Liberty, Obesity, Fraternity: A cartoon festival for French schoolchildren in the town of Carquefou asked kids to illustrate their vision of the US. The results: images of obese Americans chomping Cokes and Big Macs, Bush in an army tank, Uncle Sam on a motorcycle mowing down the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps the most curious depicts the US as a baseball bat and the world as the ball.

Shock-jock backtalk: Howard Stern just got yanked from broadcast on six Clear Channel stations--and he might be out of a job for good. The timing is curious--Stern has always teetered on the edge of indecency, so why now?--and here's Stern's explanation: "My last words to you are 'G.W.B.' Get him out of office. I'm tellin' you, man, he's in dangerous territory [with] a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out - anyone but Bush."

The political-journalistic-entertainment complex: The excellent Pioneer Press media critic Brian Lambert, in a piece called "Media are patsies on 'Passion' promotion," writes that "helping Hollywood sell tickets should not be a role journalists play so willingly and so agreeably." Shouldn't the same be true of our president? Both George W. Bush and Tom Ridge have given official White House approval to "DHS-The Series," a television show about fighting terrorism at the Department of Homeland Security. In an unprecedented display of official coziness between Hollywood and the White House, both Bush and Ridge "endorse and contribute sound bites to the introductions of the series," according to DHS' producers.

Anti-RFID SOL? Wired News reports that RSA Security has come up with a way to jam RFID (Radio Frequency ID) scanners--the "digital barcodes" that are drawing the ire of privacy activists who fear the GPS-based tracking devices won't turn off once tagged products leave stores. Problem is, the technology won't be perfected for years, and by that time the anti-RFID devices will likely be banned.