Chief Judge Kitty Brennan is telling Milwaukee County supervisors that they could face a lawsuit on court funding unless they restore judicial and court staffing that County Executive Scott Walker has pegged for elimination in 2006.

Students at Kirkwood High School provided information to police that helped lead to the arrests of four teenagers in the scrawlings of a racial slur and a swastika at two schools, police said Friday.

Kirkwood Police Chief Jack Plummer said officers picked up the teenagers, one of whom is a juvenile, on Thursday and Friday on suspicion of vandalism and a hate crime, a felony. Plummer said officers sought one more suspect.

The slurs were discovered Aug. 29 near the south entrance of Kirkwood High and at St. Paul's Lutheran School in Des Peres. Officers said the scrawlings, made in permanent marker, were a curse word, a racial slur and a swastika at Kirkwood, and a swastika at St. Paul's. The scrawlings included the phrase "the kings," a reference to a band the suspects like.

No necesito huevos de tortuga!

9. The 0-4 Green Bay Packers will win the NFC North.

OK, the division might be the worst in the history of the league, but I envision the Packers going 8-4 or 9-3 the rest of the season. The Packers are not as bad as their winless record.

Had the Packers huddled and taken their time before their final fourth-down play against the Carolina Panthers, Brett Favre and the Packers would've finished off their rally and upset the Panthers on Monday night.

The Packers will win their next three -- vs. Saints, at Vikings, at Bengals -- and finish the season on a five-game winning streak -- at Bears, vs. Lions, at Ravens, vs. Bears and vs. Seahawks. In between those strings of victories, they'll grab a win on "MNF" against the Vikings.

Will the Packers still fire Mike Sherman after he leads them to a division crown? Probably.

• It's Jesus's job to love everyone, not mine.
  
  
• I don't hate the people of the individuals who destroyed the World Trade Center, et al. However:
  
  
• If someone wants to kill me or my people for some abstract reason, or even for an acute reason, I'd prefer that person be incapacitated or killed. No hatred involved.

In a tie vote, the Manchester Tax Increment Financing Commission declined Tuesday to recommend that the city approve the Manchester Highlands shopping center project - and the tax increment financing plan that would go with it.

The six members of the commission appointed by city officials favored the Pace Properties Inc. project. The six members appointed by other jurisdictions, mainly St. Louis County and the Parkway School District, opposed the proposal.

Aldermen are expected to consider the commission's action at a meeting Nov. 7. Mayor Larry Miles said he expected the project to move forward anyway.

Some city-appointed commission members urged Pace to avoid using eminent domain to get land for Manchester Highlands. Doug Huff, vice president of Pace, said his company generally avoided its use.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist and editorial board member Neil Steinberg was arrested at his home late Wednesday and charged with striking his wife during an argument.

Steinberg was charged with domestic battery and interfering with the reporting of domestic battery, both misdemeanors, Northbrook Police Sgt. Tony Matheny said.

1. Declare something a fundamental right:
   
   
   San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who became internationally known for his campaign a year ago to legalize gay marriage, said on Monday he considered wireless Internet access a fundamental right of all citizens.
   
   Newsom told a news conference that he was bracing for a battle with telephone and cable interests, along with state and U.S. regulators, whom he said were looking to derail a campaign by cities to offer free or low-cost municipal Wi-Fi services.
   
   Wi-Fi is a short-range wireless technology that is now built into most laptop computers and is increasingly offered on handheld computers and certain mobile phones. Local officials are mulling plans to blanket every nook and cranny of this hilly city of 750,000 residents with Wi-Fi access.
   
   "This is inevitable -- Wi-Fi. It is long overdue," Newsom told a news conference at San Francisco's City Hall. "It is to me a fundamental right to have access universally to information," he said.
   
   
2. Fund it with tax dollars--or do you want to roll back all civil rights and repeal the right to vote for blacks???!

• Do not spend a lot of time, or start the book, with an intimate profile of victims. Their problems and frustrations will ultimately prove meaningless as they're killed imaginatively. Now, I have a lot of problems and frustrations, and I don't need the perspective that they're all meaningless because I might be killed imaginatively. Also, I think the trick wastes space and the reader's time.
  
  
• Avoid describing characters by saying they look like celebrities. That's a cheap shortcut. Who cares if the problematic and frustrated by (allegedly) attractive young woman looks like Helen Hunt? In a couple of pages she'll be deader than Helen Hunt's career.
  
  
• The psycho super Special Forces/black ops antagonist. Come on, that's been low-hanging fruit since World War I or World War II and accelerated by Viet Nam. How about a couple psycho super special vegans for once?
  
  
• Grafting on a Part II as an afterthought so to involve the rest of a special forces team who murder to cover for the psycho? Don't do it.