Looks like Adele Fergusen has some competition for “craziest columnist at a non-major newspaper.” From Fort Wayne, Indiana — the same metropolitan area that spawned the insane Tony Zirkle — we get this insightful commentary:

No, this is not an Onion article — although with an author photo like that, your confusion is understandable. This was published in an actual newspaper (page A4 of the hard copy edition). So, unlike our ephemeral musings, TREES DIED FOR THIS.

After the jump, some additional excerpts from Richard Sloan’s piece, plus commentary.

After his provocative lede, Sloan writes:

The Vatican saw major gains in the era of President Ronald Reagan when the Heritage Foundation, headed by a devout Catholic, filled well over half of Reagan’s administrative positions with Heritage conservatives, such as William Bennett, a devout Catholic. After government service, Bennett and Jack Kemp set up Empower America, with the aid of Heritage.

Wow, those Catholics are pretty good at filling the corridors of power with their ilk. Sound like even the Jews could learn a thing or two from them.

Like any good opinion writer, Sloan ties his argument to current events, such as the furor over immigration and the recent SCOTUS appointments:

Immigration issues run deeper than most are aware of. Most Hispanics are unaware of how the Vatican uses them as pawns. The Vatican is slowly destroying the U.S. with excessive immigration to advance the Vatican’s own power in the U.S. and the world. Rather than moving to the U.S., most of these immigrants should be in their home countries reforming those countries. They should be rejecting the Vatican’s self-serving doctrine of large families and bringing their own population levels under control. Instead, they overpopulate, then seek to dump their excess populations on the U.S., which benefits the Vatican. It is not mere coincidence that many of our immigration laws have gone unenforced, that several Supreme Court justices are now Catholic, or that so many of the immigrants and demonstrators are Catholic.

There’s much, much more in the full article; go read it for yourself. We just can’t bring ourselves to quote more from it.

Now, don’t get us wrong; we enjoy reading a paranoid rant every now and then. But Sloan’s rant is behind the times.

C’mon, Richard, get with the program. Anti-Catholic sentiment is so 19th century! Why don’t you write instead about how the gays are trying to hijack our national culture?

Why the Vatican Still Has a Stake in Illegal Immigration [Fort Wayne News-Sentinel]
Earlier: Score A Couple More for the Tribe

We hadn’t intended to work the United 93 beat, but then we read Slate today:

That’s always been the subtextual spiritual narrative of media catastrophe coverage: terrible human tragedy, but something good always can be found in it to affirm faith and hope and make us feel better. Plucky, ordinary human beings find a way to rise above the disaster. Man must prevail. The human spirit is resilient, unconquerable. Did I mention there must be a pony?

9/11 is no different. Flight 93 has become 9/11’s pony.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet new Slate columnist Adele Fergusen.

The Problem With the United 93 Films [Slate]
Earlier: Folks, Meet Your New Catchphrase

• As a resident in the state of Pennsylvania, I want to take this opportunity on behalf of all Pennsylvanians to say…. HELP! PLEASE! CALL THE UN! CALL IN THE NATIONAL GUARD! ORGANIZE SOME SORT OF COMMISSION! PLEASE HELP US! It’s bad enough that we have to deal with Santorum’s crazy ass, but Chris Matthews? If that were to happen I would have to give up all hope and move to Jersey shiver
• The whole Katherine Harris things is starting to make me feel dirty.
• Someone should seriously start something called “WonkettePAC,” whereby we raise money then go around supporting only the most bat- **** -crazy pols. Seriously, it would do a lot for democracy by making it a hell of a lot more entertaining. Just imagine… a country with more Ada Smiths, Cynthia McKinneys, and… dare I wish… Rep. Adele Fergusens???
• AAAAHHH! That iFrist graphic IS NOT A SPOOF, REPEAT, NOT A SPOOF! IT’S ACTUALLY FROM FRIST’S WEBSITE! Which also ACTUALLY USES THE WORD “IFRIST!” Sweet Jesus, I hope Steve Jobs sues.
• The funny thing is (and I know this because I’m the dude in the blue shirt/grey slacks pretending to send text message in order to get closer to the action) through the whole takedown, the ninja just kept repeating “My hair is not an issue. And it shouldn’t be an issue.” over and over again.
• [The entire Brian Doyle post comments cluster **** is worth your perusal, but we particularly liked:]*taps nose twice to alert FBI. Does a double ear-lobe pull and nods in the general direction of illotus and his explorer “history” file.
• i guess the atf votes pirate?

