Battle 'recession weight gain'
Also:
Also:
N.C. Rep. Cary Allred
The House is investigating a series of incidents Monday night in which a House member is accused of being intoxicated and inappropriately hugging a teenage page.
State Rep. Cary Allred, a Burlington Republican, denied in an interview Thursday any inappropriate behavior or being intoxicated. The page was a family friend and Allred said he hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.
Allred said that he remembers having one cocktail before leaving for Monday night's House session.
"That's all I remember," Allred said.
Allred was also stopped for speeding on the way to the House Monday afternoon. Allred said he was asked to produce identification beyond his drivers license and he showed the trooper his legislative ID. The trooper let Allred go with an admonishment to slow down, Allred said.
Allred said he is the subject of a "witch-hunt" because he is outspoken and frequently challenges House Speaker Joe Hackney.
"I think it's an effort to embarrass me because I am a conservative Republican from Alamance County, and he's a liberal Democrat from Chapel Hill," Allred said.
Hackney said he received various reports of the speeding incident, drinking by Allred and an "embrace" with a page. He asked the House sergeant at arms to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the matter.
"Speeding is not in my jurisdiction but the other two incidents it appear have to do with conduct on the House floor. I have simply asked the House sergeant-at-at arms, who is in charge of the House floor together with me to conduct what i would characterize as a preliminary inquiry to gather whatever facts there are to determine if any referral beyond this stage is appropriate," Hackney said.
As the House Session wound to a close Thursday, Allred told House members that he was proud of having sponsored the 17-year-old page.
"She's like my granddaughter," Allred said.
Customs officers in Rome on Thursday arrested a 76-year-old Dutch man who tried to smuggle in more than 13 pounds of cocaine packed into oranges that had been emptied of their pulp.
The man arrested on international drug trafficking charges at Rome's Leonardo da Vinci airport had arrived from Buenos Aires, Argentina and said he was on his way back to the Netherlands after a vacation.
Police at the airport said the drugs would have had a street value of $6.6 million.
In a separate bust, police arrested five Italians and a man from Paraguay when they seized more than 550 pounds of cocaine concealed in the trunks of tropical plants shipped from Argentina to a northern Italian port.
(Here is a Video of the incident.)
The workers speculated it was a carp.
At nearby Hanard Machine Inc., maintenance supervisor and fisherman Rich Samsom told the Statesman Journal it was more likely a chub.
Samsom said ospreys like perching on power poles near the plant. The birds, raptors related to hawks and eagles, feed on fish.
Oregon Public Utility Commission spokesman Bob Valdez said an outage from an electrically fried fish is rare. Cooked squirrel is much more common.
The hottest thing on the griddle at the Las Palmas restaurant in Calexico, California these days isn't the food - it's the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe that a cook says she saw on the griddle.
Restaurant manager Brenda Martinez says more than 100 people have flocked to the small town of Calexico on the California-Mexico border to gaze at the likeness of the Virgin Mary since it was discovered as the griddle was being cleaned.
Among the awe-struck was a group of masked Mexican wrestlers who arrived Thursday for an exhibition at a nearby swap meet.
One, known as Mr. Tempest, says: "This is amazing. It's a true miracle."
Since the discovery, the griddle has been taken out of service and placed in a shrine in a storage room.
Police in Fairbanks, Alaska said a man wanted to go to jail with his arrested brother, so he shoved an officer and got his wish. David Jacob Ginnis, 35, pleaded guilty Wednesday to assault on a police officer and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, with the full sentence suspended.
Ginnis' brother got into a fight on Monday night and was arrested on a criminal trespass charge.
Police said Ginnis, who appeared intoxicated, approached the arresting officer and asked if he could speak with his brother, who was in the back of a patrol car.
After five minutes, Ginnis asked if he could join his brother in jail if he assaulted the officer.
The officer told him that would "not go well" for him, but Ginnis shoved the officer with his fist. He was arrested.
Police in northwestern Pennsylvania say a burglar took some jellybeans from a home - but nothing else.
A 24-year-old man likely will rethink his habit of sleeping with a gun after police said his 40-caliber pistol discharged and hit him in the shoulder on Wednesday.
Also:
The Harder They Fall…
What a Hoot: As Keith Olbermann reported Wednesday night, perpetually-insane Minnesota comediatrix Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Daft) brought the funny the other day when she took to the House floor to condemn Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Dems for the ‘Hoot-Smalley Act’ of the Great Depression era. While you can never be sure when dealing with a dingbat like Bachmann, who apparently stole her blank eyeballs from a crazy doll in “Bride of Chucky“, she probably meant the ‘Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act‘ that was sponsored by two Republicans, and signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover in 1930.
In reality, FDR campaigned against the act in 1932, and a Dem majority in Congress effectively repealed Smoot-Hawley in 1934 with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, but in Michele’s loopy-dumb, wish-I-had-a-brain, far-right universe facts are a liberal, commie plot invented by the Devil to trip up those patriotically lying in the name of Jesus.
If you’re a sane Republican (okay, that would be confined to ex-McCain manager Steve Schmidt and Sen. Olympia Snowe) you know that Bachmann’s Sixth District is already in the ‘D’ column in 2010 (she nearly lost to an unknown children’s book character named Elwyn Tinklenberg in ‘08), and that you must find a legal means to (a) shut this woman up before she further damages what’s left of your party and (b) prevent her from running for president or vice president in 2012. (The vision of a ‘Palin-Bachmann 2012′ ticket privately induces dyspeptic nightmares of an LBJ/Goldwater electoral slaughter among GOP bigwigs.)
