An Iowa newspaper editor and beer blogger is halfway through his quest to live on beer and water for 46 days during Lent. The “liquid bread” diet is a 300-year-old idea brewed up by German monks who did not eat during Lent. Gotta feeling this guy would rethink this idea if he had the chance. Click here for the story.
Category: News and Views
Bill would make it illegal to practice medicine while intoxicated
Posted by – March 15, 2011
The Missouri House Committee on Crime Prevention and Public Safety heard testimony Monday on a measure that would make it illegal to practice medicine while intoxicated.
You mean it’s legal now?
The Associated Press reports the bill would make it a misdemeanor to perform surgery or a medical procedure while under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The charge would be a felony if a patient were injured or killed. Supporters say the law could save patients from serious injuries or death at the hands of drug-addicted doctors.
Let’s hope the state or federal government didn’t bankroll an expensive study to reach that conclusion.
St. Louis attorney Paul Passanante said the law might deter physicians from performing improper surgeries or writing illegal prescriptions to support their habits. The Missouri State Medical Association opposes the measure, arguing lawmakers should instead make it easier for the state to confiscate a doctor’s license.
Maybe the next step is to install breathalyzers in operating rooms.
Want to get out of jury duty? Tell judge you knew Jeffrey Dahmer
Posted by – November 10, 2010
NEWS: An Ohio man was excused from jury service after mentioning he was a childhood friend of cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
John Backderf was among prospective jurors being screened last week by a judge in Cleveland. When asked if he’d known anyone convicted of a crime, Backderf responded: “I had a close friend in high school who killed 17 people.”
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports the answer caused the judge to freeze and lawyers to drop their pens. Backderf explained he knew Dahmer, who was raised in northeast Ohio. Dahmer confessed to killing and dismembering men and boys in Milwaukee. An inmate killed him in a Wisconsin prison in 1994.
VIEWS: Some people will say anything to get out of jury duty.
NEWS: A New York man looking to buy drugs misdialed and got the sheriff’s “Crime Stoppers” line instead.
Erie County Sheriff’s Detective Alan Rozansky says he got a call around noon Monday and answered with his usual “Crime Stoppers.” The caller apparently didn’t hear that and told Rozansky he was looking “to score” drugs. Rozansky told WIVB-TV that he was surprised but played along and arranged a meeting with undercover officers.
The officers didn’t arrest the caller but used him as an informant to lead them to another transaction taking place down the road. There, police arrested a 35-year-old woman trying to sell her prescription painkillers to a Buffalo man. The careless caller is off the hook for now.
VIEWS: The late Gil Feld, a longtime coordinator for Quincy Regional Crime Stoppers, would have had a hoot detailing this call. He loved stupid criminals.
NEWS: Police in western Massachusetts say a man has been arrested in the robbery of a food delivery driver after he returned to the driver’s restaurant for seconds.
Sgt. John Delaney says police arrested 23-year-old Edward Blatch on Monday at Fu Wong Restaurant in Springfield after the delivery driver identified him. Delaney said the driver and cooks surrounded Blatch and held him until officers arrived. Blatch is scheduled to be arraigned on an armed robbery charge in Springfield District Court.
Police say two men robbed the 23-year-old restaurant driver at gunpoint when he made a delivery in September, taking the food, $200, a cell phone and a high school class ring.
VIEWS: Not exactly John Dillinger.
NEWS: A man who trapped and killed an alligator so big it pulled his boat around a lake has snared what authorities say is Florida’s longest gator on record, exceeding 14 feet.
Wildlife officials say the gator caught by Robert Ammerman, a nurse who traps gators as a hobby, weighed 654 pounds and measured 14 feet, 3 1/2 inches. It was caught Nov. 1, the last day of Florida’s alligator harvest, in Lake Washington near Melbourne.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the previous record was a 14-foot, 5/8-inch alligator trapped in 1997. The state’s heaviest gator on record was taken in 1989, weighing 1,043 pounds.
Ammerman said the gator thrashed and pulled his boat for about 45 minutes after being harpooned and took two hours to tow to dock.
VIEWS: Golf is a hobby. Don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not messin’ with a 14-foot, 654-pound gator.
Will a serious third party candidate emerge for the 2012 election?
Posted by – October 4, 2010
Thomas Friedman of the New York Times writes that barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.
There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing “third parties” to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.
Steve Benen of Washington Monthly disagrees.
To hear Friedman tell it, this mystery party is, in effect, needed to pass a bolder, more sweeping version of the Democratic agenda. Why not just elect more and better Democrats to make that possible? Friedman doesn’t say. How would the Friedman Party overcome Republican obstructionism? He doesn’t say. How would this third party make the kind of institutional changes that have stifled the process in recent years? Friedman doesn’t say.
Other than that, it’s a fine idea.
Cardinals stumbling toward finish line of disappointing season
Posted by – September 25, 2010
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Bernie Miklasz called the Cardinals’ effort “embarrassing” before they lost to the Cubs on Saturday. The Redbirds, everybody’s pick in the NL Central, could be officially eliminated from the playoff race this weekend. St. Louis has not won a playoff game since capturing the 2006 World Series. Walt Jocketty has to be smiling.
In the end, it was lack of depth that did in the Cardinals.
Do what you think is right? Or do what the polls say is right?
Posted by – August 17, 2010
It’s nice to see the wit of Roger Simon back on display after he was out of commission for eight months. Simon, long ago a Chicago Sun-Times columnist and now the chief political columnist for Politico, had his right leg amputated below the knee and lost most of his left foot because of health problems.
In a column penned today, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, Simon suggests that President Obama quit doing what he thinks is right and instead do what is most politically expedient if he has any visions of being around for a second term.
You can go back to the mid-1800s and find a lot of legislators saying that Abe Lincoln should stop lecturing people about ending slavery and listen to them about keeping it.
And there were plenty of lawmakers who said President Dwight D. Eisenhower was “disconnected from the mainstream of America” when he ordered the 101st Airborne Division to go down to Little Rock, Ark., to make sure some black kids could go to school with white kids.
Both decisions may have been “off message,” which is about the worst sin you can commit in Washington. But what’s so wrong about being off message if you are right about the issue?
