Category: News

Here’s how Amendment I of the United States Constitution used to read:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Well, that was before the government began taking its normal vigorish off of the top. Latest evidence:

Police officers arrested Earl Hogan, the president of the Venice-Tri City Lions Club, on Saturday as Hogan tried to lead a small procession of cars into the city for a parade.

The Board of Aldermen had denied Hogan and the Lions Club a parade permit earlier this month, but Hogan said lack of a permit wouldn’t stop the parade. Lions clubs are holding numerous events this weekend to raise money for charitable causes.

Officers who handcuffed Hogan and took him to the station called the arrest “unfortunate” but said they had no choice.

“We have to do our job,” said Police Chief Shawn Tyler after the arrest.

Hogan was cited for unlawful assembly and released after about 30 minutes. His fine could range from $100 to $1,000, Tyler said.

After the addition of the crime of unlawful assembly and Mark of McCain-Feingold, how’s that amendment looking now?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the press; or the right of the people peaceably petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Much more economical. The fewer rights, the more the citizens can enjoy them, right?

We talk about making sacrifices in our lives and our working world, using figures of speech such as taking one for the team or jumping on the grenade. Some say this makes our language richer, to use metaphors to express concepts in a colorful way. Hey, as an writer, I’m all in favor of it. However, when those colorful metaphors become cliches bantered about too easily, we forget the powerful sacrifice of those who do it literally:

A Navy SEAL sacrificed his life to save his comrades by throwing himself on top of a grenade Iraqi insurgents tossed into their sniper hideout, fellow members of the elite force said.

Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor had been near the only door to the rooftop structure Sept. 29 when the grenade hit him in the chest and bounced to the floor, said four SEALs who spoke to The Associated Press this week on condition of anonymity because their work requires their identities to remain secret.

“He never took his eye off the grenade, his only movement was down toward it,” said a 28-year-old lieutenant who sustained shrapnel wounds to both legs that day. “He undoubtedly saved mine and the other SEALs’ lives, and we owe him.”

I don’t expect I could or would do that.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)

Lost emu raises ruckus on Route 3:

Six times during the weekend, police here responded to the same call: a 100-pound emu running wild near Illinois Route 3.

The 5-foot-tall bird caused quite a ruckus, especially when it wandered into traffic on the busy highway, Police Chief Richard Miller said.

Sure, when it was apprehended, the emu told the cops it was lost, but the word I heard on the street is that this particular emu was looking to hitchhike to Carbondale to settle a score.

In St. Charles, Missouri, two youths in an unmarked police unit pull over an off-duty police officer, who recognizes the youths as not really cops. The leader youth is charged with misdemeanor impersonating a police officer instead of the felony tampering or, you know, stealing a freaking police car.

The city of Ballwin, whose police car was misappropriated, chooses not to press charges:

Banas said City Administrator Robert Kuntz had faxed a letter stating the following: “With regard to the case involving Brian Biederman and the use of his father’s police vehicle, the city of Ballwin is not desirous of prosecution in this matter. Please find enclosed a notorized form of no prosecution from the city of Ballwin.”

No doubt Ballwiin treats all youths, regardless of whether they’re the fruit of the Police Chief’s loins, with that amount of tolerance.

Walk a dog without something to clean up after it? Go to jail in St. Charles:

Like many municipalities, St. Charles for years has had a pooper-scooper law requiring pet owners to remove their animal’s droppings while in public places.

However, Councilman Jerry Reese says the new measure, which he got the council to pass last week, will make it easier for police and animal control officers to deal with the problem. No longer will a witness to the droppings be needed to make a case, he said.

From now on, the ordinance books also will say that simply walking a pet without “waste removal equipment” in itself is a violation. Those convicted could be fined up to $500 or get up to three months in jail. The measure will take effect when Mayor Patti York signs it; she says she’ll do that sometime this week.

Now the government wants to micromanage the minutiae like a subdivision association with SWAT teams standing by. Why don’t we just get body armor and automatics for the building inspectors and get it done with?

No, he’s against train whistles:

Train horns are keeping Wentzville newcomer David Lutes up at night.

“It was a great disappointment to move to Wentzville and hear so much noise at night,” Lutes, 54, said. “On about the second night here, it was like (a train) was in our bedrooms.”

