\"\" Washington (AP) – The U.S. Senate took a dramatic turn today as a lunchtime Taco Bell run in Senator Russ Feingold\’s car was poisoned by a toxic anal cloud. It is still unclear who released the rancid fart, with Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA) riding shotgun and Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) and Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) in the back seat.

\”Whoever is responsible for that atrocity should be held accountable,\” said Feingold, as he took a bite of his steak Grilled Stuft Burrito. Feingold immediately had his staff look into whether a large intestine has been ever been censured. It only appears that Senator Jacob Welsh Miller\’s beard was censured in 1802 for accepting numerous bribes.

Unnamed sources close to the situation have reported that Obama is most likely the responsible party. However, no senator was willing to finger the freshman senator from Illinois as the culprit. \”If we blamed him, he\’d just play the race card,\” said Lautenberg. \”What he needs to do is play the \’race to the bathroom\’ card, because it smells like a woodchuck died in his colon,\” added Lautenberg.

\”It was totally Obama,\” said Landrieu, who immediately phoned in a report of Centox Nerve Gas to the Department of Homeland Security. When told that Centox gas only existed on the popular television show \”24,\” Landrieu immediately suspected Obama. \”I saw him giggling back in the corner while he pulled his shirt over his nose,\” she said.

It appears that Obama was invoking a little-known legislative maneuver known as \”hot boxing,\” in which a legislator rolls all the windows of the car up before flatulence occurs. This tactic, also known as the \”Dutch oven,\” apparently was first employed by Senator Henry Clay in 1830, which earned him the nickname \”Old Rotten Ass.\”

Republicans immediately pounced on the revelation, with Sam Brownback (R-KS) relating an unfortunate recent encounter with Obama. \”We were working late one night, and he tried to give me a cup of \’F\’\”, said Brownback, referring to a little-known tactic where the perpetrator \”cups\” a fart in their hand and delivers it directly to the face of the victim. Brownback claims he got his revenge the next day when he rubbed Crisco on Obama\’s office doorknob, followed by passing a bill declaring Illinois \”Kansas\’ bitch.\”

Hearings are set to begin on the controversy in May.