I've been remiss, and so busy lately, that I haven't been keeping up with my favorite news source--the Weekly World News. I've particularly fallen behind on the heart-rending saga of Bat Boy.

But I was fascinated to learn today, in perusing the recent headlines, that the Confederacy was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon, with the ostensible purpose of destroying Washington, DC, and thus bringing to a rapid conclusion the War of Northern Aggression.

I was particularly enlightened by these lines:

?Thaddeus McMullen was a plantation slave-owner who loathed Abraham Lincoln and was willing to do anything to ensure a Confederate victory.

?He was also a brilliant researcher and scientist -- in league with Albert Einstein. This made for a horrifying combination that almost resulted in the fiery deaths of thousands of innocent people.?

And here, all this time, I thought that Al Einstein was born years after the end of the war.

It almost makes me question the veracity of the story. I'd hate to think that my favorite news publication would ever publish anything that isn't true.

Sure would like to know how he was going to do the uranium enrichment.

In fairness to the WWN, the story reads as if they intended to say "in *a* league with Albert Einstein." I mean, WWN has *some* editorial standards; it's not they were the Guardian or something of that nature.

I'm sure that he used slave labor for the enrichment.

No a secret society of Aliens were helping him, only one of the aliens just happened to be name Albert Einstein.

No, no, no. Yes, he used slave labor for (unjust) enrichment, and there are probably some cancer claims in there somewhere for a large group of descendants of former slaves. Genetic mutations, don't you know. But the aliens were sent on a mission to assassinate Lincoln. I mean, you don't think John Wilkes Booth acted alone, do you?

One of the aliens reportedly escaped after the Lincoln mission and settled in Tupelo, Mississippi, where he (it?) is rumored to be Elvis' great grand-something or other.

They goofed and wrote "Albert Einstein" when what they really meant was "Elvis".

Man, this is really bugging me. I'd swear this was the plot of a short story in "Analog" some time way back.