Category: News

In a move certain to bolster respect for law and order amongst the civilian population, we discover that police are apparently allowed to personally own fully automatic weapons:

Federal prosecutors dropped the criminal case against the last of three Illinois State Police officers accused of federal machine-gun law violations — and signaled Tuesday that charges against a fourth man may soon be addressed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Crowe dismissed a charge of illegal possession of a machine gun against Special Agent John Yard of Collinsville.

Because, you know, they’re just better than civilians.

Someone let me know if I’m misreading this.

Officials: Pet Food Poison May Have Been Intentional:

For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

As you know, gentle reader, your Shidoshi of Paranoia speculated it might have been intentional, but for more nefarious reasons.

(Link seen on Rocket Jones.)

UPDATE: So I’m not the only one: The pet food investigation turns to human food.

Art foundation defends properties:
Is this Fox Point mansion a multimillion-dollar house or a museum? Some neighbors want it on the tax rolls.

When is a museum a museum and not just a tax dodge? That’s the question raised by residents who want two Fox Point mansions worth at least $3 million restored to the tax rolls.

The neighbors are calling on the Village Board to re-examine a nearly 20-year-old agreement with the Chipstone Foundation that declared its property overlooking Lake Michigan a museum, granting it tax-exempt status.

Not many have set foot inside the Georgian-style mansion.

If that property belonged to you or me, gentler reader, the commmunity would have already stripped its blighted eyesore from us and turned it over to a responsible developer who probably has the proper financing for an elegant strip mall.

But with millions of dollars available for defense, the local government must observe some decorum.

Great thinker Sheryl Crow proposes:

“Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

“I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting.”

Obviously, further development would identify whether this limitation would be enforced by camera or an actual enforcement official in the bathroom with you.

How else do you bring a mace to school when you want to show a teacher some clerical attitude adjusting?

“It’s heavy, and it’s metal, and it’s sharp,” Detective Sgt. Darlene Breitenstein said of the weapon. The girl, who is being held at the Lake County (Ind.) Juvenile Justice Center on battery charges, told police she brought the weapon to school because she was “tired of getting picked on.” “I took the weapon to the detention center for the judge to see,” Breitenstein said. Charmella Greer of the Gary Community School Corp. said the school system plans to take disciplinary action against the freshman. She said she did not know how the girl managed to smuggle the large weapon past school metal detectors.

She swung on the teacher and missed, but sometimes they even try when their THAC0s are 20.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

I heard this story on the radio today, and I was going to make fun of it: Illinois mother sues utility over son’s fall from electric tower.

But I already did.

Not quite, but in California, the bad guys stopped a train and pulled its engineer off for a beating:

The engineer of an Amtrak Capitol Corridor train was seriously injured Monday night in West Sacramento after a group of people forced the train to stop, dragged the engineer from the train and assaulted him with rocks and bottles, according to Capitol Corridor officials.

Quick, let’s use this isolated incident to expand the Federal bureaucracy, to fund reinforced engine doors, to expand the rail marshal program, and to make taking a train as onerous as riding in a plane.

As the recent pet food recall expands again, do you think anyone is noting how a tainted raw food material can spread death throughout North America after being processed locally?

I mean, if this were a Tom Clancy novel, first, the foreign power would kill all the bees to limit continental agriculture and force food producers to buy from abroad, and then the foreign power would poison a root agricultural product that would be distributed to a number of plants for processing into a number of different food products. Because the raw ingredient would be made into a number of different things, investigators would have trouble identifying a single cause when people started dying. When thousands were dead, civil order would break down and the main portion of the novel would commence.

Which is why I wanted to be a writer. To channel my paranoia into profitable pursuits.

Ziggurat Con – The World’s First War Zone Game Convention?:

When President Bush ordered troops to Iraq, he probably never imagined that he would be ultimately be responsible for what very well could be the very first D&D convention/game day ever held in a war zone. Ziggurat Con, being held June 9 from 1200 to 2100 hours at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase, is open to all allied military personnel and civilian contractors in Iraq.

If you’ve got a closet full of old books you’re not using, the guys are accepting donations.

No Twilight: 2000, though; we don’t need arguments arising about game rules versus actual experience with the weapons listed.

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ. More here.)

You know the classic movie scene where the cop runs out, flashes his badge, and tells a driver that he has to appropriate the automobile to pursue a subject? Apparently, using World Series tickets taken from scalpers:

Eight city police officers were wrong to use World Series tickets seized from scalpers, but they did nothing illegal, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce said Monday in revealing there will be no charges.

She acknowledged public outrage but said she could not find any way to construe their actions as a violation of Missouri statutes given the available evidence.

You see, it served the public good having more cops at the World Series.

Meanwhile, respect for law and order just took another drubbing.

We all know about the long lines that await when we go to the airport to catch a flight, but a recent widow is suing to make sure airlines check your IDs as you leave the plane, too:

After the plane landed at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on April 13, 2005, passengers and flight crew disembarked and the jet was taken to another gate for cleaning. Workers then discovered the bathroom was locked from the inside and found Matsuo’s body — about two hours after the jet landed.

