Toronto Police arrested a Canadian man over the weekend who threatened to kill Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his family, according to authorities.
Officials from the sheriff's office said 37-year-old Matthew Carl Sanderson used the Internet to communicate the threats against Arpaio, writing that he would murder the sheriff in dramatic fashion by shooting him, poisoning him, blowing up his car or burning him alive...
...If convicted, officials said Sanderson will be the 12th person found guilty of threatening Arapios life in the past several years...
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/23/2006 21:23 Comments ||
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#2
In some ways he is good to have around, but his tactics have become more and more SS-like as of late, using far too much force when its not called for.
Just because you have M-16s. body armor, etc, gives you no cause to smash into peopels houses at 3 AM to serve warrants for an illegal poker game (shooting the dog and handcuffing the children and other family members out in the yard in the process).
Sherrif Joe needs to drop the Nazi act for enforcement, but keep the "Jail isnt suppsoed to be comfortable" angle - after all, they are in jail usually because they have been convicted.
Others are becoming more concerned about this sort of behavior. I dont advocate threatening a law enforcement official - not a healthy thing to do. But exposing them? Sure, as long as you dont put life or public safety at risk.
#3
I'm with you, OS. Tough law enforcement is good, but there's a line and you can't cross it. We've got a big expose going on in Chicago right now: seems like some of our white police officers engaged in a little torture of black suspects in the 1970s. Perhaps the suspects were gang-bangers and punks, but you can't use the #7 pliers here in America.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/23/2006 22:23 Comments ||
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" by shooting him, poisoning him, blowing up his car or burning him alive..." Rather flee off a cliff python fans, though its what you wanted.
Might evolves into page 1 material, who knows? Hope it's just "random" mindless violence.
SEYMOUR, Ind. - Sniper fire struck two pickup trucks along Interstate 65 in southern Indiana early Sunday, killing one person and injuring another, state police said. One or more snipers shot at a southbound truck about 12:20 a.m., killing one of its three occupants, police said. About the same time, occupants of a second southbound truck called police to report a passenger had been shot. The victim was hospitalized with injuries that were not life-threatening, police said.
Officials were also investigating two other shootings along Interstate 69 about 50 miles northeast of Indianapolis. No one was hurt.
Authorities closed a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 65, about 50 miles south of Indianapolis, for about eight hours Sunday. The interstate is part of the only direct route between Chicago and Florida and is heavily traveled at all hours, state police Sgt. Jerry Goodin said.
A preliminary investigation could not determine whether the shots came from the roadway or an overpass, or if there was more than one shooter. "Right now, we haven't made a determination whether it's one person or how many people are involved," Goodin said.
In the I-69 shootings, state police at Redkey received a report about 2:30 a.m. that a semitrailer was struck near Muncie. About an hour later, a shot struck a parked, unattended vehicle. "At this time it is unknown whether the shootings in the Seymour and Redkey area are related," Goodin said.
At the Seymour state police post, technicians gathered evidence from the two trucks struck in the earlier shootings. A Chevrolet had a bullet hole near the top of the windshield on the passenger side, and blood stained the top of the seat. A Dodge Ram pickup with Iowa plates had a bullet hole in the middle of its windshield and a rear window that had been blown out.
After the first shooting, the driver pulled off the highway at a weigh station. After that investigation began, Seymour police received a call from a gas station just off I-65 reporting the second shooting. Goodin asked motorists who traveled through the area in the past week to check their vehicles for bullet holes, saying a noise dismissed as a rock might have been a bullet.
ASTRONOMERS are expected to add at least one new planet to the nine in our solar system.
The new body, provisionally named Xena, is 14 billion kilometres from the Sun - about 100 times more distant than the Earth and well beyond Pluto.
Its diameter is 2399km, 113km greater than that of Pluto, the smallest and most distant planet, which may qualify Xena for planetary status.
The decision will be taken at a meeting of the International Astronomical Union in Prague next month, when 2000 astronomers will be asked to vote on the expansion of the solar system.
