The following is a partial transcript of that call. Items in bold appear to be the voice of the 911 dispatcher.

911 Office, Tammy.

Tammy, my ex-husband's here with a gun. He's in here. He's got a gun.

He's going to kill them, hurry.

He's got my kids, quick.

What's his name?

Parker Elliott.

(Quick, shallow breathing)

2005 Forrest Ridge Trail, Culleoka. We've got a male subject in the house with a weapon.

He just told my kids he's going to kill them if I'm on the phone. He's going to kill me.

I don't need you to hang up. Has he been drinking?

He's going to kill me. They're in the hallway with him, and I'm hiding in the closet.

(First shot is heard)

I'm hiding in the closet. I'm coming out 'cause he'd not going to hurt my kids. The kids are with him.

Can they get out?

I want to make sure he doesn't shoot my kids. The kids are with him.

They're deterring him. Please, please, he's going to kill them.

Has he been drinking?

He's got to be.

How long has he been out of the residence?

(Labored, quick breathing)

The kids are telling him I'm not here. He said if I'm here, he'll kill them.

He just shot the gun.

He hasn't seen you yet?

He's coming. He just shot the gun again. Please! Please!

What kind of a gun is it?

A handgun. He's going to the front door.

(Dispatcher to other emergency personnel) He's inside the house, shooting. He had two children and an ex-wife.

Oh, he hit one of them!

Stay in the closet. He doesn't know you're in the closet?

He can see the phone cord coming in. Oh! He hit one of them.

(Gunshots. Sound of girl screaming in the background)

They've got the gun. I think my kids have got my gun. I can't believe I forgot to get it.

I think one of my children has the weapon. He's shot five times. I'm hiding in the closet, and my kids are out there with him.

How old are the kids?

15 and 18.

(Gunshots and screaming)

He shot five more. Is that all of them?

Ma'am, I don't know what kind of gun he has.

He hasn't shot them yet. My kids are still OK.

(Labored breathing)

(Kids screaming)

He's going to kill me.

(Screaming)

He's coming to the closet! He's coming to the closet! He's coming to the closet!

(Kids screaming, shrieking)

He's at the closet. He's going to shoot me. Help me! He's here. He's gonna hit me with the gun.

(Children screaming in the background)

Calm down.

He's still shooting at the kids! Help me!

(Whimpering)

Be calm! They're getting there. They're coming.

He's beating on the doors.

(Loud banging)

He's still shooting.

Parker, don't!

Parker, no! Please, no!

He's going to beat a hole in the door.

Ma'am, calm down. What's your name?

Please! Freda! Freda!

(Yell heard from man in background)

Please, don't hurt my kids! Don't hurt my babies! Parker, no!

Where are they?

I don't know.

(Screaming)

Parker, please! Don't!

(Screams, screams, screams)

(Gunshots)

Don't hurt my babies!!

(Shrieks)

(Screams)

Freda, what's going on? Freda?

(Gunshots, gunshots)

Hello?

This is E-Com 720. We just heard two gunshots inside the residence. We heard a woman screaming. Now we've got dead silence.

10-4.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:46 PM   0 comments

...20 percent of U.S. residents admit buying products from spam purveyors.

The US has a hardcore group of people who simply aren't interested in using the Internet. Around a third of US adults have rejected the Net, causing researchers to split them into two distinct groups.

• By 20 percent of U.S. residents, undoubtedly they meant respondents to the survey.
  
