Getting away with murder.

Here in Kentucky, you can sell someone a pill that can ease their headache for three or four hours… and get fifteen years behind bars. A homeless man can swipe a few apples to feed his children, and will spend more time behind bars then these people did:

Men Get Suspended Sentences For Running Scooter Rider Off Road, Killing Him

SALISBURY, N.C. — Three teens each pleaded guilty to a felony and misdemeanor in the Rowan County Courthouse on Thursday and, for the first time, they faced family members of the victim.

Alston Vanderford said, “I’m very sorry. I know there’s nothing I can do to bring him back, but if I could I would.”

In an emotionally charged courtroom, Vanderford apologized to family members of Michael Brown. Vanderford, Eric Taylor and Brandon Lowery admitted to causing the crash on Highway 52 in Rowan County more than two years ago.

The teens said they threw eggs at Brown as he rode his scooter, and ultimately caused him to lose control, leading to his death.

The trio also admitted to leaving the scene of a crash. Lowery echoed his former classmate’s words.

“I’m as sorry as one person can be, and I haven’t forgiven myself since it happened,” he said.

Pictures of Brown and his two young sons is all his mother, Elizabeth Brown, has left to remember him by. She talked about the apologies after leaving the courtroom.

“No matter what, it’s not bringing Michael back, but if it eases their conscience, then just let it go as it goes,” she said.

What the hell is this world coming to?

Yahoo! Alerts Yahoo! News - My Alerts - Edit Alert
Wednesday, July 23, 2008, 10:55 AM PDT
WASHINGTON (AP) Federal Reserve says country struggling with slower growth, rising prices.

Fucking geniuses….every last one of them!!

How fucking scary. H/T Bat!

The school board of a small central Ohio community voted unanimously Friday to fire a teacher accused of preaching his Christian beliefs despite staff complaints and using a device to burn the image of a cross on students’ arms.

School board members voted 5-0 to fire Mount Vernon Middle School science teacher John Freshwater. Board attorney David Millstone said Freshwater is entitled to a hearing to challenge the dismissal.

Freshwater denies wrongdoing and will request such a hearing, the teacher’s attorney, Kelly Hamilton, told the Mount Vernon News.

School board members met a day after the consulting firm H.R. On Call Inc. released its report on the teacher’s case.

The report came a week after a family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Columbus against Freshwater and the school district, saying Freshwater burned a cross on a child’s arm that remained for three or four weeks.

Freshwater’s friend Dave Daubenmire defended him.

“With the exception of the cross-burning episode. … I believe John Freshwater is teaching the values of the parents in the Mount Vernon school district,” he told The Columbus Dispatch for a story published Friday.

More at Yahoo News

Last time I danced on a bar was at a Pool and Spa operator’s conference in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin about 7 years ago. (hey, I get around!) I didn’t start the place on fire, but I did receive two job offers at universities, post conference, from men who were at the conference. Needless to say, I didn’t end up working at either of those universities and now sit in Miami blogging.

From the Sun Sentinel:

A woman dancing on a bar accidentally set a man on fire early Sunday after noticing her foot was in flames, Miami-Dade Fire-Rescue said.

The woman, described as in her 20s, was at Drake’s Bar in Kendall when she agreed to help out with a display involving liquor and fire, authorities said. According to Fire Rescue, she hopped on the bar, started dancing, then realized her foot was engulfed in flames.

She reacted by accidentally kicking the flaming mixture into a passer-by, Fire-Rescue said.

Paramedics arrived at the bar, 13758 SW 88th St., about 2 a.m. The man suffered burns to about 20 percent of his upper body, authorities said. Paramedics took him to Ryder Trauma Center’s burn unit. The woman was taken to a hospital.

He has to be the most fucked up man ever to live in the White House. Isn’t this big of him? He feels it’s his duty to give up FUCKING GOLF as long as the war is on. Gee, that’s a HUGE FUCKING SACRIFICE YOU SHITBAG! So on par with the sacrifice those Moms have made….. you know, the sacrifice of their loved ones! The kids they will never see getting married.

US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year.

“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said in an interview for Yahoo! News and Politico magazine.

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf,” he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.”

The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body’s top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello.

“I remember when de Mello, who was at the UN, got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do,” said Bush.

More at Yahoo News

Gee, why not build a U.S. military resort while we’re at it? We don’t want this built for the Iraqis……we want it built for our personnel in Iraq. How nice.

Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

That’s all part of a five-year development “dream list” - or what some dub an improbable fantasy - to transform the U.S.-protected Green Zone from a walled fortress into a centerpiece for Baghdad’s future.

But the $5 billion plan has the backing of the Pentagon and apparently the interest of some deep pockets in the world of international hotels and development, the lead military liaison for the project told the Associated Press.

For Washington, the driving motivation is to create a “zone of influence” around the new $700 million U.S. Embassy to serve as a kind of high-end buffer for the compound, whose total price tag will reach about $1 billion after all the workers and offices are relocated over the next year.

“When you have $1 billion hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbors are. You want to influence what happens in your neighborhood over time,” said Navy Capt. Thomas Karnowski, who led the team that created the development plan.

Karnowski said a deal already has been completed for Marriott International Inc. to build a hotel in the Green Zone. He also said a possible $1 billion investment could come from MBI International, a conglomerate that focuses on hotels and resorts and is led by Saudi Sheikh Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber.

More at the Houston Chronicle

Need more proof of this administration’s incompetence? Well here you go:

Mandela Is on US Terrorist Watch Lists

(May 1) - Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation “embarrassing,” and some members of Congress vow to fix it. [...]

“This is a country with which we now have excellent relations, South Africa, but it’s frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterpart, the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader Nelson Mandela,” Rice said.

So let me get this straight. Not only was former Gov. Eliot Spitzer a very, very evil man, but any crooked republicans he came into contact with, as it turns out, were saints. Is that right?

DA’s Report: Spitzer Behind Dirty Tricks

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A prosecutor said Friday that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have lied when he told investigators he wasn’t deeply involved in a plot that used a Republican rival’s travel records in an effort to embarrass him. He added that Spitzer could have been indicted had he not resigned in disgrace in a prostitution scandal.

Albany County District Attorney P. David Soares said in a report that Spitzer’s former communications director, Darren Dopp, recounted conversations and e-mails that indicated Spitzer directly ordered him in a profanity-laced exchange to give a reporter records regarding Senate Republican leader Joseph Bruno’s use of state aircraft on days he attended Republican fundraisers.

Dopp was provided immunity for his testimony in Soares’ second investigation of the 2007 scandal. Dopp had faced a possible perjury charge because a statement released by the Spitzer administration about the scandal differed from his own testimony, but Soares found Friday that he did not commit perjury.

“If Dopp’s testimony is credited,” Soares’ report states, “then former Governor Spitzer’s answers were not truthful. Accordingly, we intended to present these conflicting accounts to a grand jury.”

But Spitzer’s resignation this month, after he was implicated in an investigation of a prostitution ring, made it impossible to file a charge against him because it meant he was no longer a public employee, the report said.

So stop bothering us already!

White House: Computer hard drives tossed

WASHINGTON - Older White House computer hard drives have been destroyed, the White House disclosed to a federal court Friday in a controversy over millions of possibly missing e-mails from 2003 to 2005.

The White House revealed new information about how it handles its computers in an effort to persuade a federal magistrate it would be fruitless to undertake an e-mail recovery plan that the court proposed.

“When workstations are at the end of their lifecycle and retired … the hard drives are generally sent offsite to another government entity for physical destruction,” the White House said in a sworn declaration filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola.