REUTERS (Redmond, WA) - Microsoft today unveiled its own brand to compete in the crowded market for U.S. Government goods and services. Microsoft.GOV is intended to leverage the Redmond, Washington company's monopoly in computer operating systems to compete in — and ultimately dominate &mdash the lucrative field of United States federal governance.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at a news conference at the placing of the cornerstone for the new Microsoft™ Federal City^®, outside of lush Bellevue, Washington, announced that, "With the opening of our new campus in Bellevue, Microsoft-Washington.com will offer citizens and other users the world over the chance to take care of all their governing needs at the click of a mouse, at one convenient, one-stop website."

Microsoft Founder and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates III added that one of the first competing products in this space will be Microsoft Passport, which Mr. Gates claimed is technically superior to the more dated, hard-copy "U.S. Passport," and which allows Microsoft to keep a detailed database of customer needs, travel habits, telephone numbers, and personal thoughts in a large Microsoft Sequel database stored in a vast underground bunker in Eastern Washington State.

"With Microsoft.GOV, there will no longer be a need for such wasteful government contractors as Halliburton or Lockheed-Martin," said Mr. Gates. We know what consumers want, because we've been dictating consumer needs for more than two decades now.

Whitehouse sources were unable to be contacted, as their email servers were down.