Whenever someone hits one of those mega-jackpots, you hope it will turn out to be a struggling waitress, a person down on their luck, some kind of proof that there is justice and hope in this bizarre and bleak world. We lose again.

Andrew Jackson Whittaker Jr. looks like the last guy on earth—except maybe that gnarly old gimp in the TD Waterhouse commercials—that you'd like to see win $317 million. For starters, he's already a millionnaire, he looks like Johnny Cash crossed with a vicious Baptist purse-lipped gallstone bleeding Puritan tightwad, and he's planning to use the money to expand his business after he tithes a wad of cash to a trio of bible-thumping pastors.

"I truly believe this is an opportunity for me to give testimony about tithing and spreading wealth," Whittaker said.

The Third Column

While we're talking pukebags this afternoon, let's drop in on Jeb Bush, poster-boy for what's wrong with Republicans. Seems that he's come up with a little scheme involving the placement of mentors in public schools. "Why, what could be wrong with that?" you wonder. Well, in Jeb's purview, the only good mentor is a wacked-out religious nutjob mentor. So he's grabbing $80,000 in Florida state funds and funneling it into Frontline Outreach "a faith-based group that has done extraordinary work." This is bad enough, but consider Frontline Outreach's track record:

A 1997 audit by the Orange County comptroller found the group had overbilled the county thousands of dollars under a $150,000 contract to run a teen pregnancy program and helped only a fraction of the teens it promised, and many of those never successfully finished the program.

The Right to Talk as Fast as You Can

When the cops grab you here in America, they have to read you your rights. Ever wonder what happens when the CIA nabs you overseas? Today's International Herald Tribune has a sharp briefing on the Company's interrogation techniques, with a particular focus on "captured Al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders."

According to the article, we don't go too easy on these chaps. If they refuse to cooperate, they're kept "standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles." Time must pass really slow that way. Especially when we have the ultimate threat: handing you over to some of our overseas pals.

In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services - notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco - with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

3:55:19 PM       

I knew this was going to be a wild day when I ran across the "Cloning group to make 'major announcement'" headline at CNN. Calling itself Clonaid, the company run by Brigitte Boisselier claims to have cloned a baby girl to a 31-year-old mother. They aren't saying where this took place, but we're betting on France.

The weird part came while I was scanning the article and noticed that Clonaid was "founded by a religious group called the Raelians in 1997." With a name like "Raelians," you know that aliens are involved somehow and sure enough, these people actually believe that all of us are the result of cloned alien genetic material.

I've been watching Ms. Boisselier's press conference this morning on cable and she's like something out of a science fiction magazine, with an infectious giggle, French accent, and sparkling eyes that sit like uneasy pools over the wellspring of sheer madness. Rael (formerly known as Claude Vorilhon), the founder of the space-crazy sect, claims to have had secret meetings with extraterrestrials:

During these sessions, Vorilhon learned that humans were created in laboratories by people from another planet who had mastered the science of genetics and cell biology. The creators are the "Elohim," (singular, Eloha), a word that Vorilhon attests was wrongly translated in the Bible as "God." Vorilhon claims that the word "Elohim" really means "those who came from the sky."

Back to the press conference, Brigitte is shrugging off reporters' questions (e.g., "will the father be the child's grandfather, too?") by noting that "family" is a flexible term these days. She says that genetic material from the mother and daughter is currently undergoing an independent audit and they'll have results in a week or so.

All me to provide my own assessment here. I'd say that anyone this closely aligned with the Raelians—granted that the mother isn't a church member—has got to have some highly suspect DNA to begin with.

On the other hand, whether this turns out to be a hoax or not, the Brave New World is here: I just can't figure out if it's Huxley's or Miranda's version.

9:14:29 AM