Happy %$@&ing New Year everyone!!!

Officials in Boston are defending their decision to include a cat in the jury pool for an upcoming trial in March.

Sal Esposito, a domestic short-hair from East Boston is scheduled to begin passing judgment on the 23rd of next month despite the best efforts by Sal’s owners, Guy and Anna Esposito to have Sal disqualified on account of not being human.

“First of all, there is nothing in the Constitution that forbids cats from serving jury duty,” announced jury commissioner Pamela J. Wood.  “I am tired of felines shirking their responsibilities just because they are a different species and have a brain 50 times smaller than a humans’!”

When asked how a cat could be expected to be as compassionate and pragmatic as a human, Mrs. Wood replied, “Compassionate?  Anyone who owns a cat knows that they bring in many of their kills as gifts to their owners.  While this may only be a dead mouse with its intestines dangling, that’s still more than the Republicans ever gave anyone and they can sit on juries!”

Mrs. Wood then continued, “As for pragmatism, cats will never urinate on themselves or fall asleep in their own vomit which makes them much smarter than every person downtown at a St. Patrick’s Day Festival and those folks can all sit on juries too!”

Cat behavior expert, Marilyn Krieger responded to the jury commissioner’s decision in an interview via telephone.

“Sure why not?” she said.  “It makes about as much sense to have a cat decide someone’s fate as it does for twelve people who were too stupid to get out of jury duty.  Cat senses are seven to fourteen times better than humans and since most juries convict on how the defendant appears to them anyways, I think I’d rather take my chances with the tabby!”

Point in case,” Mrs. Krieger continued.  “Charles Manson, OJ Simpson and Dick Cheney all hate cats and all three of those guys are guilty as hell so who am I to stand in the way of the next great reform in American justice?”

Jury Commissioner Wood could not be reached for a follow-up comment as she was busy contracting Keyboard Cat to play defendants off upon being found guilty.

In a generous outpouring of Christian love, Evangelist Pat Robertson blamed the devastating earthquake in Haiti on the Haitians themselves and a pact their ancestors supposedly made with Satan in 1791 to rid themselves of the French.

“You see it was like this,” Robertson explained on his show ‘The 700 Club.  “The Haitians were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III and whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the French.’ True story. And so, the devil said, ‘OK, it’s a deal.’”

“I know this because I was there!” Robertson continued.  “That’s right, I am over 200 years old and have been kept alive this entire time by the blood of children which I crave with an unholy thirst!  Also God talks to me in my head but it’s in that weird trombone voice that Charlie Brown’s teacher uses.  Wah! Wah! Waaahh! Wah!  What’s that God?  Incest is OK if everyone around you is a homosexual?  I’ll be sure to pass that along!”

In response, Satan, Lord of the Pit and Master of Evil held his own press conference.

“OK first of all let me state for the record that I did NOT cause the earthquake in Haiti!”  the Dark One announced.  “Oh wait, everything I say is a lie so maybe I’m supposed to say that I DID cause it if I mean that I really didn’t.  Hrm, then again, the fact that I can even SAY the phrase ‘everything I say is a lie’ means that I everything I say is NOT always a lie so maybe the first statement was OK after all.  Argh!  I wish there was a ‘How To’ manual for this Dark Lord thing!”

“Anyways,” Satan continued.  “I know that I’m supposed to revel in the pain and suffering of you mortal worms but I think that by creating Pat Robertson I may have gone too far!  In my defense, I was under a lot of pressure to top Joseph Stalin and I still had Charles Manson to work on plus I was taking a lot of Vicodin for my back problem and Robertson just sort of slipped through the cracks!”

When asked why even he could allow something as utterly vile as Pat Robertson to continue existing, Satan replied, “I never imagined that it would go on this long!  Hey, when you accidentally release a retarded monkey into the jungle, you don’t expect all the other monkeys to make him their king and give him all their bananas!”