  
• It's unclear whether "spam" means opt-in e-mails and e-mails from companies with which the users already have an established relationship.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:40 PM   0 comments

Now this is what a superhero movie should be. "Spider-Man 2" believes in its story in the same way serious comic readers believe, when the adventures on the page express their own dreams and wishes. It's not camp and it's not nostalgia, it's not wall-to-wall special effects and it's not pickled in angst. It's simply and poignantly a realization that being Spider-Man is a burden that Peter Parker is not entirely willing to bear.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:37 PM   0 comments

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton said. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Then came the Parable of the Stairs, of course. My tiresome, shopworn, oft-told tale, a piece of unsupportable meaningless anecdotal drivel about how I turned my tax cut into a nice staircase that replaced a crumbling eyesore, hired a few people and injected money far and wide - from the guys who demolished the old stairs, the guys who built the new one, the family firm that sold the stone, the other firm that rented the Bobcats, the entrepreneur who fabricated the railings in his garage, and the guy who did the landscaping. Also the company that sold him the plants. And the light fixtures. It’s called economic activity. What’s more, home improvements added to the value of this pile, which mean that my assessment would increase, bumping up my property taxes. To say nothing of the general beautification of the neighborhood. Next year, if my taxes didn’t shoot up, I had another project planned. Raise my taxes, and it won’t happen – I won’t hire anyone, and they won’t hire anyone, rent anything, buy anything. You see?

“Well, it’s a philosophical difference,” she sniffed. She had pegged me as a form of life last seen clilcking the leash off a dog at Abu Ghraib. “I think the money should have gone straight to those people instead of trickling down.” Those last two words were said with an edge.

“But then I wouldn’t have hired them,” I said. “I wouldn’t have new steps. And they wouldn’t have done anything to get the money.”

“Well, what did you do?” she snapped.

“What do you mean?”

“Why should the government have given you the money in the first place?”

“They didn’t give it to me. They just took less of my money.”

That was the last straw. Now she was angry. And the truth came out:

“Well, why is it your money? I think it should be their money.”

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:17 PM   0 comments

It reminds me why Democrats are always at a disadvantage when butting horns against the Republicans -- Democrats think, and re-assess, and the notion of fairness at least floats somewhere in the background.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:27 PM   0 comments

Bongiovanni saidticket sales went south about the middle of April, when shows already on sale dramatically slowed and new shows failed to ignite.

"Price has got to matter," he said. "Ticket prices are elevated to where they are not a frivolous expense." But industry insiders say it's not simply high ticket prices and a bad economy that caused ticket sales to drop, but a variety of larger issues, ranging from the lack of exciting attractions to a growing reluctance to patronize the suburban amphitheaters (called "sheds" in the business) where most of the summer tours play.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:18 PM   0 comments

• Page xi, in the Preface and Acknowledgements, for crying out loud. Alterman acknowledges missing the works of Robert Caro as he (Alterman) pursues an advanced degree in history--so he (Alterman) listens to the complete works of Caro on tape. Cheez, Louise, Alterman, that's not scholarship, that's killing time. When you listen to books on tape, they flow past you in a stream of someone else's conscious narration, and once the words are past, they're gone; you're at the whim of the break in the tracks if you want to listen to a section over again, which is why I rarely do.
  
  Mostly I listen to books on tape to kill time on long drives to Milwaukee and back, or I used to do them when I had an hour long commute from work (or an hour and a half commute from work to my sweetie's home, a quarter of the way across the state. If you're listening to books for twenty minutes at a crack, you're not paying them much attention. Cripes, I would not dare try to impress upon my mind the serious works of Tacitus or Gibbons through books on tape; I'd require the opportunity to re-read sentences until I grasped their very meaning. Alterman admits he--in pursuit of a college degree, for crying out loud (or swearing out loud in my case)--did less. It's less respect to Caro on Alterman's part than I am paying to Alterman, but it's too late for me to borrow the abridged audio version of Alterman's work, so I am stuck with my dollar's worth (plus Quality Paperback Club's Postage and Handling) of print. Heaven help me, and you, gentle reader.
  
  Fortunately for the both of us, I skimmed the rest of the acknowledgements.
  
  
• pp1-2 in the Introduction, a lot of name dropping, but I disagree. Whereas Bernard Goldberg and Ann Coulter quote people to indicate bias and slander, Alterman quotes people who indicate there is not bias nor slander. Goldberg and Coulter's quotes represent primary sources, that is, indications that illustrate their points; when Alterman quotes sources who say there is no bias, it's the equivalent of hearsay, since he's not actually illustrating non-bias, but rather people saying there is not bias.
  
