Various sites are reporting that TV evangelist Pat Robertson is again holding forth on seismic retribution. Robertson was quoted as saying “God is even angrier with them than he is with the people of Haiti” — which would explain the greater seismological magnitude in the 8.8 earthquake. The reason: what Chileans did to poor General Augusto Pinochet. Update: our earlier stated suspicions were confirmed and the author admits that the story was untrue.
Continue reading “Hoax: Pat Robertson Did Not Attribute Chilean Earthquake to God’s Punishment for The Mistreatment of Augusto Pinochet”
Police in Tampa, Florida appear to have clown issues from their youth. Matthew David Lopez, 18, was arrested for wearing a clown mask in public. (The picture is some other clown).
Continue reading “Send in the Clowns: Tampa Police Arrest Teen For Wearing Clown Mask in Public”
When Glenn Richardson stepped down as speaker of the Georgia House in a sex scandal with a lobbyist, it was widely denounced as another politician who ran on “family-values” while living la vida loca. Voters of Paulding Country, however, quickly replaced him with another Republican running on family values, Rep. Daniel Stout. Stout, however, may be a bit too close to family: he was divorced in 10 years ago after his wife accused him of having an affair with her mother while she was pregnant with his child.
Danish daily Politiken has issued a perfectly bizarre apology for reproducing the controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2008. The newspaper reached an agreement with eight Muslim organizations to apologize without expressing regret.
Continue reading “We Apologize But Have No Regrets: Danish Newspaper Reaches Agreement With Muslim Groups Over Mohammed Cartoons”
Yelp, a site that allows customers to write reviews of businesses, is the subject of an interesting lawsuit that alleges that the San Francisco company engages in secret quid pro quos with businesses under which it removes negative reviews in exchange for advertising.
Continue reading “Yelp Accused of Extortion in Trading Positive Review for Advertising Money”
David Hale Warner, 50, is facing charges that he choked his Labrador retriever puppy named Coco after the dog bit his girlfriend. Coco later died.
Continue reading “San Diego Man Charged With Choking Puppy”
Ypsilanti police are looking for a naked man who first exposed himself in the Ypsilanti District Library. The librarian had assisted the man in locating a book and then turned around to find him naked — he then fled with the book. The problem with the police report is that it fails to mention the book title. Perhaps we can help. As forewarning to future librarians, what books is a naked man most likely to check out from a library?
Continue reading “Question of the Day: What Book Does A Naked Man Check Out of the Library?”
Clyde Haberman at the New York Times has an interesting column on the general shift away from bringing civil rights charges when state juries fail to convict in cases on the state level. Al Sharpton is calling on the Obama Administration to try police officers again in the case of Michael Mineo after a Brooklyn jury acquitted three police officers.
Continue reading “Sharpton Pushes For Federal Prosecution After Brooklyn Jury Acquits in Mineo Case”
Leading Saudi cleric Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif defended the practice of marrying nine-year-old girls as sanctioned by the prophet Mohammad in his own marriage to a nine-year-old girl, Aisha. In a truly signature moment, Al-Sharif insisted that not only does a girl become a woman at nine but when Islamic law refers to a certain issue – we don’t need human rights.
In a remarkable find, archeologists have discovered tools buried by a Toba volcanic eruption 74,000 years ago in Northern India. Of course, where scientists see evidence of humans in the 15,000 years before earlier estimates, creationists see a pile of old tools and a gross miscalculation since the Earth is only 5000 years old.
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Biurny Peguero Gonzalez allegedly was embarrassed when her friends were berating her for ditching them at a bar. Instead of claiming some urgent call or just telling the truth that she got into a guy’s car, she elected to cry rape. She stuck to her story through a trial and through years of incarceration of William McCaffrey for a rape that he did not commit. She has now been sentenced to three years for perjury — less than the four years that McCaffrey spent in prison.
Continue reading “Woman Sentenced to One to Three Years in Jail — After Sending Innocent Man to Prison for Four Years”
Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been found guilty of violating ethics rules in accepting Caribbean trips from a corporation. In a classic move, the House ethics office has decided not to find violations by four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus who also took the free trip in 2007 and 2008 because they were unaware that it was paid for by the corporation. How about the idea of not going on paid trips at all? I have long argued for a complete ban on such travel, here. The other four members were Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee; Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan; Donald M. Payne of New Jersey; and Delegate Donna Christensen of the Virgin Islands.
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Dutch bobsledder Edwin van Calker and this four-man team pulled out of the Olympic competition after the driver said that he was terrified of using the track. It is a major slap at the Canadian designers who have been criticized since the death of Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili on the luge track.
Continue reading “Dutch (Re)Treat: Bobsled Driver Refuses to Race on Canadian Course”
Question: what is the only thing scarier than one of the world’s largest indoor shark tanks? Answer: one of the world’s largest indoor shark tanks with a crack.
Continue reading “Question of the Day: What is Scarier Than One of The World’s Largest Shark Tanks?”
Zombies are free to again walk the streets of Minneapolis due to another zombie-friendly decision from the federal courts. The federal court of appeals ruled that a group of protesters dressed as zombies could sue the police department and individual officers for wrongful arrest in a 2-1 decision. The dissenting Judge Colloton immediately had his brains sucked out after being pursued by rampaging zombies.
Continue reading “Zombies! The Undead Return to the Streets of Minneapolis”