Around the time that my teenaged mom-to-be was making googly eyes at my dad-to-be, L. Ron Hubbard — like my father — was in his early twenties. While my father was setting up a medical practice on the Jersey Shore, Ron Hubbard was reportedly off tramping through Asia, learning Eastern religions and customs. All of us in Scientology believed this about Ron. He was an explorer, an intrepid researcher into the darkest depths and starry heights of the human soul. He engineered and built the Bridge to Total Freedom.

Lafayette Ronald Hubbard was a rugged guy, just like my dad.

He was born on March 13, 1911, in Tilden, Nebraska. My dad was born just a few months later, on May 19. If you believe the authorized biography, Ron grew up out by a tribe of Blackfoot peoples. By the time he was four, he’d already learned all the Blackfoot lore there was to learn, so tribal elders made him a full-fledged blood brother. What’s more, at thirteen years old, Ron became the youngest Eagle Scout in the history of Scouting. So goes the authorized biography, and as Scientologists, we believed it.

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Lay off Americans for Prosperity. If you've got a problem with the Koch brothers, go after them the democratic way -- by funneling millions of dollars into a front organization to launch attack ads against teachers.

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Along with some incredible new details, there are the previously reported stories of rampant physical abuse of underlings by church head David Miscavige, the church's "Sea Org" full of underage workers signed to "billion-year contracts" performing manual labor for little to no money, and the tales of the church separating families and milking its members for thousands of dollars. The church is even under investigation by the FBI for what could amount to human trafficking.

And, of course, like any other moneymaking American enterprise, it has good friends in Washington.

As far as I know, the only Scientologist to ever actually serve in Congress was the late Sonny Bono. His widow, Mary Bono Mack, who inherited his seat, attended courses, but never took to the religion.

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Angle's one comment to the assembled members of the mainstream press was "yes," in response to basically being asked whether she enjoyed lunch.

The reason Angle is unable to answer questions is because she is an Outsider. Also, she only has two full-time staffers. She needs a couple weeks with the campaign pros behind Scott Brown's victory before she's qualified to say what she believes to reporters. Once she owns a truck, you can ask all the question you want, lame stream media.

Texas Republican John Cornyn explained:

And Cornyn acknowledged that Angle is not yet prepared for what he considers to be a coming onslaught of attention. "I don't think anybody would be prepared for a race. where 20 or 30 million dollars is going to be spent in negative advertising," he said. "It's going to take a few weeks, I would think, but, you know, it's really up to her."

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The accounts in the story come from several women who became pregnant while they were Sea Org members during the 1990s. Sea Org provides its 6,000 members with housing, food and medical care, and in exchange they perform jobs ranging from cleaning to communications to "auditing,” or serving as spiritual counselors. Scientologists who join Sea Org sign billion-year contracts indicating their intention to serve the church throughout this and future lifetimes (commitment-phobes need not apply).

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Yesterday the 55-year-old actor did something extraordinary: He got off his ass and flew his own Boeing 707 from Florida down to Haiti with an astonishing four tons of ready-to-eat military rations and medical supplies. It is a gesture no one would look askance at in and of itself, particularly at a time when relief organizations like Doctors Without Borders have been having persistent problems getting into the beleaguered country.  We may raise a skeptical eyebrow at the fact that the famous movie star – and his lovely wife, Kelly Preston – just happened to arrive prepared for a camera-ready scene of unloading cargo, but it's doubtful anyone in Haiti right now is saying, "Medical supplies? We would, but you really sucked in 'Old Dogs.'"

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The group's French branch immediately announced it would appeal the verdict.

The court convicted the Church of Scientology's French office, its library and six of its leaders of organized fraud. Investigators said the group pressured members into paying large sums of money for questionable financial gain and used "commercial harassment" against recruits.

The group was fined euro400,000 ($600,000) and the library euro200,000. Four of the leaders were given suspended sentences of between 10 months and two years. The other two were given fines of euro1,000 and euro2,000.

However, the court did not order the Church of Scientology to shut down, ruling that it would be likely to continue its activities anyway "outside any legal framework."

Prosecutors had urged that the group be dissolved in France and fined euro2 million ($3 million).

The verdict is "an Inquisition of modern times," said Scientology spokeswoman Agnes Bron, referring to efforts to rout out heretics of the Roman Catholic Church in centuries past.

