VW Beetle Clocked at 115 mph

Huh. Mine old Beetle couldn't do 115 in my dreams, let alone in real life.

Guess the new ones are a bit faster.

Go On a Drug Raid, Find Gators

Certainly not your normal drug raid in Brazil as cops found two alligators.

Fodder for police bars for weeks in Rio.

Revolution to the Rescue!

Interesting story about the New England Revlution's Trip to Los Angeles over the weekend.

Interesting

A speeding ticket in Holly Springs, GA will cost you an extra $12 if you get one. Why?

No teh city didn't increase the speeding fine, but have added a fuel surcharge onto the ticket

Drivers caught speeding in this north Atlanta suburb soon will have to pay an extra $12 — to cover $4-a-gallon gas costs for the police officers who stop them.

The City Council passed the fee hike, effective July 1, to offset fuel prices that have eaten up nearly 60% of the police department's 2008 fuel budget, Police Chief Ken Ball says.

Most law enforcement agencies are looking at an exhausted fuel budget and this looks like a legitimate and creative way to make up the shortfall.

Can You Defame A Country?

I ran is threatening to sue other nations for defamation. Can they do that? probably, it is likely they will win? Probably not, after all truth is an absolute defense to defamation.

What are you doing here? - Man Asks Wife at Brothel

She was working and he was patronizing the establishment. Yahoo! News has the short story.

Perhaps is their relationship was a little stronger, he wouldn't be patronizing the place and she wouldn't have needed the money from such a source.

Still, it is a little humorous.

Hat Tip: Sister Toldjah

Wha, Wha, What?

Sometimes you really can't make this stuff up:

Hundreds of students in Arizona are trying to learn English from teachers who don’t know the language, state officials say.
The kids are taught by teachers who don’t know English grammar and can’t pronounce English words correctly. Last year, for example, a Mesa teacher stood in front of a class of language learners and announced, “Sometimes, you are not gonna know some.” A teacher in Phoenix’s Creighton Elementary District asked her kids, “If you have problems, to who are you going to ask?” A Casa Grande Elementary District teacher asked her kids to “read me first how it was before.”

hat Tip: Bryan at Hot Air.

Priest To give Eco-Confessions

OOOKKKAAAYYY???!!!

Rigging Elections--for Reporter Hotness

Farhad Manjoo has the story of how two reporters rigged an "election" on who is the hottest reported in DC.

Has my generation stooped so low in the self-esteem category that we have to rig elections so that people can know how attractive we are? The two "winners" are attractive enough people. Is the desire to win and validate our self-esteeem so great that "hot-ness" is a contest that one must cheat at to win?

Australian Politics, A Strip Club and Too Much Drink

Teh latter two intersect a great deal, but rarely do they intersect in a New York strip club and a leading candidate for the Prime Minister of Australia. Kevin Ruddy explaining his 2003 trip to New York.

Sounds like he a some good times while he was here, too bad he can't seem to remember them.

News You Can't Make Up Even If You Tried

China has issued regulations banning reinarnation without permission. Had the big Newsweek banner not been at the top, I would have sworn I was reading the Onion:

In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

The purpose, of course, is to limit the influence of the Dalai Lama, but it seems a bit absurd to regulate teh afterlife.

Perhaps China should spend a little more time regulating this life, say their toy manufacturing practices, and get that right before trying to regulate the next life.

That One Way to Increase the Birth Rate

Have the Government give everyone a day off to have sex and babies:

A Russian region of Ulyanovsk has found a novel way to fight the nation's birth-rate crisis: It has declared Sept. 12 the Day of Conception and for the third year running is giving couples time off from work to procreate.

The hope is for a brood of babies exactly nine months later on Russia's national day. Couples who "give birth to a patriot" during the June 12 festivities win money, cars, refrigerators and other prizes.

Ulyanovsk, about 550 miles east of Moscow, has held similar contests since 2005. Since then, the number of competitors, and the number of babies born to them, has been on the rise.

There is no question what people are doing on that day off.

House of Representatives Looks Like the House of Commons

One of the neat things you can see on C-SPAN late at night is a regular replays of the Prime Minister's Question Time from the British House of Commons. The decorum in the House of Commons is, well common, with lots of boos, whistles and shouts. It is entertaining in some respects. Well last night, it looks like the U.S. House of Representatives took a page from their British bretern and got a little rancorous last night:

In a massive flare-up of partisan tensions, Republicans walked out on a House vote late Thursday night to protest what they believed to be Democratic maneuvers to reverse an unfavorable outcome for them.

The flap represents a complete breakdown in parliamentary procedure and an unprecedented low for the sometimes bitterly divided chamber.

The rancor erupted shortly before 11 p.m. as Rep. Michael R. McNulty (D-N.Y.) gaveled close the vote on a standard procedural measure with the outcome still in doubt.

Details remain fuzzy, but numerous Republicans argued afterward that they had secured a 215-213 win on their motion to bar undocumented immigrants from receiving any federal funds apportioned in the agricultural spending bill for employment or rental assistance. Democrats, however, argued the measure was deadlocked at 214-214 and failed, members and aides on both sides of the aisle said afterward.

regardless of who was right and who was wrong, the event shows that the partisanship in the House has gotten so bad that the Members don't know how to behave themselves.

