that the agency forcibly took suspected terror detainees to Six Flags and made them watch the dolphin show over and over until they cracked and ratted out their mothers. Pelosi claims she was never briefed about the enhanced interrogation technique known as “Waterparking,” which, according to the Geneva Convention, constitutes torture.

And now, a pubic service message from this column.

Have you ever wondered why the so-called “new economy” isn’t working? I can explain, but first, this disclaimer:

Warning! The author’s dinosaurish notions of chivalry require that he state unequivocally that the following examples refer only to the male half of his audience. Thank you very much.

Gentlemen, have you ever looked at pornography on the internet? Have you done it more than once, more than a dozen times, more than a hundred, have you not, in fact, looked at internet porn until your palms are raw?

Now, with that established, let me ask you this. Have you ever paid for it? Neither have I. The problem with the new economy is that there is no money in it because most of it is free. Therefore the web generates very few jobs, other than the casual, off-hand variety.

Now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

The past few weeks have witnessed a virtual blitz of Dicks and Dons—Cheney and Rumsfeld in particular—on the national media. They are desperately trying to polish their legacies by claiming that the wars they started and the controversial actions they took kept us safe, and if those policies are changed, America is doomed.

I have no problem with Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld wanting to wrap themselves in the flag all the time. I just wish they had the decency to wait and do it right, like all those Americans they sent overseas who came home wrapped in the flag at Andrews.

On a lighter note. The government is trying to impose a tax on soft drinks. Supposedly all that sugar is bad for our health. I don’t like being told what to drink, but I’m okay with that decision if they go all the way and let Coke go back to the original, original formula. I’ll gladly pay three cents extra for that.

Switching to sports: I think I speak for all of us when I say that hockey is much more enjoyable now that we have hi-definition television and we can occasionally see the puck. But what genius decided the season should go on until June when there isn’t a scrap of natural ice to be found in the Northern Hemisphere? (I know, the glaciers, but they’re melting too so don’t bug me with details.) It’s stupid, is what it is. Almost as stupid as if they decided to play baseball in November. Oh, wait….

Basketball isn’t any better. That season runs far too long as well. Here’s a good rule of thumb. If, when your season starts you have to heat the arena to make it habitable, and when it ends you need to air-condition it for the same reason, it’s too damned long.

Yesterday, Kris Allen was crowned the new American Idol in an election that tallied nearly a hundred million votes. The day before the State of California was bankrupted and its assets sold to Dubai in an election that garnered four million votes. I don’t know what this means, but I’ve pulled my kids out of school and sent them to Branson for “singing” lessons.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is all there is this week. You are now free to go about your lives informed. I bid you ado.

If you think the story about God telling George Bush to kill millions of people in his name is unbelievable, here's yet more proof that Texas and its hair-brained Governor should go on and secede.  A Dallas couple has found Jesus in a bag of Cheetos. Read it and weep:

http://cbs11tv.com/local/Cheesus.jesus.inside.2.1011719.html

Of course, it has managed to find its way to ebay. God must have told them to sell him.

Here we are on a bright, glorious Monday morning in Massachusetts and there are a few issues that do not warrant a complete article. However, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be addressed, so let's have at it.

The notion that Nancy Pelosi is to blame for torture. Give me a break. There is one administration and one administration only that is responsible for torture: The Bush Administration. I've heard all the GOP talking heads insist that the DOJ would never lie to Congress because it knows that Congress controls the purse strings. Lying was a way of life under George Bush. In fact, I'm here to challenge anyone to tell me they actually know the truth about anything that went on over the last eight years. The DOJ lied to the American people and it lied to Congress. Just enough was told to Nancy Pelosi so that the GOP could come back later and say, "Hey, we told Nancy Pelosi and Congress." This latest attempt at shifting the blame was planned in advance and it is now in the execution phase.

We can, first and foremost, blame the 110th Congress for this mess hanging around today. Impeachment was in order and it was ignored. In fact, Pelosi herself failed to move. Her mistake. We can also blame Barack Obama himself. His administration needs to either lay the blame squarely where it lies and pursue an investigation, or get the hell out of the way if he cannot uphold his oath of office. Enough with trying to cooperate with a band of bad smelling leftovers (that would be the GOP) intent on keeping things the same.

The notion that Dick Cheney has anything important (or credible) to say. This guy is amazing. During the Bush administration, he held up in a bunker and called the shots. He hated the media and wouldn't give them the time of day. Suddenly he's Mr. Congeniality who can't find enough television cameras to paste his snarling, ugly mug on. As my late, great mother would say about people who don't realize that their time has come and gone, "He's everywhere now. He's like horse shit." That's exactly what's coming out of his mouth, and 57% of the GOP leftovers think he's a detriment to the party. (Of course, they are all a detriment to the party anyway, but he's just pouring gasoline on the fire.) The fact that the GOP loser pundits, like Rush Limbaugh, think Cheney is great doesn't count for much. At best, Limbaugh reaches 20 million listeners. Nobody is winning an election with that dismal reach. I can't figure out if Cheney should STFU or keep his trap yapping. (Oops, I forgot Cheney has a fan in Bill Kristol but, then again, that doesn't count for much either.) How much more irrelevant can they make themselves?

