- Okay, Mr. Howard, so I think you know why weve brought you in here today.  We’re rounding up the last of the liberals and depositing them in special internment camps so they can’t do any more damage to the rest of the country.  It’s been a long, slow process--with highlights that include the Reaganization of America in the ‘80s, the Republicans taking back congress in 1994, W. Bush’s re-election, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist creating a genetically engineered army of super clones--but America is now almost entirely conservative.  Except for a few hold outs.  We hadn’t noticed you up until now, but you’ve been identified as one of the last liberals and you’ll have to go the internment camp.

- I had been so good about keeping a low profile.  I shouldn’t have been laughing so loud at that bootlegged copy of The Daily Show--one of my neighbors heard me and turned me in.

- Those neighbors are patriots.

- I’m not entirely liberal, you know.

- Really?

- Sure.  I have lots of non-liberal ideas.

- Tell us about them, Mr. Howard.

- Well, for example, I?m not all that big on centralized health care.  I hate hospitals--they all smell like antiseptic and medicine. I figure if we have centralized health care, the whole country will smell like one big hospital.

- Well, uh, that’s an interesting political position, but--

- And then there’s welfare.  I’m in favor of some kind of social safety net, but I’m in favor of aggressive policies that get people off the rolls quickly and back into the labor market.  That’s why I think all welfare recipients should get an alarm clock.

- An alarm clock?

- Sure.  The only reason to be on welfare is to sleep in, so if you give everyone an alarm clock and force them to wake up, they’ll be back at a job before you know it.

- Isn’t that kind of a simplistic solution to a complex problem?  What about single mothers?

- Oh, give the kids an alarm clock too. They need to go to school.

- Well, now, that’s--

- And although I’m against a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, I am in favor of an amendment that says we don’t have to buy presents for gay couples.  Or straight couples. In fact, I’m in favor of a constitutional amendment that says couples have to buy presents for single people for a change.  I could use a nice crystal gravy boat.

- Mr. Howard, despite the conservative views you’ve just espoused, you are clearly still a bleeding-heart liberal.  Your sentence is unchanged.  You’re going to the internment camps immediately.

- Damn it.  Well, please, just tell me I have a decent roommate.  A lot of my fellow liberals annoy the living spit out of me.

- I’m afraid in one bunk it’s Ben Affleck--

- What?

- --and in the other, it’s the Indigo Girls.

- DEAR GOD.  Listen...did I mention that I think supply-side economics is just...swell?