Lutes said he left Southern California for the clean air and convenience of Wentzville. He and his family absolutely love their new city — except for the nightly noise from train horns.

A Wentzville resident for just about a month, Lutes has already established a community action group, Wentzville Against Noisy Traffic and Trains. He’s looking for others wanting more sleep and less noise at night to write aldermen and sign a petition urging the city to apply for a quiet zone with the Federal Railroad Administration.

I’d remind the fellow that train whistles are safety devices designed to prevent collisions with the train. But I expect the gentleman doesn’t care as long as he gets his night’s sleep.

Workers’ job skills criticized in report: Those hired at entry level found to be unprepared:

Written communications ranked highest of all deficiencies among new employees. More than 80% of the respondents said the high school graduates they hired had insufficient writing skills, compared with 47% for two-year and technical college graduates and 28% for four-year college grads.

About 70% of the employers found recently hired high school graduates lacking in personal accountability and effective work habits, including punctuality, time management and being able to work productively with others. At the same time, the HR executives said they’re seeking higher skills in foreign languages, creativity and problem solving.

It’s imperative that we raise the minimum wage because it’s inhumane to…. aw, I cannot even fake a good snarky rejoinder. Somehow, though, it always comes out sounding From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

If you feel you have reached this message in error, please check your number and dial again:

Since June, area Muslims have become increasingly uncomfortable and even fearful not because of overt attacks or threats against them, but because a sequence of incidents have built upon each other to form an intense, low-grade foreboding.

Beginning with the monthlong Israel-Hezbollah conflict through Pope Benedict XVI’s inflammatory lecture last month, American Muslims say they feel more uneasy in their own country. Local incidents, including the August screening of a controversial anti-terrorism movie and an FBI raid on the home of a Muslim in Columbia, Mo., have heightened the anxiety, according to dozens of St. Louis Muslims interviewed over the last few weeks.

“Muslims are feeling like the world is closing in on them,” said Orvin T. Kimbrough, executive director of the Interfaith Partnership of Metropolitan St. Louis. “They feel like they’re being targeted.”

When our leaders call for your extermination and members of the population start killing you for being Muslims, call us back.

Until then, forebode quietly like the rest of us.

Cue the violins: 16 horses killed in trailer crash on I-44.

The grisly toll:

Officials say 26 of the 42 horses in trailer survived but nine had to be put down and the other seven died at the scene of the accident.

The authorities are taking heroic measures to save the survivors:

The surviving horses were taken to an arena at the St. Clair Saddle Club, where veterinary personnel were working on them. The highway was reopened to traffic about 11 a.m.

Cole said she did not know what would happen to the horses that survived. She was looking for places for them to stay until their status is cleared up.

“The Highway Patrol made them our responsibility,” she said. “The Humane Society is footing the bill for all of this. We are looking into the legalities as we go along.”

The bureaucracy and its attendant veterinarians are no doubt working through the night to make sure the survivors are healthy and can continue on their journey.

The horses were on their way to Cavel International Inc., a horse processing plant in DeKalb, Ill., authorities said. In a statement today, Cavel said even though the horses were bound for the slaughterhouse, “where they would have been euthanized under the supervision of federal inspectors and USDA veterinarians,” the horses belong to the horse trader who bought them until they reach the plant.

That’s right: these horses are being healed so that they’ll reach the slaughterhouse in prime shape.

Michael J. Fox to host McCaskill fundraiser:

Michael J. Fox will be in St. Louis next week to host a fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.

Well, he is an actor, and so his political thinking skills were suspect from the start.

Apparently, some people are still seizing the air, feeling it, et cetera. How quaint; pirate radio stations when all the cool kids have podcasts.

The CDC recommends regular AIDS testing for people 13-64.

Federal health officials Thursday recommended regular, routine testing for the AIDS virus for all Americans ages 13 to 64, saying an HIV test should be as common as a cholesterol check.

Because you’re just as likely on any given day to eat eggs and cheeseburgers as you are to have sex with an intravenous drug-using homosexuals who trades sex for drugs.

Oh, right, like I’m the only one who tosses that coin every morning.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells another heartwarming story of someone with a personal preference who would probably not mind government enforcement of his preference. This time, it’s car restraining systems for pets:

Since then, Rodriquez has beome an advocate for having all dogs in cars secured in the back with safety restraints.

