"Where Angels Fear to Tread"

The editor of a local paper has made some prognostications for the coming year. You can find the article here, but I do not have a history of links like that lasting; so his comments are reproduced below.

• Congress will convene and in the spirit of full disclosure, will decide to do away with earmarks. They will be replaced by ear tags. Each member of Congress receiving pork will have his or her ears pierced, and an ear tag will be inserted, showing exactly how much pork he or she has been able to latch onto.

• The two Democrat front-runners for President will announce their choice of running mates. Barack Obama, in an effort to get the women's vote, will hold a press conference and announce that he has selected Anna Nichole Smith as his choice for Vice President, while Hillary Clinton will decide to balance the ticket with a high profile African-American and announce her running mate will be Mike Tyson.

• Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Rudy Giuliani will announce he is dropping out of the Presidential race after being soundly defeated in the New Hampshire primary by Britney Spears.

• Closer to home, Montana lawmakers will convene in Helena and proceed to introduce five thousand bills, including two that actually make sense.

• Members of the legislature will then begin deliberations on how to spend the reported one billion dollar state surplus. Deliberations will come to a screeching halt when it is discovered that the state does not actually have a billion dollars in cash, but instead has a billion dollars worth of leftover merchandise from the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial that didn't sell.

• Montana governor Brian Schweitzer, a big booster of wind power, will propose putting a huge windmill on top of the state capitol building in Helena. The plan will be withdrawn when it is pointed out that it is only windy at that location when the legislature is in session.

• Finally, Montanans will be shocked when the World Court upholds a claim by France that it owns the rights to the word Montana and we can't use it anymore. An obviously agitated Governor Schweitzer will announce plans to have the Montana Highway Patrol invade France. However, cooler heads will prevail, and Montana lawmakers will convene in a special session and vote to change the name of our state to West Dakota.