Hot off the criticism over seemingly pre-judging a case, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has raised his hand to the press -- minus 4 fingers. Emerging from a special mass at Boston's Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Justice Scalia was asked by a reporter if he received a lot of questions regarding his impartiality about separation of church and state. Scalia responded, "You know what I say to those people?" and flipped the bird at the press. "That's Sicilian," he said. Cue Dino. "When...

From my perspective, artistic expression is little different from verbal expression. To me, a word is a symbol of an idea. Artistic forms other than writing use different materials than words, but they still come down to symbolizing and representing ideas. That's why the piece "Piss Christ," for instance, didn't bother me. That's the artist's idea and he's welcome to it. I don't agree, and I'm welcome to my disagreement. Frankly, I find the stuff on South Park far more objectionable than...

The Euro's hate the death penalty and they hate us for loving it. So when Austrian-born California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger refused to grant clemency to convicted murderer Stanley "Tookie" Williams, many in the old country threw a fit. Austria's Green Party suggested Arnold be stripped of his Austrian citizenship. Officials in his hometown of Graz have threatened to remove Arnold's name from their stadium and rechristen it after Tookie. The idea is scheduled for a January 19th vote, al...

Most Americans may not have noticed, insular and self-obsessed as we are, but there have been serious racial conflicts going on in Australia. It started when a group of Lebanese-Australians attacked some lifeguards on a beach. Then a bunch of Aussie equivalents to drunken good ol' boys went out to settle the score. You've heard of soccer hooligans? Think beach ball hooligans and you're on the right track. It's been the proverbial snowball rolling down hill ever since. This morning as I re...

A little something I heard on the news last night... Perhaps you know that when a plane ran off the end of a runway in Chicago last week it plowed into a passing car, killing a six year old boy. Just moments before, he, his parents, and two younger brothers had been driving to visit his grandparents, singing Christmas carols as they went. The Woods family buried their oldest child, Joshua, yesterday. In his hand he held a cross and a quarter. The quarter had been pressed into Joshua's ...

Next to himself, Tookie's worst enemy was his supporters. All we ever heard, as if on an endless loop, were the ludicrous arguments "nominated five times for the Nobel Peace Prize" and "he wrote children's books." The bizarre notion that writing children's books should exonerate someone from murder would be laughable if so many people hadn't just tried it. I hear Dr. Suess wasn't such a lovable fellow. I wonder what he'd have done knowing writing children's books was considered a get off ...

In Las Vegas, Nevada, the Clark County School District has a little problem: shivering students. Kids at dozens of schools have been forced to attend classes wearing scarfs, gloves, and heavy jackets. It seems the schools have older equipment that requires maintenance workers to physically start it by hand. Big deal, right? Start the heaters, warm up the kids. No problem. Wrong! First we must run the bureaucratic obstacle course! Here are some of the excuses and my responses: * T...

For those of you who didn't read my previous article about Kenneth "Jody" Thompson (and for the nearly 200 of you who did, but couldn't be bothered to comment -- A POX ON YOUR HOUSES, GOOD SIRS! ), here's the skinny: Jody Thompson got sent to prison for pulling stickups. He told people he didn't want to rob them but had to because his (non-existent) kid had cancer. Earlier this year he escaped, beelined for Vegas, and started holding people up again. A couple days after being featured on ...

While I'm ragging on Las Vegas TV news outlets... This past week saw fugitive Pahrump, NV native Jody Thompson captured by police while he cowered in an elderly couple's closet (or laid on the kitchen floor with his hands on his head begging 911 to tell the cops not to kill him, depending on what you listen to or read). This guy got sent to prison for pulling stickups and telling people he didn't want to rob them but had to because his (non-existent) kid had cancer. Earlier this year he...

Last week I wrote about a Pennsylvania case of Child Protective Services attempting to get custody of an unborn child because of sex crimes the father committed more than 20 years earlier. CPS sweetened the pot with contested new allegations that the father, DaiShin WolfHawk, previously molested his daughter and that the mother, Melissa WolfHawk, is a drug taking prostitute. Whether unfounded or not, the new charges worked. Mrs. WolfHawk gave birth Tuesday. On Wednesday, a judge gave...

When a substitute teacher in Lake County, Florida heard beeping coming from a student, he acted before he thought. He asked the student what the beeping was, but before the 9th grader could answer, the teacher grabbed the offending item and ripped it from the boy. It seems he thought it was a cell phone. Instead, it turns out the boy is a Type I diabetic, the ripped item was an insulin pump, and the teacher pulled it out of the tube connected to the boy's leg. It had been beeping as war...

Harry Potter is gay. Or so former vicar and current J.K. Rowling rival Graham Taylor announced to a packed auditorium of 12-year-olds at a school in England, just before being asked to leave the premises by administrators. "As for Harry Potter," said Reverend Taylor, "well, he's not the only gay in the village." Reverend Taylor, who is becoming rich and famous from his novel-length tale of wizards and sorcerers called Shadowmancer , was asked by a local bookstore, Ottakar, to speak ...

Remember back in March, when accused rapist Brian Nichols killed four people, escaped, and took a woman hostage who eventually talked him down with pancakes, sharing God, and readings from "The Purpose-Driven Life"? It turns out there was more to the story. Isn't there always? For one thing, the much ballyhooed "Purpose-Driven" intervention amounted to reading little more than a paragraph. For another, as indicated in the title of her new book, "Unlikely Angel," Ashley Smith is far fr...

Thank God most terrorists are stupid. Take, for instance, "shoe bomber" Richard Reid , who in full view of flight attendants and fellow passengers attempted to light a fuse sticking out of his shoe. Stupid. There's nothing like a terrorist you can foil by turning on the "No Smoking" sign. Anyone with half a brain would have gone to the bathroom to light-up. His lack of I.Q. and covert smoking skills saved nearly 200 people. Like I said, thank God most terrorists are stupid. Our late...

While browsing BlogExplosion earlier, I happened upon this sad story in Scott-O-Rama's blog. On May 12th, a young man in New York City answered the door to find his sister's ex-boyfriend. Sek Man "Simon" Ng began his blog entry, "Today I missed my Japanese class again, since I have gotten a bad throat," never suspecting it would be the last thing he would ever write. Hours later, police would find Simon brutally murdered and his sister, Sharon, clinging to life. Shortly thereafte...