Archive for the 'Apocalypse Now' Category

Carol Murphy

From the Lewiston Sun-Journal:

Police say a 65-year-old New Sharon woman assaulted a state trooper with a 975,000-volt stun gun during an investigation into possible animal hoarding at her house on Lane Road. Carol Murphy pleaded not guilty in Franklin County Superior Court on Thursday to assault on an officer, criminal threatening, refusing to submit to arrest and criminal use of an electronic weapon. State Trooper Aaron Turcotte, who was not seriously injured by the shock to his head and neck, went to the house Wednesday after a representative from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals asked police to check on Murphy.

State Animal Welfare Program staff and Maine State Police seized at least 40 domestic and farm critters, including a donkey, two alpacas and a pot-bellied pig, at Murphy’s house on Thursday.

“We found a lot of animals,” Animal Welfare Director Norma Worley said. “Forty at minimal; maybe more.”

Murphy is under a court order that bars her from keeping animals at her home. In 2004, nearly 70 animals were seized from her property, most of them living in her house and garage. In 2005, she was convicted of animal cruelty and possessing animals without permits. Murphy was sentenced to six months in jail, with all but 24 hours suspended, and one year of probation. She was fined and ordered to pay restitution, as well as prohibited from possessing any animals for the rest of her life.

On a serious note, I think this is a case where the offender should go to a mental hospital.

Looks like Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi has a crush on former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:

Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi showered then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with gifts during her historic visit to Tripoli last year, according to a government report. Gaddafi, who did not hide his admiration for the woman he called “Leeza” rather than her nickname “Condi,” gave her a diamond ring in a wood box, a locket with his photograph and a DVD with a musical instrument.

The value of the gifts amounted to $212,225, according to the 2008 annual report of gifts given to members of the US administration that was published in the Federal Register.

All the presents become public property as US law bars any representative of the US government from receiving a present from a foreign government.

Gaddafi also reportedly referred to Rice as “my little black African woman“.

Is it just me, or were there an unusual number of irony-laden stories in the news lately?

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BNP poster campaign for British workers uses American actors

I think the British National Party official who approved this ad campaign probably figured it was alright to use the photo of American workers, because in his mind “British” is just another word for “white”.

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Eli Lilly CEO Makes Case Against Public Health Insurance Plan

In a recent speech, a drug company executive argued that offering public health insurance would drive private insurers out of business, because the government is better at controlling costs.

Read the rest of this entry »

From CNN:

A Florida man threw a 4-month-old boy out the window of a moving car Tuesday after a fight with the infant’s mother, investigators said.

Emanuel Murray’s body was found by a passing motorist on Interstate 275 early Tuesday morning, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Department said. His mother’s ex-boyfriend, 20-year-old Anthony McTear Jr., has been charged with first-degree murder, the department said.

I suspect the prosecutors in this case will charge McTear with aggravated murder, which can get you the death penalty in Florida.

An early supporter of torture

From CNN:

The more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists, according to a new survey.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week — 54 percent — said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is “often” or “sometimes” justified. Only 42 percent of people who “seldom or never” go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

It’s really hard for me to see how 6 of 10 white Evangelical Christians can justify their support for torture. And I find it interesting that people without a specific religious affiliation were the least likely to support torture.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that the poll appears to indicate that whites are more likely to support torture than non-whites, but it’s difficult to say how much more likely, since the poll results weren’t broken out by race. But the Pew researchers did do the usual trick of breaking down religious affiliation by race in an attempt to demonstrate a greater gap between the views of religious and non-religious people. While white Protestants and Catholics tend to support torture, the poll appears to indicate that non-white Protestants and Catholics do not.

From the Consumerist:

For a while US Airways has charged $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for the second, but now there will be a $5 additional fee if you pay those fees in person rather than online. In other words, a fee for paying a fee.

This is the image I came up with when I googled “bad mother”

Mother of the Year early entries:

Candidate 1:

Mother phones son 49 times a day.

Candidate 2:

Mother granted permission to harvest dead son’s sperm and use it to impregnate herself.

Candidate 3:

Mother takes son to shooting range, shoots him in the back of the head. Intentionally.

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In light of this last story, I’m sure both of my readers will be gladdened by the news that you can still buy a gun in 32 states without any kind of background check.

Michelle Owen

From The Smoking Gun:

Meet Michelle Owen. Concerned that an ex-boyfriend had used her laptop to search for child pornography, the Indiana woman asked police to search the computer for illegal images, but had her plan backfire when cops discovered two videos of her engaged in illicit acts with a dog. Owen, 24, was charged last week with two felony bestiality counts in connection with the video files, which a detective found in the laptop’s “recycle bin.” At the time Owen asked cops to search the computer, she was locked up in the Johnson County Jail on a public intoxication charge (which violated the terms of her release in a prior drunk driving case). According to a police affidavit, a cop told Owen that he had found videos of her on the laptop and asked if she “knew what those files might be.” Owen, pictured in the below mug shot, replied, “The one with the dog.” Cops believe that the dog in question, Toby, is a beagle. After asking if she was “going to be charged with this,” Owen said that the videos “were just something she did when she was drunk and barely remembers it,” adding that she tried to “delete them the next day when she was sober.”