Of course, it may be too late – the GOP brand is so tainted that if you jettisoned all of the dotty Dittoheads, nattering neocons, tone-deaf teabaggers, putrid Palinites, raging racists, Savage Nation neo-Nazis, fatuous Freepers, flaming fully-automatic gun nuts and kinky religious kooks, you could assemble what’s left of the party in a Washington hotel ballroom with space to spare for a trained elephant act. (For more on this, read the last two items in this article.)
Read the rest here.
Twenty-eight groups representing millions of hunters and sportsmen are demanding that the Fascist bastard end his collaboration with the HSUS and stop 'helping them to mainstream their image in the minds of reasonable people.
Mexico’s Senate approved a bill on Tuesday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of narcotics for personal use, in order to free resources to fight violent drug cartels.
The bill, proposed by conservative President Felipe Calderon, would make it legal to carry up to 5 grams (0.18 ounces) of marijuana, 500 milligrams (0.018 ounces) of cocaine and tiny quantities of other drugs such as heroin and methamphetamines.
Mexico’s Congress passed a similar proposal in 2006 but the bill was vetoed by Calderon’s predecessor Vicente Fox, under pressure from the United States, which said it would increase drug abuse, but now is worried by the drug-related violence along its border.
Calderon has staked his presidency on curtailing the escalating violence between rival drug gangs as they fight over smuggling routes to the United States, with violence spilling into U.S. cities like Phoenix and Tucson.
Photo via cisdallas.org
Last week in Congress was dubbed the "mother of all climate weeks", and with a parade of hearings from heavyweights like Al Gore and Newt Gingrich, it certainly seemed to fit the bill. Of course, nothing was resolved about the massive climate bill the congressmen were debating, and things got a little ugly. So ugly, in fact, that some Republicans decided they didn't want to deal with it at all, and that instead of continuing to engage the bill and sit in on actual hearings, they're holding a mock hearing.
Photo via NY Mag
Yesterday marked Obama's 100th day in office, but if you were within 50 feet of any sort of media yesterday, you already knew that. We marked the occasion with an Obama Timeline of his first 100 days in green. But those 100 days, while certainly filled with a slew of good first steps, are far from definitive in terms of judging Obama's green agenda. What really matters, of course, is what comes next. And so, in celebration of the first day of Obama's Next 100 Days, here are a few ideas of what he could and should do now.
A northeastern Pennsylvania prosecutor said he's shocked that two sisters accused of selling heroin are 65 and 70 years old.
Tough economy, man
Elise Tan-Roberts was five months when she spoke her first word, calling her father "Dada".
She was walking three months later and running two months after that.
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
Philip Alcabes | ||||
thedailyshow.com | ||||
|
Two Australian nursing home residents were "severely chewed" by mice when the Queensland state-run facility in which they were patients became infested with the rodents.
A Florida man faces misdemeanor charges for possession of drug paraphernalia after he placed his keys and other belongings, including a pot pipe, in a tray at a courthouse security checkpoint.
There are probably better ways to avoid jury duty than the approach recently taken by a Montana man.
After Erik Slye, 36, received a jury notice earlier this year, he filed a notarized affidavit seeking to be excused from serving on a District Court panel in Gallatin County.
This one time at band camp ...
Don't mess with a marching band girl, especially one armed with a baton.
A 17-year-old high school marching band student beat up two assailants who tried to mug her as she walked to school in this high desert community about 40 miles north of Los Angeles, sheriff's officials said Tuesday.
Also:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
The Stockholm Syndrome | ||||
thedailyshow.com | ||||
|
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2 | ||||
thedailyshow.com | ||||
|
Very interesting tidbit: the Swedish MP explains that Sweden has a trade surplus and lends money to the US (we, of course, have a massive trade deficit).
There is, of course, a contrarian view: that the trade deficit is not a bad thing. That it is, in fact, a good thing:
The Causes and Consequences of the U.S. Trade Deficit
Are Trade Deficits Really Bad News?
(a case that seems less and less reality-based every day)
Also:
Matter and energy are vanishing without trace at the center of the galaxy – the best evidence yet that a black hole is lurking there.
A system that can tell what language someone is speaking from the shapes and movements of their mouth could lead to lip-reading computers for deaf people.
A Georgia woman threatened to shoot her neighbor in the kneecaps because she thought he was leaving walnuts in her yard.
Also:
Also:
Also:
Also:
From the "You know this was in Arkansas" Department:
Even though the truck wouldn't run, it was still a crime to try to steal it. A Jefferson County sheriff's deputy thought it looked a little odd when three men were pushing a pickup truck near the county jail on Sunday, with a fourth man in the cab to steer.
A Virginia man walked toward the distinctive music emanating from his stolen ice cream van and found it a few blocks from where it was taken, police said.
Six members of a family holidaying in Malaysia drowned when their small boat capsized in rough seas, leaving a lone survivor who clung to his mother's dead body to stay afloat.
A British letter carrier got an unpleasant surprise when a venomous snake lurking in a post box bit him on the hand.
A worker at Radio Shack was arrested for punching a customer.
Officers arrested 52-year-old James Knol of Eau Claire on Sunday night for disorderly conduct and battery.
Also:
A Russian man whose car was stolen on Tuesday in Saint Petersburg said the thieves were in for a surprise.
Also:
Also:
Also:
Also: