TODAY'S TOP FIVE: A Bus Tour of Truth traveling through an Ohio of Falsehood.

MSNBC Fears MLWL! Yesterday, those pussies at MSNBC.com pulled Ted Rall's cartoon about Pat Tillman from their web site after receiving tons of Drudge-fueled hate mail. Note, though, that not only did we post the cartoon before they did, but we continue to display it as an enduring symbol of our commitment to free speech and tasteless, unfair jokes about dead football players.

We're From the Government. We're Here to Help. Over 50 million Americans will use ATM-like electronic voting machines this November, and we here at the MLWL have joined in the chorus of alarm and derision over what looks like a transparent attempt at massive vote fraud. Finally, our urgent calls have been answered: the US Election Assistance Commission, a government body supposedly founded in 2002, is here to help. That's the good news. The bad news is that the group only has a $10 million budget, and only $1.2 million of that has been appropriated. The organization didn't have its directors until December and didn't have a meeting until March; in its first public communication, it announces that it has absolutely no way to prevent nationwide vote fraud related to electronic voting. So, where did the $3.9 billion appropriated under the 2002 Help America Vote act go? Diverted, through state government, to Republican companies like Diebold, which manufacture the very machines that will steal the election.

Fighting With Monsters Thomas Hamill, the Mississippi truck driver who worked for Halliburton in Iraq and who daringly escaped from his Iraqi captors over the weekend, was well-fed and treated for a gunshot wound by a doctor while a hostage. According to this story, Hamill received anesthesia before a doctor performed surgery on his injured arm, and got medication afterwards. While he was being treated, his captors brought him bottled water and cookies. Contrast this with the treatment that thousands of Iraqi prisoners got at Abu Ghraib prison - yes, those murderous animals who kidnapped Hamill didn't make him participate in a single homoerotic human pyramid. How can they expect the civilized world to take them seriously if they aren't going to force their prisoners to simulate gay sex while being beaten and photographed?

Man of Cats and of Screwing Us Over Speaking of those pussies at MSNBC, they have a really good story today about Ahmad Chalabi, the shady leader of the bumbling Iraqi National Congress and neocon-favored candidate to lead a free Iraq. Apparently, the Bush administration has proof that Chalabi has been passing official secrets about our occupation of Iraq to the government of Iran. Chalabi has long been friendly with the second point on the Axis of Evil, and the INC maintains a $36,000-per month office in Tehran paid for by American taxpayers. Now we learn that Chalabi, who has already admitted to lying about Saddam's WMD program, is spying for the Iranians, who at the very least can be accurately characterized as unfriendly toward our plans in Iraq. At what point do we just shoot the guy? Does he have to blow up a train or something?

Today's Sign of the Apocalypse I'm not a fan of Biblical literalism, but I found this impossible to pass up: a total eclipse of the moon tonight will render the lunar body a blood-red appearance in the skies over the United Kingdom. Turning to what Catholics call the Apocalypse of St. John and George Bush calls the Book of Revelation, we find chapter 6, verse 12: "And I saw, when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun became as black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon became as blood." Have a nice day!

-Consider Arms