(WASHINGTON, DC) The government agency charged with assessing the relative value of insults made a rare unilateral decision this week when it issued a statement that "asshat" would no longer be listed on the Acceptable Internet Epithet Index. According to a statement from the Federal Bureau of Insults, "asshat" has been downgraded to "not a thing," effective immediately.

"Since the advent of social media," the statement read, "use of 'asshat' has proliferated wildly—particularly during presidential election years. Following the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, our monitors have detected an unprecedented surge in 'asshat' usage, prompting senior analysts to audit the term's effectiveness. A blue-ribbon commission was impaneled to adjudicate the matter. Its decision was swift and unanimous: 'Asshat' is unacceptable. Despite its syntactical relation to the evergreen 'asshole,' it has only the most tenuous connection to a literal correlative. To state it simply: It reflects more poorly on the user than it does on the subject."

Though the insult bureau is not typically a regulatory body, agency chair Donald Colough argued that the decision was well within his purview.

"Normally, yeah, we are more like surveyors," Colough said. "We keep records, study trends, that sort of thing. But from time to time, the bureau does step in as a corrective when we feel the language is being unduly threatened. And people using 'asshat' does represent a clear and present danger to the power of the English language."

Colough went on to say that the word had been on the bureau's watch list for several years.

"There was tension from the very beginning," he said. "When it began to crop up, during the first term of the second Bush presidency, we assumed it would peter out on its own, much as we had seen with 'dweeb' or 'dick licker.' But 'asshat' had legs, and at a certain point, as a public servant, you realize you have a duty to step in. I don't mean to come on like a crusader, but there's a very strong chance 'douche canoe' could be next."