  
• p2 in the Introduction, Alterman quotes Pat Buchanan, for crying out loud, as though he (Buchanan) were a member of mainstream-right thought. Who are you kidding?
  
  
• p3 in the Introduction, Alterman refers to Ann Coulter as a blonde bombshell pundette. Ad homenim as Alterman points out that Coulter is an attractive (hem) woman, and hence should be judged lesser than, say, a homely man such as Alterman.
  
  
• p3 in the Introduction FIRST TOSSING POINT this comes a couple lines later:
  
  
  In recent times, the right has ginned up its "liberal media" propoganda machine. Books by both Ann Coulter, a blond bombshell pundette, and Bernard Goldberg, former CBS News producer, have topped the best-seller lists, stringing together such a series of charges that, well, it's amazing neither one sought to accuse "liberals" of using the blood of conservative children for extra flavor in their soy-milk decaf lattes. [Emphasis mine.]
  
  
  Got that? Alterman is saying that Coulter and Goldberg might as well have committed "blood libel." The tradition to which "Mister" Alterman alludes says Jews use the blood of Gentile/Palestinian children in Zionist rituals of some sort or another. It's often repeated these days in the Arab media to support the tradition of strapping explosives to Believers, women, and children to blow up Israeli civilians whose crime is stopping at a market or drinking coffee in a particular cafe. Damn you, Eric Alterman. I curse you only to the fate you deserve, whatever form it might take.
  
  I would like to take a moment to apologize to Ajax and Tristan, the felines scared when I flung this book from my hands (towards the door, not the labouriously-painted walls) and to my beautiful wife, whom I upset with my foaming-mouth invective for Eric Alterman. You all deserve a better refuge when trying to sleep. I shall try to read this book alone, with a schnucking hammer with which to beat it, in the future for your peace of mind.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:46 PM   0 comments

From 1986's "Soul Man" to last month's "Soul Plane," racial stereotypes have been the backbone of comedies good and bad. Makeup-induced transformations are nothing new, either, whether in 1964's "Black Like Me" or Murphy's phlegmy turn as an old Jewish man in 1988's "Coming To America."

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:29 AM   0 comments

George Bush (following in the footsteps of Reaganomics) made a politically cynical tax cut when he came into office, cutting taxes but not cutting spending and instead borrowing so he could cut those taxes. He gave away money to voters, money he didn't have. He borrowed money from our children to pay us to curry favor with us. That is political cynicism at its worst; it's one of my big problems with Bush.[my emphasis]

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:31 PM   0 comments

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to repeal a state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray dogs and cats for up to six days before killing them.

Instead, there would be a three-day requirement for strays. Other animals, including birds, hamsters, potbellied pigs, rabbits, snakes and turtles, could be killed immediately.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:08 PM   0 comments

I wracked my brain for a clever way to introduce this fiercely entertaining documentary. But instead I'll begin with a straightforward appeal to see this film - and do it quickly.

Before most Americans get a chance to judge the film for themselves, they will be overwhelmed by counterspin and noisy attacks against Michael Moore, the director of this openly partisan document. But the smart-alecky fellow, who has often offended his own supporters by wielding his camera like a squirt gun, has his own ammunition ready.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:15 PM   0 comments

Economic growth in the first quarter was slower than first reported -- at an annual rate of 3.9 percent -- a pace that was solid but lacking the momentum exhibited as the calendar turned to 2004.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:52 PM   0 comments

Obama is interested in people who are hurting and problems that are serious. That, even more than his biography, is why he'll hit the big time.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:32 PM   0 comments

• Muslims' third through sixteenth wives are okay.
  
  
• Second wives are okay if they're Methodist.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:11 AM   0 comments

Avoiding the Berg video, or the pictures of what happened to Johnson, or the images of the next American they grab, won't dull the knives of those who want us all dead. They want to drive Americans from where we want to stand in the world and send us quivering home.

