After months of taking shots at each other through campaign stops and advertisements, Senater John Kerry and Mr. George W. Bush will face each other for the first time this Thursday in Miami for the first of three presidential debates. The important swing state of Florida was chosen because right now there is nothing Floridians are concerned with more than politics. The two candidates both signed off on a 32 page agreement specifying every last detail of the debate.

“We were walking up from night head count and we could hear screaming, that was…That was an every day, many times a day thing; you would be sitting in school or you would be trying to go to sleep and you would hear a kid being restrained and he would just be screaming his lungs out from pain and we were walking up the hallway and I looked into a room that the kid was being restrained in and Mr. Kay, the director of the facility, he, himself, was sitting on the kid’s back and pulling his arm up over his head to where his hand was right there.” This is the testimony of Aaron Kravig, speaking in an August 2002 case in which Gini Farmer sought a court order to have her 13-year-old son released from Tranquility Bay. What is Tranquility Bay? It is a “behavior modification center” in Jamaica. Parents of “troubled teenagers,” living right here in America, pay up to $40,000 a year to have their children kidnapped and taken to what is by all accounts little more than a concentration camp for children in which youths are subjected to physical and emotional abuse until they are “cured” (”The Last Resort,” Part 1 & Part 2).

Rumors of an impending reinstatement of the military draft have been flying across the internet for quite a while now. And while we have heard all about the draft during the Vietnam War, the candidates have finally addressed the issue of the draft as it applies to this war. At a campaign event yesterday Senator John Kerry said that the draft may return if Mr. Bush wins the election. Asked about the possibility, Kerry said, “If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can’t tell you.” Kerry and Edwards have both said that there will not be a draft under a Kerry administration.

Last week, even as Ivan was making its way up the east coast, scientists told Congress the increased strength in hurricanes was a result of global warming, and even more powerful storms could be expected in the future. According to the Reuters article, “Global warming will increase the temperature of ocean water that fuels hurricanes, leading to stronger winds, heavier rains, and larger storm surges.” So for those of you still wondering whether or not global warming is real, consider Ivan your wake up call.

During the 1990s President Bill Clinton was dubbed “Slick Willy” for (among other things) his ability to evade telling the truth. Yet now that we have a somewhat broader frame of reference, just how slick was Slick Willy? During his entire time in office, President Clinton had one major scandal which he was caught lying about and impeached for by the House of Representatives. Compare this with the things Mr. Bush has done. He has started two wars, one of which was left incomplete, one of which was launched under false pretenses against a country that posed no threat to the United States, and both of which were incompetently executed. His administration has overseen the torture of Iraqi prisoners, including children, and the use of depleted uranium shells against civilians. His administration has leaked to the media the name of a CIA agent in an act of petty revenge against Ambassador Joe Wilson. So where is Bush’s impeachment? Where is an independent counsel when you really need one? Maybe George is the one we should be calling “slick.” So the question is, just how is it that he has managed to do all of this and remain relatively unscathed?

Every human culture throughout history has performed its own unique coming-of-age rituals, and ours is no exception. I for one became a woman when I received soap as a Christmas present. For years I’d looked forward to Christmas as a time of being deluged with a veritable cornucopia of toys, games, and enough sugar to slay a diabetic elephant. There were, of course, exceptions: ugly sweaters, the Evil Ones who only gave me books… but those were drowned out in my mother’s river of expletives as she attempted to unwrap the packaging of my six new Barbie dolls.

I’m a criminal.

I admit this freely and without reserve, because I know that you are most likely a criminal as well. It’s impossible to avoid really - who among us never tried alcohol before turning 21; cigarettes, before 18; or pot, ever? Who hasn’t jaywalked, parked in a handicap space, sped on the highway, littered, loitered or cheated on his or her taxes? Almost no one.

There’s an obvious conclusion to be drawn from this: Laws don’t work.

Green apples have invaded the Louver, and all Ottawa is in a ruckus. I am somewhat taken aback by these developments, having noted a small tomato bush growing from my forehead.

We have only yet to hear what the Klingons have to say. Chancellor Martock likes his cornbeaf extra crispy!

Uninterestingly, nine synergistic werewolves escaped from local breeding ponds last Thor’s Day. Guards watched helpless as the loquacious lycanthropes chewed their way through 8 solid feet of bubble-tape. My fellow Cambodians, isn’t this one outrage too many? When you cast your fishing lines last Tyr’s Day, cast them where they’re certain to catch more lobsters.

Well, those crazy Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are at it again. This time they are not complaining about Senator John Kerry not having bled enough to get his purple heart. No, their second ad which recently started airing here in Pennsylvania is about how Kerry “sold out” his fellow veterans after returning from Vietnam. The ad plays footage of Kerry’s 1971 testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in which he, speaking about an investigation in Detroit in which 150 veterans testified to war crimes, said the following, “They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, tape wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the country side of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.”