Finished with the task of stuffing $500 million into Howard Stern’s pockets, the FCC has progressed to consecrating Sinclair Broadcast Group’s plan to air the anti-Kerry film Stolen Honor only days before the general election. While the move is seen by cynics as aquid pro quo for prohibiting its ABC affiliates from showing Ted Koppel reciting a list of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and for requiring on-screen journalists (including sportscasters and weathermen) to pledge support for President Bush, the feds tried to pose as impartial.

Numerically contorting the First Amendment into a Catch-22, the government disclosed its inability to pursue a violation of the equal-time provision until after an actual broadcast. As such, all 62 company-owned stations can carry the so-called documentary with impunity. While Sinclair will most likely offer any requisite airtime to Senator Kerry on or about November 3rd, odds are that CEO David Smith won’t be around for the festivities. According to authorities, Mr. Smith was arrested in Baltimore for engaging in an “unnatural and perverted sex act.” Out here in California this would be taken as doing it with one’s own wife, but not so in Maryland, where Smith was caught with street-corner prostitute Mary DiPaulo. “I discovered them,” recounted the arresting officer, “smearing their animal stains across the leather interior of a company-owned Mercedes as Mr. Smith shouted, “Take that, Lewinsky!”

At least Dave had the decency to unzip on a public thoroughfare. Bill O’Reilly, according to court documents, accesses his concupiscence via speed dial. You’ve heard of Voice-Over-Internet Protocol, well, this was Ejaculate-On-Employee Protocol. Associate producer Andrea Mackris claims her boss called incessantly in an attempt to engage in phone sex. One time O’Reilly boasted that he owned a vibrator “shaped like a cock with a little battery in it.” The complaint states: “It became apparent that Defendant was masturbating as he spoke. After he climaxed…” I guess Bill found his fist unworthy of the no-spin zone because in an ensuing conversation he suggested, “We should do it together, I could coach you through it.” He later regaled Mackris with a well-honed fantasy: “I’d be rubbing your big boobs and getting your nipples really hard, kinda’ kissing your neck from behind… and then I would take the other hand with the falafel thing and I’d put it on your pussy…” My God, the imagery is so incredibly disgusting; I need to stop typing so I can puke. Can you imagine, food in the bathroom?

Is there anyone besides Clarence Thomas among us who would order an entrée with pubic hair? Well, with two or three Supreme Court vacancies projected over the next four years, we may just find out. The election – and the future direction of the judiciary -is beginning to turn not on the faltering economy (declining durable goods and factory orders) or the mangled health-care system (Brother, can you spare a flu vaccine?) but rather on the war in Iraq. The White House is accusing the Kerry camp of utilizing scare tactics (envision Hitler indicting Stalin for genocide) by posting rumors of an impending military draft along “the internets.”

The President flatly declared during the debates that, “We don’t need the draft. Look, the all volunteer Army is working.” It is? How then did 19 members of the 343rd Quartermasters Company refuse a command to deliver a convoy from Tallil to Taji? The reservists were directed to drive rickety, unarmored trucks filled with fuel so contaminated that it was refused at another Army depot through the heart of Baghdad’s “shooting gallery” – an undertaking described as a pointless suicide mission. But, no matter, orders are orders and God help us if our troops start questioning if all this is worth the risk to life and limb.

The good news is that if you get shot up in Iraq, you may get better care than what’s offered by your HMO back home. The Selective Service has issued a confidential report on plans for a draft of doctors, nurses, and other health care workers. Richard S. Flahavan, a spokesman for the Selective Service System, said Monday, “We have been routinely updating… the Selective Service System plans on delivering about 36,000 health care specialists to the Defense Department…” Col. Roger A. Lalich, a senior physician in the Army National Guard, added: “It appears that a general draft is not likely to occur. A physician draft is the most likely conscription into the military in the near future.” While this may be nothing more than raw speculation, I’ve been having this recurring nightmare: I’m trying to bid on 36,000 sets of golf clubs on eBay but I repeatedly have to run to the bathroom just before each auction closes. And the worst part is that I can’t get an appointment because my urologist is in Mosul.