Bush Signs Bill Amending Ten Commandments

“Though Shalt Have No Other Presidents Before Me” Throws Wrench in Election

Mount Sinai—During a ceremony on the slopes of Mount Sinai today, President George W. Bush Bush signed into law a bill amending the Ten Commandments, the stone tablets of God’s law given to Moses some 4,000 years ago. Among the changes, Bush amended the first commandment to read “I Am Thy President Bush, Thou Shalt Have No Other Presidents Before Me” which puts into doubt the validity of the upcoming elections. “Thou Shalt Not Kill” now has a clause excepting preemptive strikes, and “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” once the most pithy of commandments, now runs to 400 pages with new language produced by a Dick Cheney-led task force.
Response to the changes has been mostly positive as mandated by the laws, but critics argue that the commandments are loaded with pork. Though there are still only ten commandments, the codex weighs in at 1,400 single spaced pages. “Farm subsidies for soy bean growers, heavenly absolution for abortion clinic bombers, tax breaks for NASCAR track owners—this simple and elegant document is now too bloated to fit on two tablets,” says Chase McGary, pastor of the Muscoda, Wisconsin, Assembly of God Church. “There’s no way we’re going to have time to teach this in Sunday school.”
The Kerry camp, facing the eternal tortures of fiery hell, points out that the bill gives coveting breaks to the richest two percent of Americans, smiting authority to the Republican controlled Congress, and amends the seven deadly sins to include donating to the DNC. “If I am elected I will cut coveting privileges from the top two percent,” Kerry promised, “and I’ll turn that covetousness over to those who really need it--the middle class.”