David Paterson is still adding to his string of confessions. I tried it a couple of times, he said in an interview with NY1 News, when asked if he had ever used cocaine.
It was his first television interview since he became governor last week. Host Dominic Carter asked Paterson a number of questions about past drug use. The governor also admitted he has used marijuana, but added that he has not touched illegal drugs since his early twenties.
Posted by: Mike ||
03/25/2008 06:55 ||
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Now if he preemptively confesses to worshiping Satan and having wild sex with animals, he'll have covered all the bases.
Police say belongings removed from a Southern Oregon man's property have begun slowly reappearing at his home, a day after a pair of hoax ads on Craigslist cost Robert Salisbury much of what he owned.
The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.
But the ads were a hoax. Robert Salisbury had no plans to leave.
The independent contractor was at Emigrant Lake when he got a call from a woman who had stopped by his house to claim his horse.
On his way home he stopped a truck loaded down with his work ladders, lawn mower and weed eater.
"I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did." Must be a liberal. Except I know that liberals don't work. He must have been going to put it up for sale on Craigslist. :-)
The driver sped away after rebuking Salisbury. On his way home he spotted other cars filled with his belongings.
Once home he was greeted by close to 30 people rummaging through his barn and front porch. Hey, which one of you dumba$$es has my shotgun?!
The trespassers, armed with printouts of the ad, tried to brush him off. "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," Salisbury said. "It boggles the mind." No they didn't. Or they wouldn't be carrying printouts of the ad. They were just having a bit of denial is all.
Jacksonville police and Jackson County sheriff's deputies arrived but by then several cars packed with Salisbury's property had fled. Probably came with their sirens and lights on so nobody would be around to confront.
He turned some license plate numbers over to police. By late Monday, s ome people who learned of the hoax began to return items taken from the home. Authorities weren't able to say how much or what had been returned, but did say that by late Monday afternoon, items were "starting to piling up" in Salisbury's driveway. Give everyone two days to return all his stuff. After a week, they start running plates. If someone is found with his stuff, they're toast.
Michelle Easley had seen the ad that claimed Salisbury's horse had been declared abandoned by the sheriff's department and was free to a good home.
"I can't stand to see a horse suffer so I drove out there and got her," Easley said. "The horse didn't look abandoned. She is in good shape for being 32 years old."
But it looked odd, so she left a note on Salisbury's door explaining the ad. She then decided to call to make sure the ad was legitimate when the second similar ad appeared.
"I feel bad because I was a part of it," Easley said. "It felt right to call the police." If you like 'em stoopid, it doesn't get better than this unless you prefer the drooling kind.
Fagan praised Easley's stupidity honesty but said prosecution was likely for anybody caught with Salisbury's property.
Officers were still contacting people who were seen leaving Salisbury's house with his stuff. If they return the taken items, no charges will be filed. But people who dont return what they took may face charges. May face charges? If they don't, I'm going to start writing craigslist ads like this and just go take what I want! Here's an example: "Ben's Jewelers inventory reduction event! If you can steal it in the middle of the night, it's yours!"
Items can be returned with no questions asked, Fagan said. Lucky ba$tards. I'd grill every one of them alive and put the rest on my homeowner's insurance.
Detectives have contacted Craigslist's legal team to try to trace the ad. This guy is probably the King Idiot in this story.
Meanwhile, Salisbury could not even relax on his porch swing -- someone took it. Well, when they catch the guy you can make a new one out of his bones and sinews. His ribs would make a great seat and his cut-open skull a great beer holder. It can serve as a warning to the next one who tries this $hit.
A Brooklyn rabbi is speaking out after a scary encounter with a man accused of snatching his yarmulke off his head.
Rabbi Uria Ohana's crash course on street justice -- and the justice -- system continues.
"I got a call from the district attorney," Ohana said. "I'm going to testify in front of the grand jury."
The case is against 18-year old Ali Hussein, accused of snatching Ohana's yarmulke last week inside a Park Slope subway station. It was an offense Ohana says he couldn't let pass.
"I decided to chase him to get my yarmulke back," Ohana said.
Prosecutors haven't classified the incident as a bias crime yet, but a Brooklyn resident who spoke to CBS 2 HD says he's not encouraged by what happened.
"It's unfortunate that these two cultures that don't get along a world away even here in Brooklyn are not getting along," Brooklyn resident Miguel Yazinsky said. One of them is getting along just fine. It's the other I'm worried about.
