The defense has rested in the case of R. Kelly, a man best known for ("allegedly") urinating on 14-year-olds. The case is centered around R. Kelly's SEX TAPE WITH A 14-YEAR-OLD GIRL. 

R. Kelly is claiming he does not appear in the tape -- that it was a FAKE to extort money from him. Worst of all, the VICTIM -- a washed-up singer-friend of Kelly's who goes by the stage name SPARKLE -- claims she is not in the tape. Fans of justice, I know this sounds distressing, but a victim denying victimhood does NOT mean a case is lost. I once convinced the jury that a man shot his wife in the head, raped the wound and dumped the body in a sewer drain while she sat in the back of the courtroom, clearing her throat and saying "excuse me." (Why? BECAUSE I COULD, THAT'S WHY.) Luckily, Sparkle's friend has bravely stepped forward to testify about all their threesomes so this creep can be LOCKED AWAY.

Much of the trial has centered around witnesses' speculation about who is in that tape. Birthmarks, breast sizes and LARGE FOREHEADS have all come into play. I am confident that "SPARKLE" is not just a hussy but a liar as well. It all goes back to a lesson I learned when I was a girl growing up in Georgia: never trust a girl called Sparkle. There was a girl named Sparkle who lived at the end of my block who was a seven-year-old beauty queen. She would always prance around with her crown on, sashaying her little hips on her imaginary runway.

A mother was sentenced to twenty years behind bars for locking her seventeen-year-old adopted son in a CAGE and nearly STARVING him to death. Now, as a mother myself, I can understand the impluse to lock a son in a cage for a while: The crying, the talking, the UNCONTROLLABLE SEX DRIVE. And then there is the danger posed by the external world. (If I didn't have to worry about getting groped all the time, maybe I could have worn clothes to school like the rest of the girls in my grade, rather than a modified beekeeper's suit slathered with an anti-pheromonic jelly.)

But still, this mother went TOO FAR. The boy was found weighing only 49 pounds. I can lift 49 pounds with one hand! (I also found out I can lift the back end of a car with one hand after I went into a rage-fueled adrenaline rush when an unsuspecting woman got between me and my babies in a parking lot, but that's another story.) Clearly the abuse left a physical toll, but just imagine the emotional toll! He may look shattered on the outside, but his head is probably throbbing with angular metallic alterna-rock guitar riffs and embarrassing teenage lyrical cries for help.

Friends, we survived Smashing Pumpkins the first time. Can we really put ourselves through that mopey self-serious crap again?

For the second time in three years, a brutal sex-dungeon has been found in the basement of an Austrian home. THIS time, a 72-year-old man locked up his daughter and fathered seven of her children, many of whom NEVER SAW THE LIGHT OF DAY. Down in Georgia, we have a saying about this kind of thing. Build a sex dungeon once, shame on you; build a sex dungeon twice, shame on you and everyone of the same ethnic background.

CLEARLY, there is something very wrong with Austrians. There doesn't seem to be a cellar from Burgenland to Vorarlberg that doesn't have a gap-toothed, in-bred Swiss Miss tied to a post by some crazy-eyed, crazy-haired SS officer with pillowy-soft hands and a lisp. What is it, Austria? Do you have pent-up frustrations that you haven't been a world power since Hungary broke up the band after the first World War? Is it that hard to think of something functional to do with your cellar? Put in some carpeting, get a foosball table, SOMEthing.

It was two and a half years ago that Elaine Sonnen, a mother from Idaho, discovered that her son RICHARD idolized the Columbine Killers and was planning a MASSACRE OF HIS OWN. But she saw the warning signs and did what any loving mother would do -- she RATTED HIM OUT.

Today, her son is on antidepressants and living alone instead of in some secret governmental dungeon. This is a MISCARRIAGE OF JUSTICE. I don't care if this Richard gets better, gets his own TV show and finally gives birth to twins like he's always been wishing -- when he wakes up every morning and looks himself in the mirror and he applies his blonde hair dye and stuffs his bra, THE RAGE WILL COME BACK. OH, IT WILL COME BACK, I PROMISE YOU THAT.

I mean, the boy created a hit list. You can get away with that these days? FINE. Here's MY hit list:

Two THIRD-GRADERS have been ARRESTED for planning an attack on their teacher. And not only did they plan the crime, they brought the weapons to school to commit it.

Now some "EXPERTS" are saying we must go easy on these kids, because they are between the ages of eight and ten. This is NONSENSE. These kids knew exactly what they were doing when they were bringing those weapons to school, and they knew the kinds of consquences they MUST face. I'm talking timeouts, revoking recess privileges, writing "I will not plan to repeatedly stab my teacher" hundreds of times on the blackboard -- THE WORKS. If they think they're going to wriggle out of this one without some heads-down time at their desks, THEY'RE CRAZY.

A Texas woman is demanding an apology and a civil rights investigation from the Transportation Safety Administration, because she set off the metal detector and was not allowed to board a plane before giving up WEAPONS hidden on her person. So what if those weapons were only nipple rings and they had to be removed very painfully and with a pair of pliers!

I don't care if they were plugged deep into her areolae and the holes had long ago been covered over with scar tissue. A sharp thing is a sharp thing, no matter WHICH way you slice it. And DON'T GIVE ME that nonsense about being unable to use a weapon just because it's lodged deep into your flesh. Just imagine the damage she could have done had she burst into the cockpit and rubbed the pilot's face in her chest! And besides, she got them out!

The home is full of hidden dangers: knives, faulty locks, husbands. TOILETS. Perhaps the most insidious of all hidden dangers, we are trained to think of the toilet as an ally in expunging waste from our bodies. But TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING -- even fine porcelain -- can be DANGEROUS.

A woman was hospitalized after spending two years in the bathroom -- so much of that time was spent on the TOILET that the seat stuck to her BODY. She stayed in there for so long not because of indigestion, but because she was afraid to leave.