BUSH SUES OVER FAKED INTERNET DRUGS PHOTO

The American presidential contender George W Bush is taking legal action
against a satirical Internet website that lampoons his allegedly misspent
youth. The case may test the limits of both free speech and the candidate's
sense of humour.

Mr Bush, the Texas governor and front-runner for the Republican nomination,
took particular and predictable exception to a faked photograph on the
website that shows him with a straw up his nose, inhaling lines of white
powder, beneath the headline: ``It's the hypocrisy, stupid.''

Allegations that Mr Bush took drugs in the past have bedevilled his
campaign, and when questioned about the website, Mr Bush reacted furiously,
insisting ``there ought to be limits to freedom,'' a remark that he has
since had cause to regret.

Mr. Bush's lawyers warned Zack Exley, the 29-year-old computer programmer
from Boston who designed the site, that he faced a lawsuit for using
copyrighted photographs lifted from the official Bush campaign website.

A formal complaint has also been filed with the Federal Election Commission
(FEC), accusing Mr Exley of violating election rules by behaving like a
political campaign committee without observing necessary regulations. If the
action was intended to silence Mr Exley, it has had the reverse effect. More
than six million people logged on to the site in the 25-days after the row
first erupted last summer and Mr Exley has become a figurehead for freedom
of speech.