The behavior of Democrats is further suspicious regarding the questionable vote, as the Politico reports:

When Democrats finally moved to consider the spending bill as the last vote of the night, furious Republicans left the chamber en masse to protest the maneuver. The House eventually recessed at 11:18 p.m. But Republicans quickly discovered that there was no longer any record of the controversial vote and immediately charged Democrats with erasing the bad result.

“Obviously, the Democrats don’t want to stand up against illegal immigration – so much so that they’re willing to cheat in order to win a vote,” Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) said in an e-mail. “They’re desperate – and it shows.”

The official House website did not show a record of the vote as of 1 a.m. Friday.

The vote results are on the House website now. The vote officially shows a 214-216 count, so the irregularities in the conduct of the vote are troubling. Of course, the Democrats, had they been a bit more prepared, should have avoided the whole incident by making sure they had the votes beforehand.

Update 11:52am: David Freddoso calls it Just Plain Cheating:

They just replayed the whole mess from the House last night on C-Span. I spoke to Novak and he doesn't remember anything quite like this happening before. Pretty outrageous, really. It is about as blatant an abuse of power as you can have in a legislative body, to cheat on a vote total.


Republicans were playing a game that the minority usually plays — you have your guys vote with the other side, then have them change at the last minute. This forces the majority to come up with votes quickly. Although on close issues they would rather spare their endangered members in swing districts and give them a free vote, the majority leadership then has to tell their endangered members to bite their tongues and vote the party line.

Two Democrats changed their votes to ensure that the measure would fail, but then three Republicans did the same. The vote total was 215-213 in favor of the Republican motion to recommit. At that moment, Rep. Mike McNulty ( D-N.Y.), who was in the Speaker's chair, gavelled out the vote, thinking that it was a tie and the motion had failed. But he had miscounted — the motion had actually passed. The Democrats were only able to change this by cheating and changing more votes after the gavel.

No wonder this Congress has a 14% approval rating.

What, No Motels Around?

an Indiana couple was arrested on indencent exposure charges after stopping in a shaded area to have sex in their car. The big problem, the shady area was in front of a day care center.

Ayers, 31, and Declouette, 43, were arrested on public indecency charges when the day care center's operator called cops after spotting the couple getting busy in public. As noted in the below Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department report, when Officer Eli McAllister responded to the scene, "I stood there for approximately two minutes, and they were so engrossed in their recreational activity that they did not notice me." Declouette explained that he had first met Ayers earlier that day and they had been "driving around town, until they found a nice shaded spot to have sex." He added that he was unaware that the chosen location was in front of Cookies Child Care.

OOOKKKAAAYYY!!!

And I Thought McCain-Feingold Was Bad

At least McCain and Feingold didn't seek to limit satire.

New Zealand's Parliament has voted itself far-reaching powers to control satire and ridicule of MPs in Parliament, attracting a storm of media and academic criticism.

The new standing orders, voted in last month, concern the use of images of Parliamentary debates, and make it a contempt of Parliament for broadcasters or anyone else to use footage of the chamber for "satire, ridicule or denigration".

The rules apply any to broadcasts or rebroadcasts in any medium.

They also ban the use of such footage for "political advertising or election campaigning", except with the permission of all members shown.

I suppose there is no New Zealand version of The Daily Show.

Ingenius Thieves Steal Pool With Water

Wha....:

Someone stole 1,000 gallons of water from Daisy Valdivia's backyard. And they didn't spill a drop.

Valdivia woke Wednesday morning to find that her family's inflatable pool, hip high and 10 feet in diameter and filled with water, was stolen from her backyard in the middle of the night. There is no evidence that the water was poured out, pumped out, evaporated or drunk.

"I've never heard of a pool being stolen, let alone one with water in it," Valdivia said.

I thought the stealing the gold bathtup was wierd, but at least the tub was gold. I don't get this.

Duty and Love

Who says that jury duty has to be boring?Not your average place to find love, but hey, who can tell.

British Juror Arrested For Listening to IPod

Look, I know jury duty can be boring, but why risk such high consequences.

A female Muslim juror has been arrested in Britain after allegedly listening to an MP3 player under her hijab headscarf during a murder trial, police said Monday.

The woman in her early 20s was spotted by a fellow juror listening to music as she was meant to be helping try the case of a pensioner accused of bludgeoning his wife to death after 50 years of marriage.

She could now be charged with contempt of court and, if convicted, may be punished with an indefinite jail sentence and an unlimited fine.

Details emerged after the defendant was convicted and Judge Roger Chapple lifted a reporting restriction which prevented previous publication of the details for fear of disrupting proceedings.

The woman had repeatedly arrived late for hearings at Blackfriars Crown Court, central London, and prosecuting lawyer Peter Clarke asked for her to be dismissed.

The judge initially refused, saying it was not necessary, but a day later, he received a note from another juror suggesting that the woman may have been listening to music during the defendant's evidence.

Such contempt should be severly punished, but I can bet that some high official is going to say, "we should be sensitive to their culture." What crap, the judge and the court system should throw the book, the biggest, heaviest book they can find, at this woman.

Oh, and a mistrial is almost sure to happen.

Say What??

Human greed takes lion's share of solar energy

Via Drudge.

Words escape me.

25 Hours for a 2.5 Hour Flight

At some point in this ordeal, I would have found alternate means. You can drive from Atlantic City to JFK in a couple of hours.