Avoiding won't make us safer here, either. It actually may do us all a disservice, since it allows us to keep an emotional distance.

The flat of the killing knives is only an inch or two wide. It is much shorter than the distance between today and Sept. 11, 2001. We've achieved separation from each, and that is dangerous.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:41 PM   0 comments

United Nations-mandated auditors have sharply criticised the US occupation authority for the way it has spent more than $11bn in Iraqi oil revenues and say they have faced "resistance" from coalition officials.

In an interim report, obtained by the Financial Times, KPMG says the Development Fund for Iraq, which is managed by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority and channels oil revenue into reconstruction projects, is "open to fraudulent acts".

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:29 PM   0 comments

I am so excited for this issue of Home By Design magazine because it is my first, as the new Editor!

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:15 PM   0 comments

Republican Senate candidate Jack Ryan pressured his wife, actress Jeri Lynn Ryan, to have sex in clubs while others watched, she charged in divorce documents released Monday.

The ``Boston Public'' and ``Star Trek: Voyager'' actress said she angered Ryan by refusing. She did acknowledge infidelity on her part, which she said took place after their marriage was irretrievably broken.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:49 PM   0 comments

John Kerry's campaign collected a maximum $2,000 check from the recently arrested son of South Korea's disgraced former president, and some of its fund-raisers met several times with a South Korean government official who was trying to organize a Korean-American political group.

Click for full size

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:40 AM   0 comments

• While discussing free trade or something important in the New York Times, Virginia Postrel points out:
  
  
  "The U.S. used to import coffee from around 25 countries," says David E. Weinstein, an economist at Columbia University. "Now we import it from 52 countries. Beer we import from three times more countries than we used to."
  
  
  Viva laissez-faire, if you can still pronounce it this late in the day.
  
  
• Via Fark, we see this little story: Ain't the beer classy:
  
  
  At Detroit's four-star Opus One last month, eager diners paid $55 apiece for an evening of fine food with fine libations. Six bulbous wineglasses stood by their plates. Waiters waltzed by and poured from . . . pitchers of beer? Indeed, dinner began with a cold shrimp and crab crostini, served with an English mild ale, and ended with caramel cappuccino cheesecake, accompanied by a British favorite, dry stout.
  
  Beer wants to be the next wine. Not the boys at Budweiser but local brewers. These beer artisans will never be able to compete with Bud at football games. But they might stand a chance as an alternative to wine with dinner.
  
  
  Call me a traditionalist, but beer really only truly augments three meals: wings, pizza, and chicken. Granted, it goes well with anything, or nothing, but if you were to ask me, "Brian, what beer goes best with brined chicken with cilantro garnish?" I would answer, "Lots."

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:14 PM   0 comments

Attorney General Jay Nixon said Friday that Schnucks and Dierbergs stores had been adding a surcharge onto video rental bills that looked like a sales tax but wasn't. He said the companies had kept some of the money.

Nixon said the two supermarket chains had agreed to stop the practice and pay $110,000 each in penalties to the state.

• Business, since Dierberg's and Schnucks saw fit to levy a 7% surcharge on video rentals and labeling it a "tax/surcharge" even though the State of Missouri does not levy a sales tax in these situations. By breaking out the extra portion of the price, these supermarket chains do the same thing telephone companies, utilities, and mechanics do: they hide, deceive, and trick customers with extra line items on the invoice to generate extra revenue. Listen, you damn creative business types: mark one price that includes all of your costs of business and tell me up front.
  
  P.S. Thanks for the statements that you didn't do anything wrong here. Smeg off, you stooges. Even the laissez-faire amongst us recognize you're not victims here.
  
  
• The consumers, who have paid extra seven cents per $1.00 rental for who knows how long. $1.07 isn't so bad for a video rental, but getting institutionally suckered is.
  
