As we've done each year, it's time again to look back at glorious moments of stupidity over the last year.

10 Ann Coulter unilaterally decided that Joseph McCarthy, whose name is synonymous with malicious prosecution and persecution of political enemies and the innocent, who at long last had no shame, was a Great American Hero who should be revered. It's pretty clear that she was rewriting history since McCarthy was a great embarassment to all Americans and the principles and values of fair trials and due process upon which the nation was founded and because he was a Republican. Unable to reconcile in her mind the infallability of Republicans and the treachery of McCarthy, she simply decided that McCarthy wasn't treacherous at all, despite that fact being well-documented, in spite of the Venona papers that she foolishly asserts exhonorated him of wrongdoing. I don't know how many times I have to say this, but even if every single person McCarthy accused were patently guilty, it still doesn't excuse his behaviour.

9 Bush told us all a big lie: that Iraq tried to purchase yellow-cake in Africa. It wasn't just an error; it was a lie. He knew it was a lie because he'd been told it wasn't correct almost a year before he included it in his state of the union address. Yet the CIA took the fall for Bush deciding that it "wrongfully allowed" the quote about the uranium to remain in the address. Mind you, this wouldn't be the first time a president has lied to the nation. We just wish Bush would have owned up to in when he got caught. Maybe he can practice saying "I was wrong" a few hundred times until he's comfortable saying it.

8 Senator Rick Santorum spewed forth nonsense worthy of the American "Family" Association or the "Family Research" Council in an Associated Press interview, likening gay sex to incest, polygamy, adultery and abortion and accusing gays of undermining society and blah blah blah. In the light of Trent Lott's relatively benign comments about Strom Thurmond earlier, a lot of folks thought that it would at least be apropos for Santorum to apologize, but he insisted he had nothing to apologize for and later tripped over a chair fleeing from parents of gay kids.

7 US Representative Jim Moran (D-VA) came under fire for blaming the war with Iraq on jews. He claimed that it was strong support from the jewish community that was bolstering the war, and implied that because the jewish community leaders weren't opposing the Iraq war, they were somehow responsible for it. He later issued a weak apology saying he has to be "more careful not to say things I don't believe."

6 While you were sleeping, a power-mad John Ashcroft and his buddies in the Justice Department were drafting the Patriot Act II. A copy of it was leaked to the press and all hell broke loose when its contents became public. Patriot II include provisions for kicking people out of the country if they're thought by Ashcroft to be aiding terrorists, which you might recall means opposing any of his policies.

5 Like french fries? French dressing? French toast? French dip? French bread? French onion soup? French roast? French vanilla? French mustard? You won't be finding them in the House cafeteria anymore. Republican lawmakers control the cafeteria menu, you see, and France became our rhetorical enemy because they failed to fall lockstep behind Bush over the war on Iraq. The whole fiasco inspired me to head to the grocery store to secure my own freedomfrench fries.

4 Lawyer Stephen Downs was arrested for wearing a T-shirt with a peace symbol because a shopping mall decided that peace symbols were offensive and un-American. The shirt also bore the slogan, "give peace a chance" and Downs had purchased it in that same mall. So offended at the idea of peace was the mall that it demanded Downs remove the shirt. When he refused, he was arrested.

3 The decision to overturn Bowers v Hardwick and to throw out the country's "sodomy" laws, kicking the government out of the bedroom was a great step forward for heterosexuals and homosexuals alike. Unsurprisingly the greatest enemies of freedom-- the radical religious right-- had no shortage of sky-falling predictions and their usual batch of aspersions to cast to demean homosexuals, prognostigate doom and disaster, and blame gays for everything short of the bubonic plague.

2 Orrin Hatch determined that the solution to gun violence in Washington DC was for there to be more guns. It's possible that there could be some credibility to the theory that guns in the hands of responsible persons may help to avert gun crime and violence, but only if such an assertion were backed by credible research and not ideological rhetoric. Unfortunately, ideological rhetoric seems to be the only thing that exists on either side of the gun-control debate in this country.

1 The Dixie Chicks dared to oppose Bush's war on Iraq, and in an even more daring move actually said something about it. As a consequence, they drew the ire of "patriotic" citizens who demanded boycotts, stoning outside the city gates and that sort of thing. Cumulus Broadcasting banned their music on any of their stations. Two Colorado DJs were suspended for playing Dixie Chicks songs. It's distressing how, although blacklisting and similar McCarthyistic tactics are still fresh in the minds of many, people are so willing to immediately revert to that behaviour without a second thought.

So there you have it. The top ten most moronic stories of 2003. Maybe 2004 will be better, but I'm not betting on it. It is, after all, an election year.

---Nick