Responding to pressure from the CIA and NSA, the US Government has banned aluminum headgear, metal underwear and other devices designed to interfere with mind-control rays.

"This kind of clothing is unpatriotic," said a White House spokesman. "America's intelligence agencies are fighting a ceaseless battle against the forces of terrorism, paranoia, alien abduction and civil liberties. Mind control is an essential weapon in our fight to keep the US safe from unconventional and non-conformist elements in society. The agencies rely on mind-control rays to preserve our freedom, and we have to let these guys do their jobs."

He added: "It's also unfair. The Government has invested billions in the MKULTRA program, developing some of the most sophisticated technology known to man. And these antisocial elements are defeating it with two dollars' worth of Bacofoil."

Congress was prompted to outlaw the possession or manufacture of anti-mind-control devices and garments when it was revealed that increasingly large numbers of people were failing to take the Government seriously.

"Clearly our message isn't getting through," said Senator Julius Fouine, chair of the Congressional Committee on Democratic Conformance. "Congress, the intelligence agencies, the armed forces - we can't make the US the country it's supposed to be all by ourselves. We need everyone on board and on message. We have the technologies to achieve this, to ensure that people think the right way, but we have to deal with that small portion of the population - traitors, I'd call them - who have the strange and unAmerican delusion that they can think any way they like."

Not everyone is happy about the ruling. 

Jezebel X, a self-confessed mind control sex-slave, who claims to have been the unwilling plaything of George W Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the last three Popes, and OJ Simpson, said: "A tin-foil hat is the only way I can get any rest. If I couldn't block the rays from time to time, I'd be worn out within a week." Asked why she didn't wear the aluminum hat all the time, she replied: "A job's a job."

There are rumours of activity by a shadowy group known as the Beanie Resistance Army (BRA) - an uneasy coalition of geeks, conspiracy theorists and ex-postal workers, according to one anonymous source. "There's a growing underground network of freedom fighters dedicated to distributing beanie-making materials to insurgents across the country," he said.

Recent raids by FBI agents have uncovered BRA safe houses where they discovered instructions for building tin-foil beanies and aluminum long-johns. They also unearthed several copies of the covert movement's 'bible', the Aluminum Foil Deflector Beanie, a book that allegedly provides full details of how to make anti-mind-control devices from nothing more than household materials.

However, according to experts, the law concerns only metal-based garments and will affect just a handful of people. "It's a good job they exempted propeller beanies," commented a spokesgeek from Slashdot, "otherwise the internet woulda ground to a halt."

[Photo courtesy Zapato Productions Intradimensional]