  
• The attorney general, who had to conduct a year-long investigation to net $220,000 in fines. Certainly not cost effective, and certainly not where I would allocate assets, but unquestionably, the wrong doers were doing wrong.
  
  
• The taxpayers, who had to underwrite an investigation costing more than $220,000.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:38 AM   0 comments

1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?
   I heard he was ailing on my way down to my aunt's house for a garage sale; I read he died later that night when I got home.
   
   
2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?
   At work. The Internet news sites got very slow, and as I walked to get some coffee, I heard a radio in another office with news of a plane disaster in New York. Within an hour, much of the company had gathered in a conference room to watch the only television in our offices, Peter Jennings the condescending Canadian our only available station through the wire serving as the television's antenna.
   
   
3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?
   I don't know, and I don't care. That particular bit of trivia doesn't matter to me.
   
   
4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?
   No.
   
   
5. Take one for The Gipper: What’s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?
   Mint? Licorice? I don't favor them.
   
   
6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA due to AIDS?
   I don't know, and I don't care. That particular bit of trivia doesn't matter to me.
   
   
7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?
   Carleton Elementary School, 41st and Silver Spring, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. When I got home, it was on television. I knew it was important, but didn't know why. I was 9.
   
   
8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?
   Eighth grade study hall at North Jefferson Junior High School in Murphy, Missouri. A couple selected students each day got to go use the Commodore 64 computers in the back of the library, and they saw it on a small television back there. I was not one of them, but the news filtered to the rest of the study hall. It was announced over the loudspeaker in 6th hour, when I was sitting in Ms. Smith's math class.
   
   
9. Where were you when the 0J verdict was announced?
   Working as an assistant editor at The Paint Dealer magazine, I was working on a Macintosh, compiling the magazine's first annual directory of paint and sundries distributors. Small office, one room shared with the director of distribution, the associate editor, the advertising saleswoman, and me, so there was much discussion. Actually, it was just the director of distribution pontificating, but she could really fill the air.
   
   

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:27 PM   0 comments

Any true fan of the University of Missouri would not be surprised to hear this tale of how the University of Kansas treats its fans.

Max and Jackie Kennedy had front row seats in Allen Fieldhouse from the day it opened in 1955. Jackie kept the tickets even after Max died last year. "The hardest thing I had to do was walk in that field house without him," she said.

But the school told Jackie, 74, that if she doesn't donate $58,500, the seats will be sold to someone else.

Kansas isn't entirely heartless. They offered her another set of seats. Near the top row. "But it's not like we're tossing her out of the place," said an associate athletic director, Jim Marchiony.

Kennedy is outraged. "I'm not sitting anywhere else," she said. "I think it's blackmail. It's just unbelievable to me that this is happening."

Of course, fans who have to sit in bad seats have a different take. "We have probably some of the worst seats in the house," said Janis Holiwell, of Topeka. "We've been making donations every year, and they're not small donations. ... I know they've sat there a long time. But we pay the same amount of money and we sit in very poor seats."

Mizzou wouldn't treat such loyal fans so shabbily. Why, all Mizzou is charging is a one-time donation of $25,000 for up to eight seats and an annual donation of $5,000 a seat.

Oh, you also have to buy a season ticket. That's about $816.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:21 PM   0 comments

Hasek said other teams -- believed to be the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues and Vancouver Canucks -- are also involved in negotiations.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:16 PM   0 comments

(d) Associate Bravenet and any Products and Services with any adult material
of any sort. This includes, but is not limited to, such things as nudity,
any site, page, image or service requiring any adult verification service,
anything that users to be 18 or older to view or join or access, and any
text, image or likeness suggesting sexual and/or inappropriate and/or
illegal acts of any sort. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use
the Products and Services to store, use, contain or display pornography,
adult novelties, adult toys, XXX material, escort services, Gorean, bondage,
BDSM, bigotry, racism, hatred, profanity, or any material which may be
insulting to another person(s) or entity;

