Brazilian jail guards nabbed the ultimate cat burglar last week at the northeastern Brazilian jail in Alagoas. The cat was found to be smuggling in escape tools after being trained by inmates who where digging out of the prison. It is not clear if the cat will now receive nine consecutive life sentences.
Category: Bizarre
There is a bizarre case involving a well-known race jockey, Paul Quinn, in England who urinated on woman after struggling with her for possession of her cell phone. Quinn was drunk and wanted to make a call. When the woman resisted, he grappled with her and then inexplicably urinated on her. However, it was not the act (which even celebrities have been known to do in close quarters) but the charge that caught my attention: sexual assault.
by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger
While touring about America’s roadways, it’s not unusual to see a vanity plate or bumper sticker that says “God Is My Co-Pilot”. It’s not unusual to see someone with a dog as a co-pilot. Can a corporation be your co-pilot?
We’ll soon find out thanks to Citizens United and Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, California. Mr. Frieman was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane. He argued to the officer that he did actually have a passenger. In the form of articles of incorporation. Upset (and reasonably so) over the Citizens United ruling, Frieman says he had been trying for years to get pulled over, ticketed and get a chance to take his argument to court that corporations and people are not the same. His mission was accomplished in October when he was pulled over for driving alone in an HOV lane, ticketed and slapped with a $481 minimum fine.
It’s a common sense argument based in the reality that corporations are a legal fiction and not a real person. We’ve seen this argument in play here and in other media since the controversial – many if not most might say ridiculously bad – decision of Citizens United was rendered in 2010. But will it work in traffic court?
-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
It was brutally cold in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on 23 December 1776 when Thomas Paine released the first in a series of sixteen papers entitled The American Crisis. The first paper, which starts out “These are the times that try men’s souls,” inspired a despondent George Washington who ordered it read to his entire army on Christmas night. Later that night the army crossed the Delaware River and the next day won a small but psychologically important victory at the Battle of Trenton. This was the first time Washington’s forces had defeated a regular army in the field and the victory helped secure Washington’s command.
In California, Jason Starn has filed a lawsuit that could be a challenge before a jury. Starn would purchase nitrous oxide canisters, or Whip its, from a local head shop in Modesto. He was regularly using the “laughing gas” when he lost feeling below his rib cage. The numbness wore off eventually but he suffered a degeneration of his spinal cord related to his abuse of nitrous oxide. He now uses a walker and has sued three stores that sold him the gas. Starn, 35, was a schoolteacher in Modesto and a student attending the Humphreys College Laurence Drivon School of Law
Continue reading “Law Student Sues Head Shops For Selling Him “Whip It” Cannisters”
There is an interesting case out of Reykjavik, Iceland where a 15-year-old girl is suing Iceland for the right to legally use the name that her mother gave her and the name that she prefers. While most Americans would be outraged, Iceland is one of the countries that requires all names of children to come from an approved government list. Since Blaer (Icelandic for “light breeze” is not on the approved list) she cannot go by the name given to her.
Continue reading “Icelandic Teenager Sues For Right To Use Name Given To Her By Mother”
There are two interesting scientific and historical discoveries this week. Researchers have identified remains from both French King Louis XVI and Henry IV. The discoveries began with a handkerchief found in a gourd found in Italy . . .
Continue reading “Researchers Identify The Remains Of Two Luckless French Kings”
We have previously seen absurd examples of disciplinary actions taken under zero tolerance rules for drugs and guns (here andhere and here). This includes cases involving kids using finger guns (here). Now Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Montgomery County has joined these ranks by suspending a six-year-old boy for making a finger gun with his hand and saying “Pow.”
Continue reading “Terror Tots III: Maryland Student Suspended For Use Of Finger Gun”
It appears that not all apples are alike when it comes to food stamps. Tracy Browning, 38, of Louisville has been arrested for trying to buy several iPads with food stamps. After she was turned away by the Apple store and fled, she then tried to make the same purchase at a second Apple store.
You will never see this on the Nature Channel. It is time to tell the truth about bears.
Continue reading “New Video Reveals Truth About Bears In The Wild”
We have been following cases where sperm donors have been held for child support or alternatively sought parental rights. The latest such case is out of Kansas where the state is pursuing a sperm donor for child support. William Marotta responded to an advertisement by a lesbian couple to donate sperm, but, after the couple split up, the state insisted on being given his name as the father and pursued him for monthly support payments.
Continue reading “Kansas Demands Child Support Payments From Sperm Donor”
Muhammad al-Arifi, a Wahhabi religious cleric, is being widely quoted on web sites like Salon as issuing a fatwa that allowed jihadists in Syria fighting the government to enter into “intercourse marriage” that has been taken as authorizing the rape of Syrian women. Al-Arifi is quoted as expressing concern that Saudis fighting with the opposition have not been with a woman in two years and must be allowed to take care of their “sexual problems.” [One supporter has insisted the fatwa was not issued].
Continue reading “Saudi Imam Reportedly Issues Fatwa Allowing Jihadists To Rape Women In Syria”
We have often discussed the continuing crackdown on student free speech in high schools. The latest such case involves Courtni Webb, a seventeen-year-old student at California’s Life Learning Academy who was suspended for writing in a poem in a personal notebook that she “understand[s] the killings in Connecticut.”
New Year’s Eve I wrote about my shock in watching the crude and often unhinged conduct of Kathy Griffin on CNN with Anderson Cooper. We switched over to the networks due to her bizarre behavior, but it appears it got worse as the night went on. Griffin followed her juvenile antics with a simulation of giving Anderson Cooper oral sex on national television. CNN’s response to this controversy is rather muted. While a “wardrobe malfunction” in the Superbowl merited weeks of discussion, simulated oral sex on a host appears to merit a return for Griffin to CNN the next day to joke around with Cooper about their wild time in Time Square.
Disgusting eating contests appear to be a certain fatal attraction these days. We recently discussed the death of a man who won a roach-eating contest. Now a Tunisian man, Dhaou Fatnassi, 20, has died in a raw egg eating contest. He won after eating 28 and then died.
Continue reading “Tunisian Man Dies After Winning Contest By Eating 28 Raw Eggs”