Rabbi Ohana says as he ran back down the station's stairs two of Hussein's friends got up from this bench and chased him out of the station.
"They were screaming 'Allah Akhbar (God is great) and punching my face," Ohana said.
But Ohana says things came to a head when Hussein was hit by a car as he ran out onto Fourth Avenue. EMS officials confirm responding to a call at that time and location for a pedestrian struck by a vehicle. Yeah, God is great. Isn't He.
At the subway station, CBS 2 HD found little sympathy for Hussein.
"So you're trying to say the guy who grabbed it got hit by a car? That's justice, isn't it?" Brooklyn resident Kevin Ryan said. Almost. He's still breathing.
Not for Rabbi Ohana, who says despite the fact Hussein was injured, he still wants him prosecuted to fullest extent of the law. Make sure he suffers both in this world as well as the next.
Hussein is charged with grand larceny, petty larceny and criminal possession of stolen property. Prosecutors expect more charges will be filed.
Posted by: gorb ||
03/25/2008 04:08 ||
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Posted by: ed ||
03/25/2008 9:22 Comments ||
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#3
Too damn bad the car didn't punt the bastard around 300 feet. Being NY though, no chance for enough velocity. Rabbi, you're a good man. And, we in the NRA would welcome you. We have the prescription for your wanderings on and about the subways.
#5
Too bad the car didn't toss him a few hundred feet - then they could charge him with leaving the scene of an accident.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/25/2008 11:37 Comments ||
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What say we see if we can toss in "Mopery and Dopery on the High Seas" and "Conspiracy to Lurk with Intent to Gawk" as well. Have the driver sue him for damages to his paint job, too.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and Detroit's youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages contradicted his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy also charged the popular yet polarizing 37-year-old mayor of no particular party with obstruction of justice and misconduct in office.
Former Chief of Staff Christine Beatty, 37, who also denied under oath that she and Kilpatrick had a romantic relationship in 2002 and 2003, was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.
"Some have suggested that the issues in this case are personal or private," Worthy said. "The justice system has been severely mocked and the public trust trampled on. ... This case is about as far from being a private matter as one can get," she said.
The charges could signal the end of Kilpatrick's six-year career as mayor of one of America's largest cities. Perjury is a felony, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. But for Kilpatrick, a conviction also would mean his immediate expulsion from office. The Detroit City Charter calls for any elected official convicted of a felony while in office to be removed.
Kilpatrick has said he would not resign and last week said he expects to be vindicated when all aspects of the scandal are made public.
The mayor was expected to hold a news conference at noon. Worthy said she expected the mayor and Beatty to turn themselves in by 7 a.m. Tuesday. Worthy has said she and her staff have pored over more than 40,000 pages of documents since January, when the Detroit Free Press published excerpts of sexually explicit text messages sent to Beatty's city-issued pager in 2002 and 2003.
The messages contradict statements Kilpatrick and Beatty gave under oath during a whistleblowers' trial last summer when each denied a romantic relationship. Their testimony came in a lawsuit filed by two police officers who alleged they were fired for investigating claims that the mayor used his security unit to cover up extramarital affairs.
Kilpatrick is married with three children. Beatty was married at the time and has two children.
In all, Kilpatrick faces charges of conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, misconduct in office, perjury in a court proceeding and two counts of perjury other than in a court proceeding.
Beatty is charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice, obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury in a court proceeding and two counts of perjury other than in a court proceeding.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
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Fans of "The Wire" think that research for that show was done in Baltimore. Actually, the show would be a documentary in Detroit and Philadelphia. At least the Mayor took on a Swahili name. Beats Hussain.
In the 16 months since he was sworn in, state Rep. Michael R. DesRoches did not cast a single vote. Colleagues in the House say they have not seen him in Concord this session.
They won't be seeing him in the future, either. DesRoches announced his resignation yesterday, explaining he was recently evicted from his apartment in downtown Manchester and no longer lives in the district he was elected to represent.
DesRoches, a Democrat, said he did not expect to win when he agreed to put his name on the ballot in 2006. Once elected, he said, he was sidetracked by a series of personal and financial problems, including a bad knee, a breakup and a bout with depression. . . .
Posted by: Mike ||
03/25/2008 15:59 ||
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CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A war on gophers waged by two Canadian men went awry this weekend when a device used to blast the rodents in their holes sparked a massive grass fire in a rural area near Calgary, Alberta, causing more than C$200,000 ($197,000) in damages. Remember, you can't own a firearm so what to do about Gophers?