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:09 PM   0 comments

• Raymond Noggle, my grandfather, USMC (purple heart on Iwo Jima).
• Michael A. Noggle, my father, USMC (Vietnam-era service on Okinawa and in California).
• Glenda L. Noggle, my mother, USMC (Vietnam-era service at El Toro, California).
• Kevin M. Noggle, my brother, USMC (6 years because the recruiter promised him Recon--sucker!)
• James Igert, my father-in-law, U.S. Air Force (Vietnam-era service).
• Timothy Crowley, friend, U.S. Navy.
• David Watkins, friend from college, U.S. Army (Ranger).
• George "Jimmy" Niederriter, friend from high school, U.S. Army (Ranger).
• Brian Mach, friend, National Guard.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:52 PM   0 comments

ABC News reports investigators have tied the man to a terrorist cell set to carry out a series of bombings and assassinations in London.

The man, a naturalized citizen from Pakistan, was secretly taken into custody in April.

He is being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan and is said to be cooperating offering investigators significant information about Al Qaeda's plans.

He is being held as a material witness and his family is now under federal protection.

The man has told investigators that Al Qaeda is planning more attacks in the United States. He has also revealed a scheme to smuggle terrorists across the Mexican border.

The suspect's assertions were part of the intelligence that led to recent warnings about a summer threat from Al Qaeda.

Another man being held today is kidnapped American Paul Johnson.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:44 PM   0 comments

(Click for full size.)

Bodyguards for President Bush's daughter Jenna Bush were entangled in a fistfight with two men trying to steal a cell phone in southern Spain, a U.S. Embassy official said Tuesday.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:36 PM   0 comments

• Frank W. Abagnale identifies 10 ways to stop identity theft cold. Slow down, Iceman. It won't make you a superhero capable of stopping any or all identity theft in the world, but it will remind you ways to make it harder for the badmen to get your identity. Best line:
  
  
  Only amateurs hack into computers; pros hack into people.
  
  
  For you damn kids out there, Frank Abagnale is the guy depicted in Catch Me If You Can. He makes Mitnick look like a script kiddie in meatspace.
  
  
• Challenged by a department store honcho, this guy goes into a store and walks out with $3500 in computers without paying.
  
  (Link seen on IMAO.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:28 PM   0 comments

That's my concern as well. With dozens - or hundreds - of young black people driving at the same time, it's hard to pick and choose who's breaking the law and who isn't.

I don't have any solutions to stop cruising, but there are plenty of answers for what to do about young people vandalizing homes, assaulting gas station employees and stealing merchandise.

Arrest them and charge them accordingly. Because that kind of behavior is a crime; it's not cruising.

Even though we all want to get more sleep and less nuisance, it's important to remember there's a difference.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:53 PM   0 comments

In an interview with British Broadcasting Corp. radio broadcast Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski said Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller told her last autumn that prisoners "are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them."

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:52 PM   0 comments

Officer Derrick Letsinger said Monday that he didn't smell bleach and didn't notice any signs of a recent cleaning, he did say that he became skeptical after seeing a crumpled rug, dirty towels on the washing machine and a wet mop behind an otherwise "model home."

Another officer, Matthew Spurlock, said there was something else that seemed suspicious: Peterson's alibi. Peterson told him he had been fishing alone on the bay the day his wife died, but could not say what he was trying to catch.

During his testimony, Letsinger said Peterson "threw his flashlight down on the ground," before mumbling a curse word. Spurlock testified he heard what appeared to be an expletive and that "it came through what sounded like gritted teeth."

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:32 PM   0 comments

A U.S. District judge in Missouri has blocked temporarily the deportation of a pregnant Mexican woman who is married to a U.S. citizen, calling the fetus an "American" and citing a federal law created to protect unborn children after the high-profile death of Laci Peterson.

Senior U.S. District Judge Scott O. Wright ordered that Myrna Dick, 29, of Raymore, Mo., who is accused of falsely claiming American citizenship, be allowed to remain in the United States for now and told prosecutors and the defense to prepare for a possible trial.

