A homicidal maniac is on the loose in our capital and the authorities are clueless as to the killer's identity. This past Saturday, I began my own investigation. I'm happy to announce that I have solved the puzzle, taken from Mad Libs: The Serial Killers Edition and completed with the suggestions of Profiling for Dummies, which reveals the identity of Washington's psychopath (my answers for the blanks are underlined):

The killer is a white, middle-aged Caucasian who was born in the South Central United States into a wealthy and prestigious family. Yet despite all the advantages afforded by his status, the killer didn't enjoy a happy childhood. Having inherited a massive bank account but a meager intellect, the killer was forced to bear the stigma of "undeserving brat" as a scarlet badge of shame and to endure the feelings of worthlessness it pinned to his heart.

To defend his wounded ego, the killer constructed his burgeoning psyche so as to downplay the importance of wealth and intellect as forces of his character. The unintentional result was that he ended up permanently defining himself in the context of those very forces.

Today, for example, he loves to introduce himself as "a good old boy" in outward scorn of the intelligentsia to which he inwardly wishes he belonged. He takes that scorn to the extreme, bragging that he opened a dictionary just once in life, at the age of 8, and only to clip out the definition of a "good old boy": n. slang. A man having qualities held to be characteristic of certain Southern white males, such as a relaxed or informal manner, strong loyalty to family and friends, and often an anti-intellectual bias and intolerant point of view.

That cutting, from his mother's American Heritage Dictionary, remains in his left pocket to this day, worn soft and almost furry from ceaseless coddling. Without a doubt, the obsessive-compulsive stroking of his "fuzzy" pet serves to alleviate the dissonance he experiences as a symptom of his numerous inferiority complexes.

Until recently, this behavior effectively reduced his dissonance to a manageable level. Now, however, the killer's feelings of inadequacy are so consuming that they demand nothing short of homicide as a distraction.

The killer's feelings of inferiority first began to fester uncontrollably in college. The killer attended an Ivy League school where he was accepted because of his father's connections. There, surrounded by students infinitely more talented than himself, the killer felt as a midget in Norway must -- extremely small. In the South, he had always been able to amuse his fellow students atop his "God bless" and "Amen" stilts, but in the more secular New England, his Christian circus act entertained no one.

His inevitable social ostracism at college served to steep his contempt for intelligence and for those who possess it. Thanks to rampant grade inflation and many contributions from related alumni, the killer graduated on time and joined the military with the hope of excelling in a more level playing field. Precisely because the killer never saw any action, he became the ideal killing machine, dehumanized by the repetitiveness of his sterile military training.

After the army, the killer worked various executive jobs he secured through his family's connections. He would have remained in the relative obscurity of corporate America but for his megalomanical belief that he, above all others, deserved to be in a position of national power and attention.

The killer's rationalization of this belief was one part Biblicism and two parts Social Darwinism -- those born into wealth and prestige deserve it because God wills things to be the way they are and nature wills them to continue that way. This constant need to prove himself and the sinking feeling that his spotlight was not bright enough ultimately drove him to dust off his army rifle and make a name for himself in Washington. Now, he's taken his hands out of his pockets and set his sight on innocents, pulling the trigger when he needs a good distraction. But he doesn't do it for a love of blood -- he does it for the media coverage.

Because under the warm glow of the television, broadcasting his victim's name in red letters that spell "Iraq," George W. Bush feels like a big man ... for a while.