The nation’s largest telecommunications companies this week denied reports that they had cooperated with the National Security Agency in handing over customers’ telephone records to the government. “Saying that we ‘handed’ over records is literally not true, particularly if the allegation is we did so at 3 PM in the afternoon,” said a spokesman for BellSouth. “We never directly gave anything to current senior staff members at the agency’s main headquarters in January 2002,” added a representative of Verizon.
Upon learning that the NSA had not been conducting such a data mining operation, politicians said they were outraged. “I had been deeply upset to learn from USA Today that the Bush administration had so cavalierly intruded upon the privacy rights of millions of Americans,” said one senior Democrat. “Now I am equally disturbed to learn that the Administration has not done its utmost to protect us from terrorists by using data mining techniques to identify possible threats to our homeland.”
The Da Vinci Code, the much-anticipated Hollywood blockbuster, opened to poor reviews around the country -- the product of a massive conspiracy orchestrated by Opus Dei, according to those familiar with the secretive Catholic sect’s operations. Using its extensive web of connections to elites throughout the world, Opus Dei succeeded in persuading all but a handful of media organizations to trash the film. The group’s apparent strategy is to paint the movie as a dull and boring tale not worth the cost of admission, with the hope being that moviegoers will then stay away. “If no one attends, then they will never learn the secret we spent two millennia hiding from everyone except a few all-too-clever Renaissance painters,” said one Opus Dei insider. “Our fear is that western civilization itself would collapse if people learned that Jesus really lived in France. Oops. Strike that. I’ve said too much…”
Meanwhile, the American Association of Albinos denounced the movie for its depiction of albinos as deranged and violence-prone psychotics. “If The Da Vinci Code is not pulled immediately,” said a spokesman for the AAA, “Then we will have no choice but to assassinate Ron Howard, Dan Brown, Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou.”
In local news, residents were reeling from eight days of rain that left many communities devastated by flooding. FEMA immediately announced plans to visit the worst-hit parts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. “We’ve got a trip scheduled for late August,” said a senior staff member. “We want the people of New England to know that we care and we’ll be there for them.”
Meanwhile, the Boston City Council offered its own assistance to victims of the recent storm, with members proposing legislation requiring parking-lot operators to refund drivers in the case of rained-out Red Sox games. The Council, which has increased residential property taxes every year for the last decade, said the help was needed. “It’s OK to fleece our residents,” said one Councilor, “But we certainly don’t want to do that to visitors -- after all, many of these are people from the suburbs who run the companies that we hope will hire us someday when we’re out of office.”
And finally, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that tobacco companies can't escape liability merely because smokers should know the risks of cigarettes. “The implication of the tobacco companies’ argument,” the Court said in its unanimous opinion, “is that people are responsible for their own behavior, and that they -- and they alone -- should bear the consequences of that behavior. This runs counter to our longstanding tradition of blaming others for our own misfortunes. Indeed, if we were to rule otherwise, we would be striking a fatal blow to the heart of the American tort system, potentially putting thousands of lawyers out of work.”