It Came From Outta Knoxville

Something is going on that the mind of a Republican congressman from Tennessee cannot handle; and for some, apparently, that is news. Tim Burchett, whose legislative record includes bills against possessing, producing or distributing Salvia divinorum and in favour of eating roadkill without prior notification of a county game warden, has expressed concern about unidentified aerial phenomena. The objects formerly known as UFOs appear to be the best available pretext for the Pentagon's annual budget increase, given that the beastly Russians, the Heathen Chinee and the mad mullahs have all been so disobliging as not to start any wars this year and even such existential threats as Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have lately reined in the fiendish tentacles of their aggression. Interviewed by the Washington Post without apparent benefit of hallucinogens, the former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program agreed that the phenomena posed a serious threat, being self-evidently the highly detectable and sinister product of a technology fifty years ahead of the Pentagon and a millennium or so ahead of the congressman from Tennessee.