Cameron Read, 39, was arrested on June 6 and admitted to smoking marijuana before trying to shoot the moon.SOMETHING tells me that Cameron Read doesn't much. Particularly about science or physics. You know, books and articles that cover the concepts of propulsion, gravity and escape velocity.
The man's girlfriend called 911 and said her boyfriend fired several shots from a handgun and was still armed at a home in the 4400 block of Preston.
Police said a 49-year-old woman and her 15-year-old son were in the home when Read reportedly fired a round out of the window, and they reported hearing several more shots as they fled the home. No one was hurt.
Prescott Valley police said they needed to use force to get Read into custody. He was booked into the Yavapai County Jail for two counts of disorderly conduct, two counts of endangerment, one count of resisting arrest, one count of criminal damage and one count of unlawful discharge of a firearm.
Well, if I were in charge, they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.
THUS the harebrained wonder from Wasilla revealed herself not only as a particularly pathetic specimen of Demagogus Americanus but as something of an antichrist as well.According to a report by NBC, the backlash against Palin’s remarks, even within the religious community, have fallen on deaf ears.
"Would I make it again?” Palin told NBC News in response to the criticisms of her metaphor. “Why wouldn't I, yeah, absolutely. Terrorists who want to annihilate Americans, innocent Americans, our children — whatever it takes to stop them. If I were in charge, I'd be stoppin' em."
"If a nation expects to be both ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be."
-- Thomas Jefferson
"We're doomed! We're doomed! We're all going to die!"
-- Kate Smith
Patrick Dotson was in crisis mode. The Grand Canyon Community Church pastor had just emailed a state food bank with an unlikely request: Rush food to one of the world's seven natural wonders.HOW LONG is this going to last -- this reign of congressional terrorists? How long will we live with the threat of "Give us what we demand, or we'll wreck the government, victimize the marginalized and blow up the economy"?
Then came the knock on the door. A U.S. Park Service ranger asked whether Dotson could expand the small food pantry that was being run out of the church's garage. "He said, 'We've got families struggling here. How can we make this bigger?'" Dotson said.
The U.S. government shutdown has turned a prestigious national park where millions come each year to relax and recreate into a realm of high anxiety. Hundreds of employees are stranded without work or pay, prompting the donation of hundreds of boxes of food for families that have nowhere else to turn.
About 2,200 people remain inside the isolated Arizona park, 1,800 of them employees of private concessions that make the place run — the people who change the hotel room sheets, serve the meals, sell the gift shop mementos. Many are entry-level, minimum-wage workers with families who live paycheck to paycheck.
And while concessionaires are offering free rent and meals to those out of work, dependents often do not qualify. Families who rent apartments and send their children to a school near the park's famous South Rim have been left to their own devices, forced to rely on savings and fast-emptying supplies.
The result: Dotson's food pantry, which normally serves a dozen families a year, now has its hands full. The impromptu pantry has been moved to a community hall, where volunteers distribute boxes containing rice, beans, peanut butter and tuna.
Dotson requested the assistance of Phoenix-based St. Mary's Food Bank last week when he noticed that donated food at the church was quickly disappearing. He knew things would worsen as Washington's standoff dragged on.
Wednesday brought news that future handouts would contain perishable items such as lettuce and other vegetables, sending a buzz through the park, said Sarah Stuckey, a spokeswoman for St. Mary's.
"It's just a very strange situation for all of us inside the park," Dotson said. "There's a lot of nervousness here. People are worried. They're asking, 'How long is this going to last?'"
But should the people of America once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another, and towards foreign nations, which assumes the language of justice and moderation, while it is practising iniquity and extravagance, and displays in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candour, frankness, and sincerity, while it is rioting in rapine and insolence, this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world. Because we have no government, armed with power, capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness would break the strongest cords of our Constitution, as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.MORALITY and religion are passé in postmodern America, some of the still-religious are bat-shit crazy for the tea-party terrorists, and "avarice, ambition, revenge and licentiousness" have become the ultimate public-private partnership today.
In the year of our Lord 2010, the voters of the United States elected the worst Congress in the history of the Republic. There have been Congresses more dilatory. There have been Congresses more irresponsible, though not many of them. There have been lazier Congresses, more vicious Congresses, and Congresses less capable of seeing forests for trees. But there has never been in a single Congress -- or, more precisely, in a single House of the Congress -- a more lethal combination of political ambition, political stupidity, and political vainglory than exists in this one, which has arranged to shut down the federal government because it disapproves of a law passed by a previous Congress, signed by the president, and upheld by the Supreme Court, a law that does nothing more than extend the possibility of health insurance to the millions of Americans who do not presently have it, a law based on a proposal from a conservative think-tank and taken out on the test track in Massachusetts by a Republican governor who also happens to have been the party's 2012 nominee for president of the United States. That is why the government of the United States is, in large measure, closed this morning.
