Category: News

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.

From the mouths of assistant university police chiefs:

A man and a woman were shot to death in the University of Washington’s architecture building Monday morning in what may have been a murder-suicide, university police said.

Officers responded to reports of gunfire found the two in an office on the fourth floor of Gould Hall, Assistant University Police Chief Ray Wittmier said. He said a weapon was also found in the room.

“It’s quite possible that the suspect is one of the deceased,” Wittmier said. [Emphasis added.]

Is he confusing suspect with perpetrator, or is he being coy?

Michelle Malkin is right, this is funny, unintentionally:

KIMBERLY SHRUM grips a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver and aims at a target 25 yards away.

Bang.

A hot shell casing hits the floor, joining hundreds of others littering the concrete at Jackson Arms Indoor Shooting Range in South San Francisco.

Update: Who am I to snicker? I once refered to the Springfield XD as the Springfield XP. So I am as ignorant as a journalist who either didn’t pay attention to or even attend the event she was covering or who decided to Hollywood up the experience.

A reader (and by reader, I mean someone who found this site while googling Lou Sengheiser) sends along a helpful link to his federal indictment press release.

As you know, I’ve previously been sympathetic to Sengheiser (here and here). I’ll still stand on innocent until proven guilty, but it’s not looking good for him.

Least I can do, since his brother seemed like a nice guy and gave us a good rate on our wedding reception hall. The Shania Twain CD thing notwithstanding.

St. Louis County government mandates its residents to partake of a private service so it can negotiate better rates for the service:

The county’s Waste Management Code, approved last year by the St. Louis County Council, provides for the county to establish “trash districts” throughout the unincorporated areas.

The code establishes a minimum level of service that must include once-a-week trash pick up, once-a-week recycling pick up and at least twice-a-year bulk waste pick up. The minimum level of service requirement applies to both unincorporated area and municipalities in the county.

However, recycling pick ups will not be required for municipalities that operate a drop-off recycling center.

Creating the trash districts would mean St. Louis County would negotiate a contract — hopefully at a price lower than what residents pay now — with a single waste hauling company.

It’s one thing to mandate some sort of minimum accummulation of detritus around one’s domicile for public health reasons, but it’s another to mandate a monopoly and to make all residents customers of the monopoly at the risk of breaking the law.

Conceptually, there’s no reason this is any different from the county council making cellular phones required and then ordering citizens to use Cingular because the county council members will get a better rate.

Illinois legislator channels Hugo Chavez:

Illinois government should get into the electricity business with a state-run, non-profit power agency, the leader of the Illinois House proposed Tuesday, in legislation that denounces Ameren and ComEd for recent rate hikes and service failures.

House Speaker Michael Madigan, one of the state’s most powerful Democrats, filed a bill Tuesday afternoon to create a publicly owned power authority that would use Illinois coal to generate and sell electricity to state residents at cost.

“Excessive costs of electricity (in Illinois) pose a serious threat to the economic well-being, health and safety” of residents, says the 47-page bill, which would establish the Illinois Power Authority Act.

Is there anything that government officials don’t think they can do better than private industry?

I didn’t think so.

Briefly, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had the the crime in this story wrong:

Click for full size

Now, if we could only get tax invasion really made into a crime for bureaucrats, we’d be getting somewhere.