"Isn't that child an American citizen?" he asked, according to the Kansas City Star. "If this child is an American citizen, we can't send his mother back until he is born."

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:01 PM   0 comments

Moore said: "It is sadly very possible that many 15- and 16-year-olds will be asked and recruited to serve in Iraq in the next couple of years.

"If they are old enough to be recruited and capable of being in combat and risking their lives, they certainly deserve the right to see what is going on in Iraq."

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:39 PM   0 comments

Unless the United States charges Saddam Hussein or releases him from custody by June 30 the nation will be in violation of the Geneva Convention, the Red Cross charged yesterday.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:34 PM   0 comments

...we Baby Boomers know all the tricks, and I am even more paranoid than Blackfive.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:20 PM   0 comments

However, Blunt, the favored Republican candidate for governor, said the law merely set the framework for early voting but did not give statutory authority for it. It also did not provide funding for early balloting, a possible violation of the so-called Hancock Amendment, which requires the state to pay for anything that it is requiring local jurisdictions to do. Early voting would cost about $2.4 million, according to estimates from local officials that Blunt compiled in 2002.

KMOX ran a story in which the picketers stated that Blunt wasn't allowing early voting because he was a Republican. Blunt answered with something on the order of "You could come to me as the most Republican-voting city in the state, (not that I can think of one at the moment) and I'd still have to say you can't do it." The picketers responded with It's our right 'cause we want it!

*sigh*

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:43 PM   0 comments

At least five workers developing an anthrax vaccine at a children's hospital research lab in Oakland were accidentally exposed to the deadly bacterium because of a shipping mistake, officials reported Thursday.

Officials with the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute said none of the researchers has shown symptoms of infection since the first exposure about two weeks ago, but each is being treated with precautionary antibiotics.

The researchers believed they were working with syringes full of a dead version of anthrax, hospital spokeswoman Bev Mikalonis said. Instead, they were shipped live anthrax by a lab of the Southern Research Institute in the Frederick, Md., Mikalonis said.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 PM   0 comments

The only woman on Virginia's death row doesn't deny that she deserves punishment for having her husband and stepson killed so she could collect insurance money.

But paying the ultimate penalty, says Teresa Lewis, is too much -- especially considering the men who actually did the deed will live out their lives behind bars.

"I don't think it's fair for the triggermen to get life, and I got the death penalty," she said, speaking by phone through a glass partition at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.

Lewis pleaded guilty last year to arranging the slayings of her husband and stepson to collect a $250,000 insurance policy.

Lewis: "I just feel like I have something to live for. I've got a daughter here."

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 PM   0 comments

In the grand hall of a mothership that resembles a mid-century Chrysler on steroids, the Lord Marshal mentions that the Necromonger army is composed of forced converts from other religions. So maybe "The Chronicles of Riddick" is supposed to be a parable about American imperialism, sweeping other cultures into its maw.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:13 PM   0 comments

One of the difficult things about hanging out with people who (occasionally) read your blog is that they're already familiar with all of your A-list material (and, let's face it, I use most of my B- through M-list material here, too).

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:52 PM   0 comments

How can St. Louis host a diving championship and not invite Tyson Nash?

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:39 PM   0 comments

A new report finds that suicidal young people are less likely to use firearms to take their own lives, but the survey finds little comfort in the trend because they are turning to more readily available methods.

In the last decade, suffocation -- notably hanging -- has overtaken firearms as the most common way for adolescents to kill themselves, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:31 PM   0 comments

It's wrong to speak ill of the dead.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 PM   0 comments

Who is putting pop-under ads under blogs?

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:19 PM   0 comments

As a dispute escalates over discipline of wayward deputies, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. is trying again to fire a deputy who kept his job after smashing into another car and fleeing while intoxicated off duty.