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In his letter, Haggis explains, "for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California -- rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state -- shames us." Though the Church claims not to dictate personal sexual practices and has several openly gay members, it's perhaps no coincidence that Scientology also has a reputation as Hollywood's biggest closet, with gay rumors persistently dogging famous members like Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

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In either case, their discretion has backfired. It may well be that the activities of the world's most notorious secret societies consist of little more than grown men cavorting in drag and performing dopey ceremonies under the influence of strong drink. Whatever -- the public will never believe it's all innocuous. Secrecy turns out to be the most effective attention-getting, fantasy-inciting trick in the book. Remember how the neighbor kid's previously unimpressive playhouse became instantly and irresistibly fascinating the moment he taped a "Keep Out" sign to the door? If a cabal of evil masterminds really wanted to keep their fiendish plans quiet, they'd cook them up in a Christian Science Reading Room and hand out fliers on street corners.

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As an undergraduate, I picked up a hobby of reading about fringe religious movements. As a result, I became pretty familiar with the Church of Scientology, to the extent that a layman hobbyist can be. I also casually knew a couple of folks involved, though I wouldn't call them close friends.

Anyway, I recently developed a friendship with someone, and as it was going along, I picked up fairly quickly from the things that she was discussing that she was a Scientologist. If I wasn't as familiar with the church as I am, I probably wouldn't have figured it out, so it wasn't as if she was trying to tell me.

I chose to ask her about it, and my worry about her involvement showed. I didn't bring up any of the really horrible facts about the actions of the church, but I did honestly express my concern about the organization. She told in general terms how she had been recruited, and that she had been involved for over a year, but not many other details. However, she gives the impression to all but her closest friends and family that she is not a Scientologist. She also believed I was invading her privacy and was pretty angry.

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Yep, Katie came through with the world's biggest get. Bigger than George Bush, who got bumped to night No. 2 to make way for Suri. The only bigger guest Katie could have booked was Osama bin Laden. He hasn't been seen, well, longer than... Dick Cheney. Where has Cheney been? I like to the think that Osama and Dick are hanging out in plain sight at a Rally's in Van Nuys.

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But Katie ... they can say that about your child. And they have been, and they will. We've all heard them -- the conspiracy theories to make tangible the vague doubt about Katie and Tom's bundle of joy. Although the mainstream press often hints at public skepticism, the best of the theories are found not in news stories -- Tom Cruise's publicist isn't that bad -- but on message boards and blogs all over the Internet. One only needs to press the "cached" link on a Google search to find smug declarations of what's really going on with TomKat and Suri.

Early on, the mystery of Katie's incredible shrinking/growing stomach led to fake-pregnancy rumors on Web sites, some with fun "Click to watch it grow and shrink" links on Katie's belly. Others were wondering whether Katie was articifically inseminated with the sperm of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. A reporter appearing on CNN said it was a well-known fact that he had preserved his sperm.

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Broadsheet's Special Forces units are currently mobilizing to infiltrate the couple's home and strategically place an additional sign reading "Run, Katie, run!" ("And whatever you do, don't talk to this guy.")

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"So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"

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Hooray for Hollywood! Providing sweet relief from reality since World War I!

But it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye. And if the cover story in August's W magazine is any indication, "Batman Begins" star Holmes has had both her peepers gouged from her gamine face by a sharp Tom Cruise stick. Reading the piece, it's hard to ignore the rather awkward position we, consumers of America's cotton-candy media, have gotten ourselves into. Holmes' goring just officially stopped being fun or funny; suddenly we're not simply fans or spectators, we're accessories, standing idly by in uncomfortable paralysis as she gets her body and mind snatched on a national stage.

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But the Church of Scientology's war on psychiatry is no joke. For decades, Scientologists have maintained that the very notion of mental illness is a fraud. They base this belief on the views of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, who proclaimed that psychiatry was an evil enterprise, a form of terrorism, and the cause of crime. Now, they're attempting to enshrine their contempt for psychiatry in laws across the country.

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But for many who have long questioned the church, founded by the late L. Ron Hubbard and embraced by a string of Hollywood stars, that article represents one of the genuinely aggressive reports on the organization. And their concern is that what subsequently happened to Time -- and to other publications that tried to peek behind the church's cheerful exterior -- explains why few investigative reports on the church have followed.

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