We have elected the people sitting on hold, waiting for their moment on an evening drive-time radio talk show.
We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.
Here's some news that has law enforcement officials and lawmakers scratching their heads:IN A RELATED development, the Iowa Legislature has just sent a bill to the governor that would require violent criminals to continuously beep during assaults and robberies.
Iowa is granting permits to acquire or carry guns in public to people who are legally or completely blind.
No one questions the legality of the permits. State law does not allow sheriffs to deny an Iowan the right to carry a weapon based on physical ability.
The quandary centers squarely on public safety. Advocates for the disabled and Iowa law enforcement officers disagree over whether it's a good idea for visually disabled Iowans to have weapons.
On one side: People such as Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington, who demonstrated for The Des Moines Register how blind people can be taught to shoot guns. And Jane Hudson, executive director of Disability Rights Iowa, who says blocking visually impaired people from the right to obtain weapon permits would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. That federal law generally prohibits different treatment based on disabilities
On the other side: People such as Dubuque County Sheriff Don Vrotsos, who said he wouldn't issue a permit to someone who is blind. And Patrick Clancy, superintendent of the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, who says guns may be a rare exception to his philosophy that blind people can participate fully in life.
Private gun ownership — even hunting — by visually impaired Iowans is nothing new. But the practice of visually impaired residents legally carrying firearms in public became widely possible thanks to gun permit changes that took effect in Iowa in 2011.
"It seems a little strange, but the way the law reads we can't deny them (a permit) just based on that one thing," said Sgt. Jana Abens, a spokeswoman for the Polk County Sheriff's Department, referring to a visual disability.
Polk County officials say they've issued weapons permits to at least three people who can't legally drive and were unable to read the application forms or had difficulty doing so because of visual impairments.
And sheriffs in three other counties — Jasper, Kossuth and Delaware — say they have granted permits to residents who they believe have severe visual impairments.
"I'm not an expert in vision," Delaware County Sheriff John LeClere said. "At what point do vision problems have a detrimental effect to fire a firearm? If you see nothing but a blurry mass in front of you, then I would say you probably shouldn't be shooting something."
TED NUGENT -- and this is the kindest thing you can say about the man after his repeated whacked-out, incendiary outbursts about, well, everything . . . particularly all things political -- is a thought-challenged hothead. This is reason enough not to take him seriously, much less not give him a column.Right-wing rocker Ted Nugent has taken to his column to call for the public hanging of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the now-charged Boston Marathon bombers.
The column, titled “Time To Stretch Neck Of Jihadist Punk,” was posted on the right wing website WND over the weekend. Stressing the need for quick justice, he (mostly) avoided his frequent talking points (fighting against gun control, criticizing Democrats and President Obama).
Using his usual colorful language, Nugent refers to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and his now-killed brother Tamerlan using the term “voodoo” 13 times in his article, and calls for “stretching their necks” three times.
In the piece, he laments that Tsarnaev will likely spent years in custody before being sentenced: “Justice is supposed to be swift. At least that’s how our Founding Fathers thought it should be,” speculating that, 150 years ago “he would have been swinging from an oak tree in Boston Common no longer than 60 days from the date of his arrest. That would be justice.”
Nugent predicts: “He probably won’t go to trial for more than a year due to court-sanctioned delays. Once he’s found guilty, he will be afforded any number of appeals that will take more years, possibly more than a decade. The young voodoo nut has got a long life in front of him, thanks to America’s screwed-up justice system.”
He cites the trial of Nidal Malik Hasan, set to start May 29 (Hasan is accused of killing 13 soldiers and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009), as an example of crimes against Americans taking a long time to reach the court.
While “The Nuge” didn’t bring up gun control specifically (though he had a bit to say about it last week), he did note that Hasan’s “voodoo-inspired rampage” took place “in yet another gun-free zone.” Nugent added, “I would have supplied the rope, the lumber for the gallows and gladly pulled the hatch on this soulless rabid dog.”
b : favoring extreme changes in existing views, habits, conditions, or institutions
c : associated with political views, practices, and policies of extreme change
IN A political culture as deeply silly and shallow as our own, this inevitably leads to an assault on . . . bicycle lanes. Do reporters at the Omaha World-Herald even try to keep a straight face when covering politicians exercised over the Civic Menace of Bicycle Lanes? God, I couldn't. The Omaha mayoral candidates were all over the road Tuesday on those two big-city issues, with several questioning the wisdom of Mayor Jim Suttle's decisions to hire a bike czar and to develop bike lanes downtown.I GUESS nothing screams "raging irresponsibility" like making an effort to reduce the amount of complex hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide we daily spew into the atmosphere over our fair city, save a bit of money we'd otherwise be dumping into our gas tanks, conserve a limited natural resource and burn a few pounds off of our limitless backsides.
