I've been a bit slow getting you the news lately, not because there isn't enough material out there, but because there is so much.  My Extremely Reliable Anonymous Source, Lumpy the Mongoose, has run into some, er, problems related to his pursuit of Bush Administration stories.  Specifically, Lumpy attempted to pursue, simultaneously, the following leads:

1. The testimony of a White House dormouse who claims to have seen the President and his advisors holding national security meetings in the nude.  
2. The discovery that the White House decision to broadcast grisly pictures of  the Hussein brothers was made by our new strategic ally, Krusty the Klown.
3. A secret policy document outlining the Bush Administration's plan to replace the US government with Comcast, America's largest cable company, paving the way for a subsequent merger with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and the inevitable consolidation of Australia and the United States. To generate revenue, California and Queensland will be merged to form a holiday island in the South Pacific.

Poor Lumpy, hardworking anonymous mongoose that he is, worked tirelessly on all three stories for several days. But unbeknownst to Lumpy, the Bush administration had been working just as tirelessly to thwart his investigations. Using a mysterious device called the SuperDuperInvestigationThwarter Thingie, the Bush Administration caused a Subarctic Epidermal Pulverizor Annhialation Destabilizer Loop. SEPADLs are greatly feared by mongooses, as extended exposure can cause them to turn into chickens.

And so Lumpy, experiencing a sudden urge to organize his entire social group into a rigid hierarchical structure, realized he was suffering from the early effects of  SEPADL. He had no choice. He had to call off the investigations and re-orient himself to fluff pieces about polygamous long-haired hamsters.

As a result, I've been forced to engage in my own research and try to take up the slack. But as a rat, I simply don't have the finely tuned research skills of a mongoose. It will take a few days for  Lumpy to recover (the tail feathers are especially unbecoming), and hopefully by then our usual news coverage will resume. I may make use of some second-string sources, but unfortunately I can make no guarantees they will match Lumpy's extraordinary reputation for accuracy and journalistic integrity.

8:05:36 PM