BO Pulls His Putz!
"Rahm Emanuel is son of the devil's spawn, Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY) said. "He is an individual who would sell his mother to get a vote. He would strap his children to the front end of a steam locomotive."
Rep. Massa describes a confrontation with Emanuel in a shower: "I am showering, naked as a jaybird, and here comes Rahm Emanuel, not even with a towel wrapped around his tush, poking his finger in my chest, yelling at me."
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A Colorado Catholic school's decision to deny enrollment to a young child with lesbian mothers has divided the religious community with some questioning whether a preschooler should be used to make a political statement.
The child, currently a preschool student at the Sacred Heart of Jesus school in Boulder, would be allowed to finish out the school year, but would not be readmitted for kindergarten in the fall.
The move came after the parents' sexual orientation drew the attention of the parish priest, the Rev. Bill Breslin, and the Denver archdiocese.
Breslin did not return messages seeking comment, but explained his decision in a lengthy blog posting in which he defended his decision as protecting the child and the parents "from the necessary conflict that their relationship would bring to a clear-seeing and committed Catholic community."
"It is not about punishing the child for the sins of his or her parents," he wrote. " It is simply that the lesbian couple is saying that their relationship is a good one that should be accepted by everyone; and the Church cannot agree to that."
The child's ousting became public after some of the teachers who didn't agree with the decision contacted Boulder Pride, the city's gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender services organization.
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Such is the case in the Florida Keys, where police say a 37-year-old woman crashed her 1995 Ford Thunderbird into another car as she attempted to shave her bikini area.
According to the arrest report, on March 2, Megan Mariah Barnes told Florida State Trooper Gary Dunick that she was on her way to Key West to meet her boyfriend, and that she "wanted to be ready for the visit." So, police say she had her ex-husband, Charles Judy, who was riding in the passenger seat, take the wheel while she attended to her pubic hair.
The results weren't pretty. Going 45 mph, Barnes and Judy are said to have rear-ended a car that had slowed to make a left turn.
A day earlier, Barnes had been convicted of numerous driving infractions, including DUI with a prior arrest and driving with a suspended license. She had been ordered to impound her car, her license was revoked for five years, and she had been placed on probation for nine months.
Dunick told The Citizen newspaper that after the crash, in which two passengers in the other car were treated for minor injuries at an area hospital, Barnes drove for another half-mile before switching seats with Judy in an attempt to make it seem to police as though she had not been driving.
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Washington
In the nearly two years since the US Supreme Court struck down the District of Columbia's ban on handguns, more than 190 challenges have been filed seeking to overturn other gun-control laws or to reverse firearms convictions.
Now, with the justices examining a similar ban in place in Chicago, gun-rights advocates are hoping for another landmark constitutional victory - this time extending an individual right to keep and bear arms in cities and towns across the country. (To see a preview of this case, click here.)
But the ultimate showdown over gun control in America will be waged in a future legal case not yet on the high court's radar, analysts say. At issue in that case: Are Second Amendment rights as fundamental as freedom of speech and religion, or will gun rights be subject to lesser constitutional protection?
The answer to that question - and the potential future course of gun control - may rest with a majority of the nine men and women on the Supreme Court. When that future case arrives, it will all boil down to a three-word phrase of legal jargon: "standard of review."
What does 'standard of review' mean and how does it relate to gun rights?
The way the Supreme Court protects individual constitutional rights against encroachment by the government is by weighing the government's interest in a particular law against the individual right preserved in the Constitution.
For example, when the government passes a law censoring people from engaging in core political speech, the court requires the government to demonstrate it has a compelling interest in the censorship and to prove that the measure is the least intrusive means of achieving that governmental interest. If it can't prove both, the law must be struck down.
Not all rights warrant the toughest level of constitutional protection. In the intermediate level, judges often attempt to balance competing interests to reach the proper outcome.
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The Alaskan village of Akutan is home to 100 permanent residents and 900 seasonal workers. Like many Alaskan communities, Akutan makes its money off seafood production. At the moment, the village is only reachable by a 70 year old sea plane - and they are quickly running out of parts for it.
The solution is a new airport. The facility will transport people on the 20 minute flight to the town of Unalaska where they can connect to other flights. Like most Alaskan transportation services - this route is extremely heavily subsidized.
The new airport will cost a whopping $76 million. The sea plane currently carries 5500 people annually, so some simple math shows that in the first ten years of operation, the tax payers are forking over $1350 for every single passenger using the facility. This doesn't even include any additional costs of operating the airport (another $500,000 each year).
Larry Cotter, the chief executive of the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association says the following about the airport:
"Some people are probably positing, 'Oh, it's another Bridge to Nowhere, except it's an airport to nowhere. Anybody who says that is really ignorant."
Well, call me ignorant, but I don't understand why a village of 100 permanent residents needs a $76 million airport. If the current sea plane is falling apart, wouldn't the best solution be a new sea plane? Alaska has 256 airports, and even the smallest of them may only serve 40 people - costing millions to build and maintain.
Then again, when you read that Chicago's O'Hare is spending $6.6 billion on its renovation plan, $76 million seems like a bargain.
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"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education", Mark Twain
