WEAPONS OF MATH INSTRUCTION FINALLY FOUND!

Hot on the heels of the capture of Saddam Hussein, security guards at New York's Kennedy airport today arrested an individual, later identified as a public school teacher, trying to board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule and a calculator.

At a morning press conference, Attorney-General John Ashcroft said he believed the man is a member of the notorious Al-jabra movement. He is being charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of math instruction.

"Al-jabra is a fearsome cult," Ashcroft said. "They desire average solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on tangents in a search for absolute values. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' and refer to themselves as 'unknowns', but we have determined they belong to a common denominator with coordinates in every country.

"As the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say, there are three sides to every triangle," Ashcroft declared.

When asked to comment on the arrest, President Bush said, "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

"I am gratified that our government has given us a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who are willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. Murky statisticians love to inflict plane on every sphere of influence," the President said, adding: "Under the circumferences, we must differentiate their root, make our point, and draw the line."

President Bush warned, "These weapons of math instruction have the potential to decimal everything in their math on a scalene never before seen unless we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random facts of vertex."

Attorney-General Ashcroft said, "As our Great Leader would say, read my ellipse. Here is one principle he is uncertainty of: though they continue to multiply, their days are numbered as the hypotenuse tightens around their necks."

Q.E.D.