Well, that Ben Domenech thing was a fun ride while it lasted, wasn’t it? Now, in the wake of his resignation, the boys over at Fishbowl want to know what the Post’s next move should be.

Even though dust hasn’t settled yet, it’s never too early to ask an all important question: Who would make a good author for the Red America blog?

TWO WORDS:

ADELE FERGUSON

Ben Domenech, Pt. 2? [FishbowlDC]

• President Bush moves to replace Gale Norton as Interior Secretary with Dirk Kempthorne — who may have some skeletons in his closet (and is less popular than Spuddy Buddy).

• Howard Dean succumbs to March Madness — and finally has good reason to scream.

• Jessica Simpson graces Capitol Hill with her luminous presence — but doesn’t meet President Bush or swing by Smith Point.

• John Ashcroft sells out and cashes in.

• Tom Malin sits for an exclusive interview with Wonkette. He adores Katherine Harris. Check out this photo of her, and this one. Can you blame him?

• Our new favorite catchphrase: “The pony in slavery.” We are kinda obsessed with it and its insane originator, Adele Fergusen.

• Our second favorite catchphrase: “I Did Not Blog.” Commemorative t-shirt sold separately.

• A bunch of Republicans get stuck in an elevator.

• From the “we’re scared **** less” department: Chris Matthews has supernatural powers. Jessica Cutler will be getting her own TV show.

• Finally, from the “not exactly news” department: Barbara Bush gets drunk. Journalists dress badly and get catty with each other. The Bush Administration doesn’t like gay people.

The Pony isn’t Adele’s first brush with controversy lunacy:
Oh, Adele. You’re a girl after our own hearts.

The Pony in this one is the mind-boggling idea of her having a husband — if that’s true, wouldn’t the poor man say that after every single word she writes?

An intrepid reader picked up the phone and called up Adele’s paper to learn a little more about the woman behind the magic:

I took advantage of my lunch break yesterday to call the Kitsap Business Journal. More than morbid, car-crash-variety curiosity, I wanted confirmation that it is indeed a real paper with real people making editing decisions, and not some Onion joke gone awry.

Anyway, a beleagured, Lieberman/Eeyore sounding editor answered with: “All right, let me have it.” Said that I was welcome to write a letter but I’d be about the 1,200th person to do so. Said his paper is contractually obligated to run Adele (pronounced with a long A, by the way), unedited. It seems that Adele is something of a celebrity in Washington state because her column is syndicated there. Added that he would have “taken a red pen” to some of her more inflammatory statements. (Leaving only, “By Adele Ferguson” on the page, I presume.)

He said that very little of the response came from locals and the reaction was from folks like me who saw it on Wonkette. He even lamented that he’d been called every name in the book at that point. (I bit my tongue to keep from pointing out that black folks hadn’t had such a hot day either thanks to the KBJ.) I said that that syndication contract seems to put him in quite a bind, and I felt for him and could even make a free speech argument, but that he might want to proceed with a little more caution when she submits her “pony hidden in the Holocaust” or “pony hidden in Sept. 11” columns.

Oooh, we like that idea! The pony in Kristallnacht is that it gave a lot of people a good excuse to replace some old windows!

The only way we could love this story more is if Adele pulls a Clooney.

Great Job!! [Voices of Palestine]
Earlier: Folks, Meet Your New Catchphrase
The Pony in Corporate Consolidation

Yes, ol’ Adele Fergusen’s brilliant, life-changing column has been Nick Sylvesterized from the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal’s website, but it is still available — the pony hidden in the internet is that all the crazy **** you put there can last forever and ever! Some kindly blogger has posted the whole thing, in case you missed it yesterday.

And Felix Salmon found a letter from the Editor and Publisher of the KPBJ in which he comes off like a regular Bob McChesney, blaming corporate consolidation of ownership while also decrying the liberal biases of reporters (pulling off a flawless Radical Centrist double-Kurtz axel!):

The corporate owners of the American media are doing nothing more than catering to their customers and delivering the product they want to buy.