Xena is the largest of many similar bodies found recently in orbits beyond Pluto. Some astronomers argue that declaring them all planets would devalue the term. Others say a purist approach would mean stripping Pluto of its planetary status - which could be unpopular with the public.
"We've been seeking a compromise solution," said Iwan Williams, professor of mathematics and astronomy at the University of London, who chairs a committee set up by the IAU to define a planet.
Its report will be presented to the IAU next month. "We had to decide whether to stick to a purely scientific approach or consider other aspects such as culture and history," Dr Williams said.
Some astronomers believe the term planet should be limited to the four rocky orbs Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and the four gas giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Pluto was accepted as the ninth planet only because Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered it in 1930, misjudged its size, claiming it was larger than Earth. Its actual mass is 400 times less.
By the time the mistake had been discovered, Pluto had entered the textbooks as the only planet to have been discovered by an American. Any attempt to question its status has been fiercely opposed by US scientists.
Xena was discovered last year by Mike Brown, professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech University, California. He said more discoveries were likely as telescopes probe deeper in space.
"This is a huge problem for astronomy," he said. "Scientifically speaking, I agree there are really only eight planets, but the word is as much a cultural as a scientific term."
One definition of a planet to be put forward in Prague is anything in orbit around the Sun with a diameter of more than 2000km.
#3
The astronomers are only doing this because they hope to meet Lucy Lawless. I'm surprised that half the newly discovered celestial bodies haven't been named after Star Trek babes.
The only woman is Venus, who is just a silly girl of no consequence. Not to mention, there are no gay planets yet, even though going by the 10% rule there would be at least one by now. Opponents of this are using fuzzy math.
We need to balance the scale in one fell swoop by kicking out Pluto and adding Xena.
#6
The only woman is Venus, who is just a silly girl of no consequence.
Sort of, in Roman patheon that they adapted from Greeks. But for Greeks, it was Pallas Athena, a nasty bitch (in the oldest discernable traditions) with shield and spear (or thunderbolt sometimes). Except for Mediterannean area, Egypt and Middle East, it was a male deity. In Americas, it needed to be appeased by taking beating heart from sacrificial victims, whether it was called Quetzalcoatl, Cuculcan, or Viracocha.
Anyway, planets are named after Roman pantheon, and any new discovery should follow the convention.
HIS reputation is one of a hawkish warmonger with a crusty demeanour and a heart of steel. But Donald Rumsfeld, it seems, has a little-known softer side.
Five decades after one of his US Navy friends was shot down over China during a Cold War spy mission, the US Defence Secretary is still waging a quiet campaign to win closure for the airman's widow. In the finest military tradition, he has vowed that Lieutenant James B Deane will not be left behind.
Leaving his normally hard-line views on communist China to one side, he has persuaded General Guo Boxiong, vice-chairman of China's Central Military Commission, to hand over once-secret papers divulging information previously unknown to the US regarding the fate of the young pilot.
Continued on Page 49
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit Friday in the U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, Mo., on behalf of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church, which has outraged mourning communities by picketing service members' funerals with signs condemning homosexuality. Missouri lawmakers were spurred to action after members of the church protested in St. Joseph, Mo., last August at the funeral of Army Spec. Edward L. Myers. The law bans picketing and protests "in front of or about" any location where a funeral is held, from an hour before it begins until an hour after it ends. Offenders can face fines and jail time. A number of other state laws and a federal law, signed in May by President Bush, bar such protests within a certain distance of a cemetery or funeral.
In the lawsuit, the ACLU says the Missouri law tries to limit protesters' free speech based on the content of their message. It is asking the court to declare the ban unconstitutional and to issue an injunction to keep it from being enforced, which would allow the group to resume picketing.
White House political maestro Karl Rove urged money and other forms of support for Republican congressional candidate Michele Bachmann at a Stillwater fundraiser Friday while protesters outside the event called for Bachmann to be defeated, Rove to be indicted and President Bush to be impeached. Rove also appeared at a fundraiser for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kennedy on Friday evening. That event was closed to the media.