“How could you lose a passenger?” Watts, who did not fly with her husband that day, told The Indianapolis Star. “If I was somewhere on that plane, I would hope someone would notice.”

Oh, sure, she’s not suing for the express goal of lengthening the disembark time or making it more likely that you’ll miss your connecting flights; she wants the money. But be assured, gentle reader, this is what you’ll come to know as a result.

U.S. Military Says Iran Helping Iraq:

A U.S. military spokesman said Iran is training Iraqis to make deadly roadside bombs. EFPs or explosively formed penetrators, hurl a molten, fist-sized copper slug capable of piercing armored vehicles.

That’s only “helping” Iraq if “Iraq’s” goal is trying to kill Americans. According to AP, I guess that’s the case.

Sunspots reaching 1,000-year high:

A new analysis shows that the Sun is more active now than it has been at anytime in the previous 1,000 years.

Natural cycles beyond the grasp of human control or outside human impact are inconceivable to some people. Certainly, this must be part of a Republican plot to impair global communications right before the 2008 election cycle.

Here’s a handy coupon:

Save money on 2 boxes? You can’t buy two boxes of the good stuff any more in these here United States thanks to former Senator Jim Talent.

Silly UN people and their media mouthpieces, tinkling the dinner bell of doom with prognostications like this: Global warming: hotter summers, more flooding:

The St. Louis region should brace for more frequent and intense heat waves, an increased risk of flooding from big rivers and a surge in air pollution by 2050, some of the authors of a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said at a news conference Friday.

Silly Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. He should have known to get the home crowd in an uproar, he should have aimed for more direct traumas that would appeal to the baser instincts of St. Louisians. Something like:

Global warming: More blackouts, higher electricity bills

That would tear up the people addicted to 70 degree interiors maintained at a government-limited few pennies per kilowatt hour and make them demand that their government do something to limit other people’s lifestyles to protect their own.

This is just good sportsmanship:

Five people were hurt last night when a car struck the rear of an ambulance, pushing it on its nose and onto the front of an apartment building in Kirkwood.

The incident happened shortly after 11 p.m. on Manchester Road near Dickson Street when a Chevrolet Camaro struck the eastbound Abbott ambulance from the rear, said Larry Stone, an Abbott vice president.

[. . . . ]

Another Abbott ambulance took the Camaro’s occupants — a man and a woman — to St. Anthony’s Medical Center, said Stone, adding that police told him the woman had been driving.

Not to mention good business.

Students at Mehlville schools received negative campaign materials relating to a fire protection district election recently. The firemen’s union were running a campaign for a write-in candidate and hired a mailing company to send the missives, and the mailing company got the addresses from the school district and sent the campaign materials, marked “You’re Invited,” to the students instead of the parents.

A Mehlville School District spokesman obliquely blames the parents:

Patrick Wallace, a spokesman for the Mehlville School District, said that per federal public records law, the district provided data with names and addresses of students to the union. He said the district did not include information on students whose parents signed a “media exclusion form” at the beginning of the school year.

That’s right, Federal law mandates that school districts sell or release your children’s data, and if you didn’t opt out at the beginning of the school year, well, his job is secure anyway, so squawk if you want.

Sure, at the same time as they loudly protest that motorists don’t treat them with equal respect even though they’re pedalling vehicles as entitled to the road as actual internally combusted or hybrid cars and trucks, they’re blowing through traffic control devices at their convenience. I could have told you that bicyclism breeds hooliganism, as became obvious in the cradle of loving-your-neighbor known as San Francisco when a mob of the two-wheeling thugs attacked a minivan containing a mother and two children:

Confusion, however, quickly turned to terror, she said, when the swarming cyclists began wildly circling around and then running into the sides of her Toyota van.

Filled with panic, Ferrando said, she started inching forward until coming to a stop at Post and Gough streets, where she was surrounded by bikers on all sides.

A biker in front blocked her as another biker began pounding on the windshield. Another was pounding on her window. Another pounded the other side.

“It seemed like they were using their bikes as weapons,” Ferrando said. One of the bikers then threw his bike — shattering the rear window and terrifying the young girls inside.

A mob, but a green-thinking mob lashing out against the global warming suburban mindset. Because that’s okay.

Corporate dischord, family infighting, and courtroom drama. Another nighttime soap? I wish. It’s my favorite dried meat manufacturer:

When Jack Link started his beef jerky business in the 1980s, it was his plan that his boys, then in their teens, would someday take over the company.

Unfortunately, that dream has turned into a nightmare that is being played out in Washburn County Circuit Court, in a lawsuit that pits Jack Link and son Troy against his elder son, Jay. The Links are battling over the ownership of Links Snacks Inc. in Minong, now one of the largest producers of beef jerky in the United States.

It’s a dispute that has ripped the family apart, with accusations of greed, jealousy, harassment of company officers, bullying of employees and a long list of bad business behavior.

If only there were some way I could stock up a dried meat product sold cheaply at Sam’s Club in case this battle destroys the company.

But my luck isn’t that good.