Despite a ban on fires in the tinder-dry area of Springbank, just northeast of Calgary's city limits, two men went into a field to kill gophers using a device called a Rodenator, fire officials said on Monday. They'll be Back!
The device pumps a mixture of propane and oxygen into gopher holes, which is then ignited, and, according to the manufacturer's Web site, the resulting blast creates a shock wave that kills the gopher and collapses its tunnel system. Shock and Awe, Gopher style.
"We had a couple of numbnutz acreage owners out taking care of their rodent problem with this device," said Captain Joe Garssi of the municipal district of Rocky View's fire department.
"They did a few holes successfully and then hit a hole that didn't go in very far. When they filled it with propane it over-filled the hole...and when they ignited it (fire) flashed out of the hole into the grass beside them." Watch out for them Gophers lightn' farts.
The resulting grass fire scorched about 160 acres of surrounding property and destroyed a number of outbuildings. No homes were damaged.
"The way I look at it, it's 'humans eight, gophers one'." Garssi said, as the two men destroyed about eight of the rodents before sparking the blaze.
Charges are being considered against one of the two men involved.
In Western Canada, gophers, more properly called Richardson's ground squirrels, are often considered a nuisance, blamed for ruining crops and damaging golf courses and lawns. Where's Carl from Caddyshack when ya need him? Gopher on a Stick, anyone?
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/25/2008 13:43 ||
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"In the immortal words of Jean Paul Sartre, 'Au revoir, gopher'. "
Posted by: Mike ||
03/25/2008 17:44 Comments ||
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#2
Here is a video of killing gophers with propane:
#3
Hey, this should work with jihadis holed up in caves, cellars and bunkers, right? Maybe we should try it.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
03/25/2008 20:06 Comments ||
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#4
In the horse and buggy days, more horses had to be destroyed after being crippled by a meet with a gopher hole, than any other cause. Killing gophers should be like breathing to a farmer.
JERUSALEM (Rooters) - Israel has granted a Palestinian a rare residency permit after the man, who is gay, said his sexuality put his life in danger in the West Bank, a Defence Ministry official said on Tuesday.
The 33-year-old Palestinian from Jenin was issued a temporary permit to live with his Israeli partner in Tel Aviv after arguing he faced death threats from fellow Palestinians who disapproved of him being gay, the official said. "Disapproving" meaning "wanting to kill on sight".
Israel's Interior Ministry rarely issues permits for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank who want to live with their partners in Israel, regardless of sexuality. Requesting such a permit can take years.
"In this case the man's lawyer said his life was in danger because of his sexual preference," said Peter Lerner, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, whose office comes under the defence ministry.
"On this basis we issued the temporary permit," he said.
But while homosexuality is largely taboo in conservative and majority Muslim West Bank cities, one rights groups working with Palestinian gays said there had been few reports of physical violence in recent years.
However Palestinians are wary of collaborators and Rauda Morcos, director of Aswat support group for Palestinian lesbians, said this suspicion was directed at gay men and women.
Morcos said Palestinian gays were sometimes targeted by the Israeli secret service and told they must collaborate or face being outed. So, it's the joooooos' fault, as could be expected.
While homosexuality is more widely accepted in Israel, some sections of society such as ultra-Orthodox Jews are strident opponents of gay rights and some religious Jews threatened violence during last year's Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem. Obligatory moral-equivalence bit.
Lerner said the man, whom he could not name, would still need eventual approval from the Interior Ministry to stay in Israel on a permanent basis.
The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth said on its website the Palestinian man had been asking for permission to live with his Israeli lover, a computer engineer in his 40s for five years. They have been together for 8 years, the paper said.
Boston police officials, surprised by intense opposition from residents, have significantly scaled back and delayed the start of a program that would allow officers to go into people's homes and search for guns without a warrant.
The program, dubbed Safe Homes, was supposed to start in December, but has been delayed at least three times because of misgivings in the community. March 1 was the latest missed start date.
One community group has been circulating a petition against the plan. Police officials trying to assuage residents' fears have been drowned out by criticism at some meetings with residents and elected officials.
Officers may begin knocking on doors this week, officials said yesterday, but instead of heading into four troubled neighborhoods, as they had planned, officers will target only one, Egleston Square in Jamaica Plain, where police said they have received the most support.