At the Bachmann luncheon, Rove focused on the global war on terror, which he treated as interchangeable with the war in Iraq, and on the strength of the U.S. economy, which he attributed to Bush's tax cuts. Rove, who is of Norwegian descent, also said of his Minnesota visit that it's "great to be in a place where Norwegians are not a minority." The Bachmann fundraiser at the Water Street Inn in Stillwater attracted about 60 supporters, who paid $250 for lunch. Couples who contributed $1,000 to Bachmann could have their pictures taken with Rove. The Bachmann campaign did not immediately release the total amount raised.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2006 00:00 ||
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BARKSDALE AIR FORCE BASE, La. (AP) - Twenty-five illegal immigrants employed as contract workers at this Air Force base were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The arrests of the construction and landscape workers were made Friday.
The workers were ``foreign nationals,'' according to a news release from the 2nd Bomb Wing that did not specify countries of origin. Most had obtained fraudulent Social Security and alien registration numbers to complete forms, the release said.
The workers did not have access to secure information, 2nd Bomb Wing spokesman Lt. Frank Hartnett said. He would not say how the workers got on the base.
Walked? Got a ride? Employer-provided bus?
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/23/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
good comment Steve. This actually makes me mad. They arrest some poor illegals trying to make some money but no mention of the culprits that hired them and got them on to the base. So we get to spend oodles of court money for ...what? If "they" really wanted to make a point about how they were getting tough on illegal on military bases- they would have arrested the employers responsible for bringing them there.
#2
They arrest some poor illegals trying to make some money but no mention of the culprits that hired them and got them on to the base.
BS. Make some money? The federal laws stipulate that cost estimates and budgeting means that pay is calculated at union rates of the nearest metro area. That means the contractor and subcontractor are using illegals and 1 - taking the job which there are indeed Americans willing to work for [which by the way is why many of these jobs are justified for local employment opportunities] and 2 - pocketing the difference.
#3
Exactly right. It's a double whammy for the taxpayers. The workers aren't making much, and I think it's been pretty well established that the meager wage they make and the small amount of taxes they pay are more than offset by the burden they become to local and state governments providing social services. The contractor bills the government as if he were paying them a much larger salary, soaking the taxpayers again.
BTW, here in San Antonio there are LOADS of illegals working on Randolph AFB, Lackland AFB, Brooks, Ft. Sam Houston, etc, every single day!
#4
mind boggling.
It only figures that some of these illegals MAY have access to secure sites. How can we rule it out that they don't? If they are able to get on base to begin with is pretty impressive to me.
For me to get on base needing all sorts of documentation, then to learn of the shear numbers of illegals on all of these bases from mcsegeek1 here angers me to no end.
On a side note; while at work I was asked to witness a signature for a paternity form. The supposed father of the baby got out his wallet and shuffled through 3 driver's licenses that I myself saw. I couldn't in good conscience witness this paperwork. He got angry with me but I told him I couldn't possibly after seeing all of his different ID's.
Posted by: Jan ||
07/23/2006 16:35 Comments ||
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Find their employer and JAIL HIM.
He was taking in high contract rates and robably paying the illegals jack-squat under the table.
Deport the illegals, but put that employer IN JAIL where he belongs.
The ordeal of five-year-old Prince, who had fallen into a deep open well more than 48 hours ago in Shahabad town near the Hindu pilgrim centre of Kurukshetra in Haryana, came to a happy end Sunday evening when he was rescued by a combined force of army and firemen from Mumbai.
It was a happy homecoming to Prince, who fifth birthday fell Sunday. As a senior army officer lifted the boy, covered in a white sheet, out of a bucket that was lowered into the 60-foot well, scenes of joy spread across the place as onlookers hugged each other in an impromptu celebration.
There was a dramatic transformation in the mood as the officer removed the sheet over the boy's body and unveiled a smiling Prince as the night fell. The area which was earlier enveloped in hushed anticipation with prayers among the onlookers began to wear a festive look. Ram Chander and Karamjit, parents of the boy, were overjoyed with the safe return of their son, who was immediately moved in an ambulance to a local hospital for a check-up.
