I liked the part where the chimp steals the zookeeper's gun.

Life imitates Lancelot Link.

Here is factcheck.org, a non-partisan Web site that checks accuracy of political nonsense, dissecting it.

Of course, the ad is nonsense.

In this week's edition, we talk about cadavers working for NASA, space zombies and Wall Street getting plastered.

Enjoy.

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Now that the jury has decided that it's going to cost us -- the taxpayers -- a lot more money, at least $10 million more, for Highpoint, the county has to figure out how to pay for it.

Of course, the commissioners are going to have to borrow the money.

But hey, how about locking up a whole lot more illegal immigrants in the county prison?

And don't forget, we taxpayers are still on the hook to the Kohr family over the rest of Lauxmont. That's going to be a few million more bucks.

Anyway, thanks bunches to former commissioners Lori Mitrick and Doug Kilgore for saddling us with this. Nice job, guys!

This is state Rep. Sean Ramaley, D-Beaver.

Beaver is where he's from, not his nickname.

The Beav was among those indicted today in the House bonus scandal that's been going on since, well, apparently, since the Beav's birth.

The state Attorney General accused the Beav of holding a "no-work job" for a state representative while running for office.

"No work job"? Isn't that what state Representatives do?

Anyway, the Beav is looking at jail time. Or maybe just some detention. Or a time out.

"Pennsylvania State Police are informing York County residents of a possible scam involving people going door-to-door saying they are collecting money for a fundraiser.

"About 5 p.m. Thursday, two white males in their early 20s went to several houses on Longview Road in Loganville, asking for money "for an unknown fundraiser," police said.

The men asked residents to donate $49, with the promise of getting $34 back at a later date."

OK, you give the guys $49 with the promise of getting $34 back.

That's the best deal I've heard since that Nigerian oil minister promised me $25 million!

I think Carlin would have been pretty amused by it. Phelps always cracks me up. That mixture of craziness and rage is hard to top.

Have a safe one and remember, keep fireworks away from small children, pets and mannequins!

"For one night only, the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick will be displaying a rare original Civil-War-era contraceptive device. This artifact has never previously been displayed at the museum.

The 19th-century condom will be displayed Thursday during a 7:30 p.m. lecture titled "Sex in the Civil War" by museum Executive Director George Wunderlich.

"'Sex during the Civil War era was not much different than it is today,' Wunderlich said, 'although our society's views on sex have dramatically changed since that time period.'"

This is a clear example of a story being useless without pictures.

That's the video of a woman who died in the waiting room at an emergency psych ward at a Brooklyn hospital while the staff ignored her.

This morning, watching the news, the crawl reported that the hospital was planning "significant reforms" to prevent such things in the future.

You need "significant reforms" to instruct hospital workers not to ignore people dying on the floor?

OK!

"Stick an asparagus plant in a pot full of Martian soil, and the asparagus might grow happily, scientists announced Thursday."

Mmmmmmm...Martian asparagus...

Read the whole story here.

So there are signs of life on Mars. Here's hoping it's intelligent life and not the kind that wants to come here and blow stuff up, like in the movies.

While I may not disagree with some aspects of the landmark decision in the Supreme Court case of District of Columbia vs. Heller -- I think it was proper to strike down the ban, but went too far in saying the Second Amendment guarantees nearly unrestricted gun ownership -- it was work of activist judges.

In this case, activist judges who disregarded precedent, went beyond the scope of the issue they'd been asked to examine and relied on ideology rather than evidence to reach their decision.

Interesting, the coverage of the ruling seems to be kind of misleading. Much of it reports that this is the first time the Supremes have examined the Second Amendment.

Not true.

The 1939 case of U.S. vs. Miller, about a law banning sawed-off shotguns, set a pretty clear precedent.

The unanimous ruling, written by Justice James Clark McReynolds, said, in part, "In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."

The current court -- Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the five-justice majority -- apparently interpreted that to mean that certain kinds of weapons may be banned by the government and that the courts may pick and choose. In this case, handguns are OK. In Miller, sawed-off shotguns weren't.

Anyway, it's an fascinating ruling, even if you have to wade through the thousands of words Scalia uses to define what "arms" entail.

And you citizens of D.C.? Keep you heads down.

Ira Tucker, the lead singer with the gospel group, the Dixie Hummingbirds, has passed away at his home in Philadelphia. He was 83.

The Hummingbirds were best known to a generation of music fans as the group that backed up Paul Simon on "Loves Me Like a Rock. But Tucker and the rest of the group has huge success with its emotive gospel, recorded at their peak in the '40s and 50s, with songs like "Thank You for One More Day," "Trouble in My Way" and "Bedside of a Neighbor."

Tucker's style influenced a generation of soul singers, from Jackie Wilson to the Temptations to Stevie Wonder.

Read the New York Times obit here.

"Mohammed Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."

"But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. But they had the wrong guy. Local anti-government insurgents had fed false information to U.S. troops."

The newspaper chain's Washington Bureau has conducted an extensive investigation into the prisoners detained in the war of terrorism and concluded that in many cases, our government is detaining the wrong people.

Here's more:

"An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men -- and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds -- whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

"McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials -- primarily in Afghanistan -- and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

"This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

"The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners."

Read the whole series here.

You know, the more we do this kind of stuff, the less safe we are. Besides, we're Americans. We don't do this kind of thing.