BEVERLY HILLS--God bless America, and how's everybody?

Dan Rather gave his final broadcast Tuesday as the anchor of the CBS Evening News. His farewell got huge ratings. That night the Orange County Sheriff's Department logged seventy-three complaints about a noisy party at the Nixon Library.

Martha Stewart offered Monday to market the shawl knitted for her in prison that she wore to the plane. She can make anything appealing. Last night in Hollywood Hugh Grant offered a hooker an extra three hundred dollars to wear an ankle monitor.

Jack Nicklaus openly complained Tuesday about the huge length of today's tee shots on the PGA Tour. There are three reasons for it. The golf balls are wound tighter, and the club shafts are whippier, and the caddies are all reading Jose Canseco's book.

Major league ballplayers were subpoenaed by Congress to appear at the hearing about steroid use. Players today get tested for pot and cocaine and steroids. They should've read the exclusivity clause when they signed that deal with Budweiser.

Hillary Clinton demanded an improved national ratings system for video games and music and children's television. She's got to get these ratings in place, and quickly. Bill Clinton on Spring Break comes out on Sony PlayStation next week.

Bill Clinton will lend his name to an Austrian financial company that wants to market hedge funds to small investors. This is right up his alley. It allows Bill Clinton to do what he does best, which is to separate people from their money.

The ACLU claimed Wednesday the White House uses the Patriot Act to conceal vast amounts of information from the public. The act is so secret it was lost in the Oval Office for months inside President Bush's copy of the Geneva Convention. The maid found it.

The Pentagon concluded its top secret review of prisoner interrogation during the war on terror Tuesday. The report stated that the treatment of prisoners was not abusive. Naked men in pyramid formation is as old as the Army-Michigan game.

President Bush got a secret report on Friday detailing all the intelligence failures in Iraq, Iran and North Korea. How bad is our intelligence? In December somebody told the president that Americans are clamoring for private Social Security accounts.

Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi demanded maximum collaboration from President Bush in a friendly-fire inquiry in Iraq. It's a waste of time for anyone to read President Bush the riot act. For crying out loud, he authored the riot act.

President Bush, with full support from France Monday, demanded that Syria exit Lebanon. Within one day Syrian troops were retreating to their own border. You can always tell which countries were French colonies by the speed of their retreats.

Howard Dean praised Democratic Party progress since he took over. He said he raised three million dollars and hasn't even sent out the Internet solicitation. For two thousand dollars, donors can watch the live exam-cam from his medical practice.

President Bush in Ohio Tuesday praised coal as a future clean-burning energy source. It could result in hearings. Geologists recently placed locally mined coal underneath their microscope and discovered that America is England on steroids.

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