Republicans Dan Welch and Dave Nabity both criticized Suttle for parts of his bike initiatives, including the hiring of a czar from California for $65,000.
“Not wise,” said Welch.
“Out of touch,” said Nabity.
Both men questioned the bike lanes. Welch said he drives Leavenworth Street every day and believes that the lanes are tough on traffic.
“I haven't seen a bike yet, but we're backing up traffic,” Welch said.
Nabity agreed: “It was a lot of energy about something that wasn't really moving the ball down the field.”
Suttle, the only Democrat in the race, stood by his bike-friendly initiatives.
He said that when he became mayor, he decided to adopt an all-inclusive transportation policy that took into consideration all modes of movement, including foot traffic, trolleys, buses and bikes.
So THIS is what it took for ESPN to finally apologize for Brent Musburger?Musberger is just silly and superficial, not to mention ignorant. Gals who look like A.J. McCarron's Miss Alabama girlfriend are a dime a dozen in the SEC. And I'm assuming you don't have to be a national-championship college quarterback to snare one.
Check out this startling tale involving a pair of Kansas City Star reporters reportedly presented with a proposition – a variation on Sophie’s Choice – that only one position remained for the two of their jobs.CAN YOU believe it? I knew that you could.
“They brought in two reporters – Karen Dillon and Dawn Bormann – and told them that one of them had to go,” says a staffer. “And that they had to decide which one would stay and they had until next week to figure it out. Sort of like ‘The Hunger Games.’ That’s the scuttlebutt anyway.”
There’s more.
“Karen Dillon has seniority, so she has the option of taking it or not taking it,” says the source. “And if she does, Dawn gets laid off. Dawn’s a great person but I think Karen will vote in favor of herself because she’s got teenage kids at home.”
This just in: Bormann is o-u-t.
The Quicky's convenience store in Mid-City takes its parking lot rules seriously. Very seriously.
About 4 p.m. Friday, New Orleans paramedics rushed inside the store for a man with a life-threatening medical issue.
They worked on the patient with chest pain, put him inside the vehicle, then started to speed off.
The paramedics “heard a loud noise,” and the vehicle came to a screeching halt, according to Jeb Tate, spokesman for New Orleans Emergency Medical Services.
The medics stepped out and found a boot on their ambulance.
Convenience store employees allegedly put a restrictive parking boot on the ambulance. And now it was stuck.
The paramedics were perplexed.
Tate said the ambulance had its emergency lights on the whole time.
Store employees didn’t want to talk about it. They declined requests for comment.
Apparently one of the employees took the boot off. The tire was left flat.
And so the paramedics and the man with the emergency waited.
“We actually had to delay that patient's care by calling another ambulance out here to come transport this patient,” Tate said.
The man who booted the ambulance was a Quicky’s convenience store employee and New Orleans Police cited him for simple criminal damage to property for putting the boot on the ambulance.SO, do you need any more proof that New Orleans is not of this country, if indeed of this world? It's not just anywhere that you will find such a perfect storm of abject stupidity plus people always, always on the make and looking for somebody, anybody to shake down.
Eyewitness News saw workers continuing to boot cars in their parking lot Monday morning. A worker at Quicky's convenience store said the employee, identified in a police report as Ahmed Sidi Aleywa, who booted a working ambulance Friday has been fired.
“The guy that did this, he came from another country. He didn't even know what an ambulance looked like. He's been fired,” said Ali Colone, a man identified as a worker at Quicky’s. The owners declined to comment, but Colone said the owners are sorry it happened.
“We just have rules and regulations that we have to follow by. There are signs out here for our regular customers,” Colone said.
Those rules and regulations are self-imposed. Quicky’s parking lot is private property. Signs posted read, “If you leave the property your vehicle will be booted."
Akesha Allen is a private investigator and in September, she stopped to get a drink at Quicky's. Before getting out, she climbed to the back of the van to secure her equipment when it started shaking.
“I said, what are you doing? I'm not illegally parked. He goes, yes you are. You didn't pay the fee. I said I never got out of the van to pay the fee,” Allen said about a $5 charge for parking in the lot.
They gave her a sheet that said she owed them $120 to remove the boot.
“We had to come out there with cash. They wouldn't take a check,” said Mark Avery, Allen’s employer at Deep South Investigations.