Ad absurdum used to be a logical fallacy. Now, it’s standard operating procedure.

Hasbro is using brand name products for token in its new Monopoly Here and Now game:

Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition will be branded, offering players the chance to be represented by miniature versions of a Toyota Prius hybrid car, an order of McDonald’s french fries, a New Balance running shoe, a cup of Starbucks coffee or a Motorola Razr cell phone.

Hasbro Games senior vice president for marketing Mark Blecher assures us:

Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens, Blecher said, to minimize concerns that the new edition would be too commercialized.

Apparently, in Blecher’s world, 62.5% commercialized is acceptable, whereas 62.6% is not. However, as I am in marketing myself (obliquely), allow me to translate what Blecher really means:

Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens because it couldn’t find cross-promotional deals with an airline, a dog breeder, and a computer maker.

Mandating $15 ID to vote, restoring some measure of faith and legitimacy to elections by making it harder to vote fraudlently? Bad.

Ordering citizens who would procreate (nowadays, that’s Republicans and the poor) to add a $49.99 (minimum) booster seat after the mandated $99.99 (minimum) infant car seat and the mandated $99.99 (minimum) toddler car seat on the off chance that the child will be in an automobile crash? Good.

Someone call me and ask me if I have faith in my government so I can add a couple hundredths of a percentage point to an inconvenient poll that our venal government betters will ignore.

D.C. man charged with stealing desktop with info on thousands:

Authorities have charged a 21-year-old Unisys Corp. subcontractor with stealing a desktop computer with billing information on as many as 38,000 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical patients.

Khalil Abdulla-Raheem of Washington was charged Wednesday with theft of government property. He is the employee of an unnamed company that “provides temporary labor to Unisys,” according to a statement released by the VA’s Office of Inspector General.

The computer was stolen in late July from Unisys’ Reston, Va., offices. It contained records on about 16,000 living patients who had received treatment at VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well has information on another 2,000 who are deceased. Data on an additional 20,000 patients may have been stored on the computer, according to the VA.

The VA said these records may have contained Social Security numbers, addresses and insurance information. The FBI is analyzing the computer to determine whether the information was compromised, but investigators do not believe that Abdulla-Raheem was after the VA data.

Still, forgive us our sensitivity to fellows with Arabic names. No, probably, we won’t be forgiven; instead, we’ll be told to pay no attention to criminals of a certain faith.

In the San Francisco Chronicle, a quote by a feminist equates theft of consumer data in a video game to, what else, rape:

“It’s identity rape,” said Lisa Stone, co-founder of Palo Alto’s BlogHer, an organization for female bloggers, and a sporadic resident of Second Life. “If this happened, it would be a personal violation. It’s completely unacceptable.”

She said she’s typically much more uninhibited in the virtual world of Second Life than she is in the real world. This is largely a factor of using a pseudonym when interacting with other Second Life members and having an invented digital image — an avatar — to hide behind.

“It’s fantastically freeing,” Stone said. “When I’m online, I can be anyone I want.”

So knowing your secret identity is exactly, or at least metaphorically, equivalent to forcible sexual penetration with actual violence or the threat of violence? I doubt it, seriously, and I haven’t even had to be raped to know the difference. Perhaps that makes me a chickenvictim or something.

You know, modern rhetoric and discourse has a distinct lack of imagination for metaphor. It’s either rape or Hitler to someone, somewhere, who lacks inventiveness to create his or her own turn of phrase. Yet these people get rewarded by a chorus of “Hell, yeah!”

Bush administration distances itself from ailing U.S. automakers:

Please call back after the election.

That’s the message from President George W. Bush’s business-friendly administration to executives of the ailing U.S. auto industry.

Twice this spring, Bush postponed a summit with the chief executives of Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler unit and General Motors Corp., citing scheduling problems.

In a Sept. 8 phone call to Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr., Bush said he wanted to wait until after the Nov. 7 midterm elections to keep partisan politics from intruding on the event.

I mean, if the Bush administration is wholly owned by Big Oil, what the hell is it doing by not pandering to Big Auto, one of the best mechanisms through which citizens consume Big Oil’s products? I guess the two choices are:

• The Bush administration isn’t wholly owned by Big Oil.
• The Bush administration is incompetent in the service of its master, Big Oil.

Many people in the blogosphere will just expect it’s option 2.