Parliaments Are for Dummies: Vice President Biden celebrated Independence's Eve last night in Iraq, where he gave a shockingly gaffe-free speech praising the huge mess normal difficulty the Iraqi Parliament has had forming a government and choose a Prime Minister. The process has been ongoing since the March 7 elections, in which no party won a strong majority.

What's More American Than Being Broke?: Russian math genius and impoverished recluse Grigori Perelman officially turned down the $1 million prize he was awarded by the Clay Mathematics Institute for solving the Poincaré Conjecture in 2003. Meanwhile, the state of Illinois is also ignoring money, to the tune of $5.01 billion in current debts. The state has been the long-term victim (it hurts so good!) of a melting pot of "blue state convictions about social safety nets and a red state aversion to taxes."

Literally Anyone: can get married, including banned-for-life former figure skater and erstwhile boxer Tonya Harding, who exercised her inalienable right to the pursuit of unhappiness in Clark County on June 23, marrying a man from the area.

Have You Left No Sense of Decency?: Please, please, please do not celebrate by tweeting the Declaration of Independence. Twitter is a sacred medium, and must be reserved for bitching about inane problems.

Save it for the Professionals: Jefferson was a hack, not that it matters.

We Can't All Be Spider-man: A Port Angeles man was bit by a non-radioactive spider and got extremely sick, developing deadly MRSA. The man could not afford the usual, most effective treatment for the bacterium because he had cancelled his too-expensive insurance. Only four and a half more years until universal healthcare!

RIP: The American Novel.

Liberty or Death?: Glenn Beck strikes one more blow for ignorance, launching a new "university" for paid subscribers to his website. In addition to Beck, "faculty" include an evangelical pseudo-historian and other theologians theocrats.

Blind Justice: People obsessed with Lady Gaga's terrifyingly ginormous eyes from the "Bad Romance" video are copying her look with circle lenses that optometrists say could cause vision problems or even blindness.

Oregon Trail Reenactment Gets Real: Seven cases of Salmonella infection have been confirmed in Sasquatch attendees.