The notion that the Obama administration can turn the page on Bush. Forget it. It isn't going to happen until he opens the book up first and goes for some transparency we can believe in.The only way to completely get rid of a disease is to eradicate it. All Obama is doing is trying to keep this particular disease in quarantine until it magically goes away. There is more than ample evidence that war crimes were committed with the knowledge of the 43rd president of the United States. I don't know what more needs to be done to convince our current myopic president that this is true. Pull out the freaking' tape of George Bush admitting this on the late-night news. It exists. Pull out the document that Condoleezza Rice signed in the presence of her attorney admitting that torture was a topic. And then pull out any videotape of Dick Cheney since he left office, and that's all the evidence you need to move forward with an investigation. If no crimes were committed, Bush and his pack of wolves will be exonerated. We'll make it easier. We'll have it conducted at The Hague. Bush's chances will be better there. Hell, they managed to exonerate Radovan Karadžić.

I don't know how to break this to our present imperial president, but there isn't a Constitutional scholar that'll tell him this is his call. President Obama is obstructing justice. We progressives are extremely disappointed in Barack Obama, the ultimate snake-oil salesman and master of the bait-and-switch administration. (This article comes next.) He was bad at one-hundred days. He's worse now. He's a side-stepper of many issues and a sell-out on the rest, That he was the lesser of two evils in the final analysis is still true. Anything was better than the decaying dinosaur and his dimwitted token female, but that isn't saying much. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

It's pretty clear that, if we're all waiting for real change we can believe in, we've got to get out and demand it. Enough with being mesmerized by the Obama we were sold. We've got to make it clear to the elected masses that we weren't kidding back in November 2008. We want change. We neither want or need, nor can we survive, Bush Lite. If this country is to regain its luster and its moral compass in the world, and if we are to regain our self-respect, we need real change across the board. The time is now. Anything less is unacceptable. This is the message that we need to send every day, loud and clear, to Washington.

Dear fellow mammals:

The Porcine International Goodwill Society is alarmed by the hate speech being directed at its members by a boorish, unfeeling human race during a tragic time for our species.

“Swine Flu,” you call it so callously. Do you realize Swine is a racial slur? We demand you cease and desist from using that terrible word!

We here at P.I.G.S wish to free you from your ignorant prejudice. We are to be called pigs, boars, hogs or porcus-planetarians, never the “S” word.

How would you like it if we called you “Long Pork?”

We know that you see us as food, there is little we can do about that. We respect our place in the food chain, but we shall defend our dignity with our last grunt.

We are being blamed for a virus that has yet to be detected in a single one of our members. Pigs by the million have been slaughtered to no purpose. Good bacon is going to waste.

The genetic material of the H1N1 virus contains as much bird and human flu strains as those of pig origin. Yet we get all the blame and all the hate.

In Egypt, a nation where consumption and even possession of our kind is officially discouraged, a holocaust is happening. Half a million of our fellow pigs are being slaughtered without mercy, yielding not a shred of decency or an ounce of ham. We infect no one, we offend no one, we provide lean protein and football leather for humanity and this is our thanks? Total destruction and hate-speech insults?

For shame, humanity! For shame.

Most unforgivably, naming this disease S**** Flu is yet another example of the human propensity to “blame the victim.” Such evidence as there is of interspecies transmission of H1N1 points the arrow of contagion in the other direction! In Alberta, Canada, a single human farm worker of Mexican extraction infected 220 of us! No equivalent example of porcine-to-human infection has yet been proven.

But do we demand this virus be named Mexican Flu? No. That would be wrong. The blame is on the virus, not the vector. We at P.I.G.S are victims of hate speech ourselves, we wish that curse on no one.

The Porcine International Goodwill Society has ordered me to communicate the following list of non-negotiable demands.

We demand an end to the use of our good name as the identifier of this, or any other virus, bacterium, parasite or biologic agent not of our creation.

You must cease and desist from use of the hated “S” word in all its human forms, including, but not limited to, swine, cochino, suino, and schweinehund. The “S” word is ugly and unacceptable. Even in a joke. Even if no pigs are present. Even between pigs. Don’t use it.

We demand an immediate end to the slaughter of pigs, boars, hogs, razorbacks, et. al. in the name of influenza control, or for any other specious, non-dietary reasons.

All pigs currently in quarantine are to be treated hogmanely, provided with proper nutrition, recreation, pens and slop, and shall be released within 72 symptom-free hours.

We demand that you develop a vaccine to protect us, as well as yourselves, from this scourge.

Effective immediately, pigs are to be allotted one half of all available Tamiflu.

This terrible flu has brought out the ugliest in human behavior, but it is not the only injury we have suffered at your hands. Your insults predate this current crisis and must end now.

We particularly resent your use of the word “porker” as an epithet for overweight humans. While we sympathize with the real epidemic that is disfiguring and decimating your population—grotesque, excess flab—we must strenuously object to your misuse of that word.

Pigs are properly sized, and pork is, as you know, lean meat. Calling a misshapen, overlarge human a “porker” is yet another gratuitous insult, absolutely without foundation in fact. Please desist from using it.

You may, however, refer to an overweight human as a “fat pig.” We call you that ourselves.

Yours in mammalian solidarity,

Augustus “Pinky” Pinkerton

Chairhog: Porcine International Goodwill Society.