Recent stories
US Patent Office Acknowledges Error in Judgment
Rice's Testimony Ensures No Further Inquiry into 9/11
Editorial: Is Spain full of cowards?
White House puts Kerry on the spot - again
FBI: Rumsfeld's fingerprints found on "Winds Of Black Death" letter
Software licenses have it out in arena free-for-all
Oh my God! It finally happened to ME!
Shareholder seeks to commit SCO's Darl McBride
Editorial: Learning from our past
Popular social website (Orkut) revealed as college experiment
Responsible: markscha@hact.org
Martial Law Declared by Exasperated Greens
Posted GMT
Eugene, OR and New York, NY (HACT Exclusive) - Disgusted by the turn of events in the 2004 election, the Green Party has declared martial law in the United States of America and announced the forcible dissolution of the Democratic Party. Their bold statement to the press was made during midnight press conferences on both coasts and was indeed backed up by nothing less than an army.
 |
| David Cobb with his head enforcer Mario del Sweeney
shortly before the history-making press conference |
Groups of armed soldiers calling themselves the "Green Resistance Force" announced their presence outside the seat of government of each of the 50 state capitals, the White House, the Pentagon, and other vital locations around the nation. Shocked and surprised during a long and late election night, American military forces have not yet mustered a response in kind, which may be due to Green infiltration.
"We have endured this administration long enough!" declared David Cobb, former Green Party presidential candidate and now self-appointed Leader of the Resistance, during his speech. "We no longer accept that greater America can make the right decision! We no longer believe that the Democrats are our only hope, and we won't sit back and wait four more years for Bush to run this country into the ground!"
Scant minutes before, former Green vice-presidential candidate Pat LaMarche, in full riot gear, led the storming of the New York MSNBC studios along with 5,000 troops. LaMarche and her former running mate Cobb claim to have taken military control of the country. "The National Guard cannot stand against us, because we have subsumed the National Guard!" LaMarche cried during the broadcast, gesturing behind her to reveal numerous National Guard uniforms in the crowd of soldiers that commanded the studios.
Experts speculate that the Greens have been hard at work for months planning the coup, which seems to have involved undermining the American military, understaffed and distracted by the never-ending war in Iraq. The Greens could well have exploited the dissatisfaction of many individuals in the armed forces who were disgusted with what many deem a "second Vietnam".
Former Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry, whom the Green forces located at a disused fallout shelter in Boston, Mass., said at gunpoint: "This is a difficult day for America. It looks as if I would have lost the official election at any rate. And so I, for one, welcome our new Green overlords and only hope that I can be of some service to this great military force that has taken control of our fair nation."
Unreachable for comment or reaction was President George W. Bush, presumed to be under Cheyenne Mountain at NORAD Colorado Springs, the closest refuge to his last known location in Crawford, Texas. Reports of the capture of Vice-President Dick Cheney somewhere in Virginia are unsubstantiated at this time.
More news to come as the Greens' bicoastal broadcasts continue.
§(The HACT team produces humor and opinion articles, not official news. Any resemblance to actual news is just a matter of style.)
US Patent Office Acknowledges Error in Judgment
Posted GMT
Alexandria, VA (HACT) -- In a press release which is likely further to destabilize the shaky ground upon which United States patent law stands, the US Patent Office admitted that 80% of its employees can neither read nor write.
"The United States Patent Office must regrettably inform all holders of patents granted between March 1, 1986 and the present day that these patents are now suspended indefinitely. We, the employees of the USPTO, are recommending ourselves to governmental investigation on the grounds that approximately four-fifths of our employees are functionally illiterate."
This news came as a shock to many of the literate patent workers, mostly interns, who reported that they had had no idea of the widespread problem.
"We were getting perfectly lucid-seeming declarations of no prior art on our desks," said Patent Office intern Bettina Sweet. "Everything seemed legit. We had no reason to doubt them."
"This explains the flood of unbelievably idiotic patents in recent years," remarked Samuel Raul Morokoff of Friendship Times Quarterly. "I'm a cynic myself, but even I would never have guessed they literally couldn't read the applications."
According to the press release, most of the workers were simply accepting patent applications without even checking for prior art, often dictating a fictitious document to one intern as a "transcript", then submitting it as a prior art claim to another intern, whose supervisor would reject it after oral consultation with the intern.
"Once in 2002 I found a $50 bill and a half-crushed pack of Twinkies in an envelope with an application for a software patent," said Pauline Grebbels, an intern for three years. "My supervisor just turned red and said, 'I wondered where I left that.' It seemed strange at the time but I didn't really give it much thought, even a week later when the patent was approved due to no prior art." The application was a patent for "a window-based computer operating system".
The Department of Commerce, to which the Patent Office belongs, said in a response that it was "sick about the news" and would be conducting "brutally in-depth investigations." The words "body cavity" appeared no less than six times in the response.
Dick Frunwell of the DoC added, "Clearing out the mess of patents granted in the last 18 years is going to take at least 18 years."
§(The HACT team produces humor and opinion articles, not official news. Any resemblance to actual news is just a matter of style.)