Thursday, April 27, 2006, clergy from around the Washington, DC and MD area will gather in downtown DC to pray for the lowering of gas prices.

"Dear Heavenly Father - We know You have a master plan and everything, and that You're probably busy blessing the meek and stuff. But just in case You haven't noticed lately, it's costing more and more to fill up the tank of the church Hummer. I realize that we're paying far less than pretty much the rest of the world, but You told the 700 Club that us Americans are Your chosen people. So we were wondering if You couldn't see fit to finagle that plan of Yours, and get those heathens in the Middle East to make a few more barrels and lower the price of gasoline. At least in the Red states. Big hugs, Your local fundamentalist wackos."

Naked chimney guy

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Believing they had a botched burglary on their hands, police in Hayward, California, called to a house instead found a naked man wedged in its chimney, a police officer said Monday. The 23-year-old man came home early Saturday morning and, finding himself locked out and without his keys, tried to enter the single-story house through its chimney. "He told us he took off his clothes because as he was going down the chimney the clothes would rub up against it and slow him down," Branson said. "If it was skin on cement he felt he would go down easier." Officers booked Urbano for being under the influence of drugs, he added.

Gee... ya think?? Skin on cement. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow. Ow.

No doubt I'm a little behind the times with this one. I hate to say it, but there are times when I'm actually glad I can say I live in another country these days. Nebraska decides to give school segregation by race another try

Fifty years after America abolished segregated schools, the state of Nebraska was yesterday accused of seeking to carve up its largest school district along broadly racial lines: white, African-American and Hispanic. Under a new measure signed into law by the governor, Dave Heineman, on Thursday night, Omaha's highly regarded public school system would be divided into three racially distinct entities. North-eastern Omaha would have a mainly African-American school district, south-eastern Omaha would be largely Hispanic, and the relatively wealthy sections in the west of the city would be packaged into a largely white school district. The division, which was proposed by the only African-American member of the state legislature last week, was adopted at breakneck speed.

Of course, if you segregate the districts, then you're also segregating the tax base - meaning that those wealthy sections they mention above will keep their property tax dollars for their own schools, leaving the other two new districts to fend for themselves. So not only is this almost certainly ripe for constitutional challenge, it's also colossally stupid. Here's my favorite part - the Nebraska state motto: 'Equality before the law'