Police would ask parents or legal guardians for permission to search homes where juveniles ages 17 and under are believed to be holding illegal guns. Police would only enter homes into which they have been invited and, once inside, would only search the rooms of the juveniles.
The goal, said Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Boston Police Department, would be getting weapons off the streets, rather than making arrests.
But critics say that the searches are unconstitutional and that police will not guarantee that residents would face no criminal charges if guns or drugs were found.
Commissioner Edward F. Davis has been taken aback by the criticism. Davis promoted Safe Homes as a voluntary program that would help overwhelmed, frightened parents and guardians by removing guns from their homes without fear of prosecution.
"I would say that the police commissioner has been a bit surprised by those that are not in favor," Driscoll said. "We're genuinely trying to save lives."
But for many of the 100 people who packed the Roxbury Family YMCA last Thursday to talk about the plan, the goal of the program was overshadowed by tactics they called invasive and misleading.
"Police are like vampires. They shouldn't be invited into your homes," said Jamarhl Crawford, chairman of the New Black Panther Party in Roxbury, who moderated the meeting.
"Vampires are polite; they're smooth," he said in an interview the following day. "But once they get in, the door closes. Havoc ensues."
Other comparisons have been no more favorable.
"The community doesn't want this," Lisa Thurau-Gray, managing director of the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School, said at the meeting. She likened the police persistence to a sexual aggressor who refuses to stop assaulting a victim despite her pleas. "What part of no don't they understand?" she said.
Police officials have said the searches would be based on tips from the community, including neighbors, school officials, and even the parents of the child. The officers searching homes would be members of units that patrol schools and who have visited the houses of teenagers as part of Operation Homefront, which is meant to help build better relationships between troubled children and their families.
If police were to find a gun in a home, they would keep the discovery confidential under most circumstances, police have said.
Officers would not tell officials at the child's school or public housing authorities, unless they believed the discovery amounted to a "public safety emergency," which Driscoll said would happen if police found a plan to use the gun at school or a hit list.
A child would not be charged with gun possession if a firearm were found. But police have said that if the firearm were connected to a crime, charges against the child could be filed.
Sarah Wunsch, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who has attended meetings about the plan, said those warnings are unnerving.
"People on the street may say: 'This is great. I'm letting them in,' " she said. "But those are the people I'm concerned about, because they haven't been educated about the hazards."
She said residents of public housing could risk losing their homes if police reported finding a firearm to housing authorities.
Supporters of the program said they are fully aware of the risks of the program and frustrated by the critics, who they believe are misinforming the public.
Police "would support any family that cooperated with the police and oppose their eviction," said Bob Francis, chairman of the Academy/Bromley/Egleston Safety Task Force, a neighborhood group that represents parts of Jamaica Plain and Roxbury.
"There wouldn't be any report that that gun was found on the property," he said.
True-See Allah, a former gang member who now works for the Nation of Islam, said people who worry that their children may face a jail sentence if a gun is found should consider the alternatives.
"It's one year to 18 months versus trips to Mount Hope Cemetery every year," said Allah. "Eighteen-month sentence versus death."
His organization supports the program as long as police are honest about their motives, said Allah, assistant to Don Muhammad, minister of Muhammad's Mosque Number 11 in Dorchester.
Allah acknowledged that his group is in the minority within the community. "Sometimes doing the right thing is unpopular and I think that's where we are today," he said. Sometimes doing the wrong thing is popular, but it is still the wrong thing.
#4
As somebody on a libertarian blog (forget which one) pointed out about this plan: if you agree to any search of your person or premises without a warrant, they can legally search anywhere for anything and are in no way bound by any verbal assurances to limit the search.
I was a juror on a case where a idiotdefendant let cops into his apartment to search for a possible fleeing felon, where they noticed nearly a pound of heroin in various stages of packaging. The search stuck because of his agreement to let them in.
To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure. Instead of calling these schools "underperforming," the Board of Education is considering labeling them as "Commonwealth priority," to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale. Schools in the direst straits, now known as "chronically underperforming," would get the more urgent but still vague label of "priority one."
The board has spent parts of more than three meetings in recent months debating the linguistic merits and tone set by the terms after a handful of superintendents from across the state complained that the label underperforming unfairly casts blame on educators, hinders the recruitment of talented teachers, and erodes students' self-esteem.