Clarke is attempting to build a perjury case against Deputy Victor Erato III, whose dismissal was overturned by the county's Personnel Review Board.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:57 PM   1 comments

Don't you feel sorry for Wisconsin? I sure do. So close to Chicago, yet still an isolated nowhere of cows and dogtracks and cheese, populated by those who never got their lives together enough to move here. Wisconsin is like the dim brother who lives in the basement and nobody talks about. You don't want him teased.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:51 PM   0 comments

"CJ" has obtained a copy of a brand new charge filed against Courtney Love. And this time it involved assault with a deadly weapon likely to produce great bodily injury. The charge stems from an incident last April 25th, to which Los Angeles Police responded. According to documents from the District Attorney, Love assaulted a woman by the name of Kristin King by throwing a bottle and a metal flashlight at her.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:32 PM   0 comments

Like all Midwesterners, Missourians believe they reside in the most authentically American of places. I grew up in Kansas, just a few miles across the Missouri state line, and I'm guilty of this Midwestern indulgence—I'm fond of telling my wife, who's lived in New York, Texas, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., that she has yet to reside in the United States. What distinguishes Missourians, though, is that they stake their claim to genuine, right-thinking Americanness on more than mere geographical middlingness or plainness of speech. Show-Me Staters marshal reams of scientific data to back up their assertion of pure red-bloodedness.

Texas brags that it's a "whole other country," but Missouri proudly declares that it is the whole country. Talk to a Missourian about the state's politics for more than a few minutes, and the words "microcosm" or "representativeness" are likely to surface.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:04 PM   0 comments

It's something of an illusion to suggest 9/11 caused their problems. That's only a popular excuse for today: Despite air travel growing an average of 7% a year throughout the 90's, the airlines still struggled, and are still struggling today to deal with passenger drops from the Gulf War. In 1991. They weren't profitable in 2000, either.

There are only two possibilities here: They are either incompetent, or the demand for the massive infrastructure they're trying to float simply isn't there. In either case, they suck at doing business, as demonstrated by last year's debacle, asking workers to take a 15% paycut to avoid bankruptcy, while simultaneously increasing their own bonuses to run away with more tax money in their pockets.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:00 PM   0 comments

Like something out of a Hitchcock movie, they're lined up along the rooftops of buildings, on parking lots, on grassy plots, on the gravel wasteland left behind by demolition of the Park East Freeway spur. Gulls. They're everywhere, it seems - and so are their droppings.

Scott Craven, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says a good food supply is part of the attraction in urban areas. "We've created a wonderful habitat for them after they were beaten back for years by egg and feather collectors and persecution," he says. "This is their rebound."

The birds are protected by federal law, but when they reach nuisance levels, their eggs can be removed with permission of state and federal wildlife officials. In extreme cases, such as Manitowoc's, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has given local officials permission to shoot limited numbers of gulls.

Andy Paulios, a state Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager, said the best approach is for communities to monitor gull numbers, recognize that the birds are here to stay and then work for a consensus on where they can be tolerated and where they cannot.

1. Daft ecologists who think it's mother nature's appropriate retribution to Man.
   
   
2. Federal law and requirements for permission slips from daddy Fed and mama State to take action.
   
   
3. Bureaucrats who recommend more bureaucracy to solve the problem.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:49 PM   0 comments

• Tampa Bay Lightning win Stanley Cup. In a hard fought, nail-biting series, Khabibulin proves the better goalie over Miikka Kiprusoff. Story
  
  
• Brian Noggle wins Great Hockey Pool 2004. It's a little pool run by a former co-worker. Since I picked Tampa Bay to win the cup, with their victory I edged out some late competition. It's my second win in two years, marking the beginning of a dynasty. Of course, I've gotten much better at it now that we're not playing for real money.
  
  
• Milwaukee Admirals sweep Wilkes-Barre / Scranton to win the American Hockey League's Calder Cup. Ah, my hometown team, the first hockey team that I ever saw play a game. Led by a lifetime minor-league goaltender, the Admirals hoist their first championship cup, bringing honor to my hometown and all 40 hockey fans in Milwaukee. Story

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:07 PM   0 comments