Walmart rolls back prices by minus fifty percent!

Our nation’s businessmen were the source of most of this week’s outrages:

General Idiocy

The College of Business at Illinois State University has taken to enforcing a dress code for students. Here’s a lesson for the idiots at Illinois State: those students aren’t your employees, they’re your customers.

***

The CEO of Spirit Air accidentally sent an in-house discussion of a customer complaint to the aggrieved customer. Here’s his comment:

Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.

***

Comcast began a “service” called the Big Ten Channel, which charges fans of college football to watch games that used to be broadcast for free. Most fans weren’t happy about the “service”, so Comcast had its employees comment on sports message boards, pretending to be real fans who love the Big Ten Channel.

Greed vs. Regulation

This one’s only half of an outrage: the World Trade Organization has ruled in favor of the island nation of Antigua, saying that the United States isn’t allowed to ban Internet gambling. By way of compensation, Antigua has asked the WTO to allow the island’s businesses to violate US copyrights. To qualify for this extraordinary benefit, a company would have to do little more than rent a post office box on Antigua.

What makes this only half of an outrage is the fact that the US can easily get around the ruling. All we have to do is ban ALL forms of Internet gambling, including online lottery ticket purchases and off track betting. The WTO hasn’t ruled that countries can’t ban online gambling; it’s ruled that countries can’t selectively ban online gambling.

***

After all the bruhaha about no-bid contracts being awarded to Dick Cheney’s old company (and at a time when Cheney held stock options worth millions), you’d think that the practice of awarding no-bid contracts would be somewhat curtailed. But you’d think wrong.

This Is Why We Invented Prison

As it turns out, the collapse of the mine in Utah that trapped 6 workers was no accident. It was the result of a dangerous mining technique that involves deliberately collapsing sections of a mine:

Miners’ advocates have accused the Mine Safety and Health Administration in recent years of being too accommodating to the industry at the expense of safety. And they say MSHA was too quick to approve the mining plan at Crandall Canyon despite concerns that it was too dangerous for mining to continue when Murray bought the place a year ago.

In question is the decision to allow Crandall Canyon’s operators to mine between two sections that had already been excavated using a mining technique that causes the roof to collapse. In that middle section, the mine was cut like a city block, leaving pillars of coal holding up the mountain above. MSHA approved a plan allowing the operators to pull out the pillars, a practice called “retreat mining,” which causes deliberate, controlled roof cave-ins.

Experts think any investigation will focus on why MSHA agreed to that plan.

Those conditions are so unstable, some companies will leave behind the last of the coal rather than risk lives trying to pull additional pillars, experts have said.

***

Instead of trying and punishing serious juvenile offenders as adults, we ought to try and punish our worst adult criminals as juveniles:

Two San Antonio-based boot camp officials accused of dragging a 15-year-old girl behind a van in Banquete were indicted Thursday on aggravated assault charges.

Charles Eugene Flowers and Stephanie Bassitt of Love Demonstrated Ministries boot camp are accused of using a rope to tie camper Siobahn McClintock to a van on June 12 and then dragging her behind it.

The Christian boot camp is a 32-day program in which girls and young women ages 13 to 19 spend 28 days at the facility near San Antonio, then four days at the camp in Banquete.

Demonstrated Love is one of those privately-run youth rehab camps that are now supported by your tax dollars through the Office of Faith Based Initiatives.

General Outrage

Yet another GOP functionary was busted in a prostitution sting. Nothing special about that, right? It seems that GOP officials are busted for consorting with prostitutes every other day. But I can’t help noting this case, because of the extraordinary amount of hypocrisy involved. As it turns out, the functionary was one Tim Droogsma, a man given to writing to his local newspaper when he thought that the paper’s content got a little too racy:

I don’t think I’m too prudish (which, I realize, is what prudes always say), but do we really want this sentence: ‘She hopped on my lap, facing forward. I pulled up her skirt in the back, slid her panties out of the way, and unzipped’?

That’s so typical of today’s GOP: it’s fine to HAVE extramarital sex, but not to write about it. (via OSRR)

***

The manual used by the president’s advance team is now available to the public, thanks to a lawsuit by a couple who were arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts (the couple was awarded $80,000). The manual instructs the advance team to identify potential protesters and remove them if they might be seen by the president or the press (see manual here). Of course, excluding non-disruptive taxpayers from taxpayer-funded events like presidential appearances is illegal.

***

Ever wonder how some churches decide which sins are worse than others? On the one hand, many fundamentalist Christians think it’s fine to refuse to hold a funeral for a gay veteran. But there’s a notable silence when another church decides to have a convicted sex offender preach the Gospel from its pulpit.

A Day in the Life…

…in Indiana:

Floyd Kibiloski was playing video poker at the Caesars Indiana casino last month when he decided to try his luck at the machine next to him — and got an embarrassing surprise. Kibiloski, a Fern Creek, Ky., computer consultant, sat in a chair soaked with urine, apparently left there by a woman who had been playing at that slot machine moments earlier. It was dripping off his shorts and down his leg.

He said the reaction from Caesars left him even more embarrassed. He said he got no help trying to find a place to clean up and had to walk in his dripping shorts to his car to get an old pair of sweatpants to wear. And another casino patron who sat there after him, he said, also got wet.

…in Arizona:

An eighth-grader was suspended this week after he turned in homework with a sketch that school officials said resembled a gun and posed a threat to his classmates. “I just can’t believe that there wasn’t another way to resolve this,” said Paula Mosteller, the boy’s mother. “He’s so upset. The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good.”

…in Michigan:

The wife of a veteran Oakland County Sheriff’s deputy faces multiple counts of prostitution in what authorities describe as a long-running operation in which she allegedly advertised her services for $250 an hour through a Web site. Sheriff Michael Bouchard said it is believed “thousands of dollars were involved” in the illegal business and that she may have then used much of the money to gamble at area casinos.

…in Florida:

Michelle Lorene Luther wasn’t sitting in the Pasco County jail on Saturday just because she took her boyfriend for a ride. It’s where he rode, police say.

On top of her car.

“The caller said they saw a man on the roof screaming for the driver to stop,” said New Port Richey police Assistant Chief Darryl Garman.

Luther, 40, was arrested on charges of aggravated domestic battery, possession of cocaine and possession of drug paraphernalia.

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