While many educators support the largely symbolic changes, others call them sugarcoating and unnecessary, feeding into the sentiment that children are coddled. Debating the terms, they say, wastes time when the board should be coming up with a plan to fix the state's 114 low-performing schools. Changing the labels seems to be intended to appease overly sensitive educators, critics say.
"This is all word games," said John Silber, the famously brusque former Boston University president and former chairman of the Board of Education. "Changing the name doesn't change the reality. I think Shakespeare had a good line: 'A rose by another name would smell as sweet.' A skunk by any other name would stink."
When Silber presided over the board in the late 1990s, he chastised members for allowing students who scored at the "needs improvement" level to pass the MCAS test. He also recommended calling that level "deficient," but members balked.
"Now here they have schools that are not doing adequately, so they're changing the name?" he said with dismay. "Why don't we call them special schools?"
Zachary Tsetsos, a senior at Oxford High School and the only student on the board, said he finds the debate frivolous.
"Why are we spending time on this?," said the 17-year-old. "I don't want to tiptoe around the issue. I'm not concerned about what title we give these schools. Let's work on fixing them."
The labels were created following the state's 1993 Education Reform Act to highlight extraordinary failure rates in some schools. The 2001 federal law pushing for more accountability from school systems thrust the issues of failing schools and what to call them into the spotlight.
For years, Massachusetts superintendents have resented education officials for slapping them with the labels. Now, the board members are debating whether they should seek public comment on the new terms before amending state regulations to formalize the name changes in May.
Board members have already begun using the label "priority" for schools in the "underperforming" category at their meetings.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/25/2008 00:00 ||
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"Why don't we call them special schools" > come on, now, even out here in Guam the label "special schools" is soooooooooooo early 1970's.
#7
Such is the state of affairs in Communistchusetts. The lefties have degraded public schooling to the point where I think abolution is the only remedy. Go back to private schooling where rules and regulations will allow those who wish to learn and progress to thrive. Tell the rest of the LOSERS that they are failures. Explain very carefully to them that they might be able to redeem themselves with a stint in the military. Otherwise, explain that their choice will lead them to the lockup. Kissing up to trouble makers and losers at a young age is the greatest disservice which can be perpetrated on these young souls. It condemns them to continuing failure.
#10
To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children
This is not simply Political Correctness run amok as this article suggests. Its another example of how some people attempt to alter semantics as a way to cloud or change definitions. Its the basic technique to frame the discussion in a way that best suits ones agenda. In this case, to acknowledge that there is underperformance would concede that standards are not being met. So now that these schools are now referred to as Priorities officials have the ability to introduce new definitions of previously established standards. For instance, subjects like Cultural Awareness Studies may be considered on par with traditional academics as a way to boost graduation rates. Its not unlike why Progressives no longer call themselves Liberals. Its not because of that pesky Tax and Spend connotation its because, by definition, Liberals are required to have an open mind.
#13
I did read 'The Screwtape Letters' - I think Screwtape Proposes a Toast was a epilogue to that book by C.S. Lewis.
From the Toast:
This can be done at various levels. At universities, examinations must be framed so that nearly all the students get good marks. Entrance examinations must be framed so that all, or nearly all, citizens can go to universities, whether they have any power (or wish) to profit by higher education or not. At schools, the children who are too stupid or lazy to learn languages and mathematics and elementary science can be set to doing things that children used to do in their spare time. Let, them, for example, make mud pies and call it modelling. But all the time there must be no faintest hint that they are inferior to the children who are at work. Whatever nonsense they are engaged in must have I believe the English already use the phrase parity of esteem. An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma -- Beelzebub, what a useful word! by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coevals attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
David Paterson is still adding to his string of confessions. I tried it a couple of times, he said in an interview with NY1 News, when asked if he had ever used cocaine.
"I can't stand to see a horse suffer so I drove out there and got her," Easley said. "The horse didn't look abandoned. She is in good shape for being 32 years old." 
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, a one-time rising star and Detroit's youngest elected leader, was charged Monday with perjury and other counts after sexually explicit text messages contradicted his sworn denials of an affair with a top aide. Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy also charged the popular yet polarizing 37-year-old mayor 
By Rebecca Harrison
To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure. Instead of calling these schools "underperforming," the Board of Education is considering labeling them as "Commonwealth priority," to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale. Schools in the direst straits, now known as "chronically underperforming," would get the more urgent but still vague label of "priority one."