You hear that, America? The market demanded that he print Adele’s crazed, feverish ruminations!

We wish only that we’d salvaged Adele’s author photo before the market demanded that Mr. Coppola delete the story from the website and pretend it never happened.

Update: Found it!

Racism Remains in Washington State [Disturbing the Comfortable]
Adele Fergusen’s 15 Minutes [Felix Salmon]
Even More Readers Respond [SeattlePI]
Earlier: Folks, Meet Your New Catchphrase

On any other day, we’d be applauding The Note for contributing something strained and unintelligible to our discourse. Something like this superlative disaster:

“Only a subset of the Gang knows that the pro-domestic surveillance talking point (picked up by the Journal) that the program is ok because there is “public opinion in support” is a ticking boomerang of a time bomb.”

Yeah! Ticking boomerangs! Outback time bombs! Do they explode in flight or after they’ve boomeranged back to the sender? Who knows? Who cares? Just don’t let al-Zawahiri get his hands on a cache of these bad boys! Then our **** in Iraq would really be bananas!

Sadly, thanks to Adele Fergusen, today is not like any other day.

Poor Note, even when they play to lose they can’t win!

The Note: Touching a Nerve [The Note]
EARLIER: Folks, Meet Your New Catchphrase

Our gossip-obsessed sister reports today that the Times Magazine is copping to inadvertently altering a picture of former Virginia governor Mark Warner: “The jacket was charcoal, not maroon; the shirt was light blue, not pink; the tie was dark blue with stripes, not maroon.” In other words, Warner was clad in his inside-the-beltway dullest. We get it.

Someone very dear to the heart of Wonkette, meanwhile, has pointed out to us that this episode in photographic TARFU is highly reminiscent of a scene from that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead of political documentaries: Inside the Bubble.

We recommend you tickle your yen for nostalgia by clicking this here linky, and watching the episode entitled “NY Times is **** ing Us.”

In addition, the events of the day have made it possible to view the episode that follows, “Pony Time”, in a hilarious new light. Go treat yourself.

Correction of the Week: Mark Warner Looks Nothing Like Mark Warner [Gawker]

It’s a good thing that we get to enjoy the pony that’s been hidden in slavery, because for the people of Mississippi, it could be a long time before they get to enjoy anything hidden in their vaginas.

A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of lawsuit filed by a Rankin County adult store, which challenged the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bans the sale of sex toys.

You’d think that the free trade of strap-ons would send a powerful message of resolve to the psycho-prudes of the Islamofascist armies. Certainly, this ruling does nothing to comfort the spouses of our fighting men and women, stranded overseas. But, as an upside, maybe Russ Feingold can uncover some useful precedent in this ruling for his battle against lawless and invasive wiretapping.

Fifth Circuit upholds dismissal of sex toy law challenge [Clarion-Ledger]

You know, generally, it’s not worth our time to go after all the insane, barely literate halfwits who write editorials and columns for our nation’s less prestigious papers. ‘Cause, really, it’s shooting fish in a barrel. It’s like sending Robert Christgau to review karaoke night at the Reef. Sure, it’s bad, but who cares — these people are amateurs. But every now and then, one of these lunatics comes up with a column so brilliant, so perfect, so unbalanced, that we must emerge from our decadent coastal enclave and enter the great uncharted middle of the country to bring back to our godless readers the Word. This is one of those columns:

One of these days before I die, I hope to see a shift in the attitudes of so many of my black brothers and sisters in this great country we share, from perpetual victimhood, to pride in their achievements on the road from slave to American citizen.

Remember Ronald Reagan’s story about the kid who had to shovel a huge pile of manure? He went about it with such joy he was asked why and said, “With all that manure, there’s got to be a pony in there somewhere.”

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people.

Oh, if only there were a way to register a spit take in xhtml.

“The pony in slavery,” people. Like the toy in a box of Cap’n Crunch. If Cap’n Crunch were, say, made of poison. And it took several generations and thousands of lives to get to the toy. And then when you got the toy, you weren’t allowed to play with it for another hundred years.

Adele Fergusen, we love you.

Why do blacks continue to support Democrats? [KPBJ]