TODAY'S TOP FIVE: I Feel More Sovereign Than Ever Today.

The End of an Error 50 years after founding National Review to run traditional conservatives out of the public debate, William F. Buckley Jr. is relinquishing control of his magazine to a board of directors that he handpicked. National Review has been one of the most important organs of conservative thought over the last 5 decades, but consider the ironies: Posing as a traditional conservative publication, the magazine actually spent much of its first five years defending Joe McCarthy and heresy-hunting actual conservatives of the Robert Taft school. Although it has been an annoying, one-note cheerleader for the free market, the magazine has never made a profit: It's sustained by a network of wealthy conservative donors. Finally, take Buckley Jr. himself. Although his plummy New England accent and stuffy grammar have made him the living embodiment of old-line conservatism, he's actually the son of an arriviste Ohio oilman. Here's to 50 more years of phoniness!

Do You Have Something You'd Like to Share With the Rest of the Class, Miss Rice? This is almost too embarassing to even think about: George Bush was notified of the ceremony handing "sovereignty" over to the Iraqis in a hand-written note passed to him by Condoleeza Rice during a meeting of NATO leaders in riot-wracked Turkey. She handed the note to Rumsfeld, who then passed it on to the president. Unclear at this time is whether Rice also wrote "Do you like me? Check yes or no" or offered to sit next to the president during study hall. Bush did, however, scribble the phrase "let freedom reign!" on the note, apparently intending to write "let freedom ring."

Canada: Not as Smart as We Originally Believed Although I take pride in the fact that, like most Americans, I am totally ignorant of a federal election happening in the country that shares our northern border that happens to be our closest trading partner, I will reprint the entirety of this excellent article for the edification of all Americans who felt bad because people in Florida were too stupid to fill out their ballots correctly in 2000: "Canadians have gone to the polls in a federal election with a firm warning from election officials: Please do not eat your ballots.
'Eating a ballot, not returning it or otherwise destroying or defacing it constitutes a serious breach of the Canada Elections Act,'Elections Canada warns on its Internet site. The issue was of sufficient concern to warrant inclusion in the site's 'Frequency asked Questions' section, above answers to such inquiries as 'Why should I vote?' and 'Am I registered?' Three Alberta men were charged with eating their paper ballots during Canada's last federal election, in 2000. The members of the Edible Ballot Society were protesting against what they said was a lack of real choice among candidates."

The Party of Family Values Gets Ready to Pay for Sex This summer, when the Republicans are in New York City solemnly honoring the fallen of Sept. 11 and nominating George W. Bush for president, they'll also be giving a shot in the arm to the local economy. The local illegal sex economy, that is: Apparently hookers are being brought in from all over the world to meet the expected demand for paid sexual encounters coming from all those sweaty, patriotic delegates from the heartland. Sorry, ladies, but I think you're going to be disappointed. This is the party of Jack Ryan, after all. GOP delegates are likely to prefer sex the old-fashioned way: With their wives. In public. In an underground sex club. Surrounded by bondage gear.

God May Be a DJ, But He's No Damn Liberal The fifth century Syrian monk known as pseudo-Dionysus the Areopagite (to distinguish him from the Biblical figure whose conversion is recorded in Acts 17:34) argued that we can never attribute qualities to God if those qualities imply that the opposite cannot also be true. In other words, he argued that we cannot say that God is great if that means we have to say He isn't small; or that God is gentle if that excludes Him being wrathful. The reason, argued the philosopher, is that God's true nature is so far beyond human reason that any categories we apply to God will never amount to anything more than human-made attempts to explain our own perception of the deity. Well, it's too bad that Dionysus died in the sixth century, because if he were alive today he'd have egg all over his face! That's because Sean Hannity and Dennis Miller, those capering clowns of conservatism, have declared that, Dionysus and Nicholas of Cusa aside, God is most definitely a Republican, and not a damn Democrat! In fact, Miller even argues that Jesus "far prefers Bush to Kerry," a remarkable theological insight for a man who once said in an interview that he likes to have women put their fingers up his asshole.

-Consider Arms