Earlier, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had led the nation in praying for the safety of Prince whose travails captured live by television channels.
Residents had held a round-the-clock prayer vigil for the safe rescue of Prince. Prayers were also held for the child in Allahabad at a school for visually impaired students.
The rescue operation, led by the 66 Engineers regiment of the Ambala Cantonment-based 2 Corps of Indian Army, started at 3 p.m. Saturday at Haldaheri village near Shahabad town of Kurukshetra district. Prince fell into the open well at about 6 pm on Friday accidentally while playing with friends.
Thousands of people who thronged the village to see the rescue operation had to be pushed back by police as their presence was hampering the rescue efforts. Besides army personnel, nearly two-dozen villagers had dug a parallel tunnel inch by inch. Two cranes were in operation since 3 pm Saturday. The team of fire-fighting experts was flown in an Indian Air Force aircraft from Mumbai to help in the rescue operation. They reached the site Sunday afternoon.
Kurukshetra is a Hindu pilgrim town, and considered to be the site of a battle in Hindu epic Mahabharata.
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, some of his cabinet ministers, Kurukshetra MP Naveen Jindal and top officials of the army, police and district administration also camped at the spot since Sunday morning to supervise the rescue operation.
Doctors at the spot monitoring the child with the help of a closed-circuit television camera lowered into the well Saturday evening had earlier said that he appeared fine despite the fall. He was lying on a two-three-feet wide pit, officials said. "He has consumed some milk and eaten a chocolate that was lowered into the pit. He sat up in the wee hours of the morning. This has given us a lot of hope that he will survive," said one of the doctors.
The CCTV cameras captured the survival instinct of the boy as he fought off an insect that tried to come close to him as some food was lowered to the pit.
Posted by: john ||
07/23/2006 12:39 ||
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#1
According to the BBC, several cable channels pulled their lineup and broadcast this rescue live..
Is there anyplace in the world now that isn't dominated by wall to wall media "human interest" and "reality" coverage?
Posted by: john ||
07/23/2006 12:52 Comments ||
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If anyone was bright enough to toss a bucket down the 12th imams dry well in the last thousand years....
AS a girl growing up in Tehran before the Islamic revolution, Anousheh Ansari watched repeats of Star Trek and dreamt of becoming an astronaut. She never tired of telling friends that one day she would see the stars. Nearly three decades later, Ansaris childhood fantasies are about to come true as she prepares to become the first female space tourist. Now a multi-millionaire in the United States, Ansari, 39, who made her fortune from telecommunications software, has secured a flight in a Russian Soyuz rocket to the international space station 220 miles above Earth. It would be nice to get outside the planet and see the universe for what it really is, she said.
Earlier this year Ansari passed stringent medical tests and spent weeks in training at Star City, the space centre outside Moscow that has prepared every Russian cosmonaut since Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space in 1961. She is scheduled to fly next year but could make the trip which will cost her about £10m later this year if a Japanese businessman who is due to become the next space tourist drops out. Ansari expressed an interest to fly aboard one of our craft late last year. Shes very passionate about space, said Sergei Kostenko of Space Adventures, a US-based space travel company that has a contract with the Russian space agency to fly tourists. She came to Moscow for preliminary talks, passed the medical tests in February and has been studying in Star City since April. Shes been living there most of the time. Shes thrilled and very much looking forward to the year ahead.
Female astronauts are no longer rare, especially in America. But Ansari who has endured arduous G-force tests and has been taught to fire a gun to protect her from wild animals in case of an emergency landing in Russias wild steppes will be the first woman to pay for the privilege. With a fortune of several hundred million dollars, she can easily afford the fare, which works out at nearly £50,000 a mile. No other tourist has done more to develop commercial space travel than Ansari, however. She recently signed a contract with Space Adventures and the Russians to develop a fleet of sub-orbital spaceships for commercial use. They have proved there is a market for space tourism by having been the first company to fly a private citizen into space, she said.
She also donated heavily towards a £5m cash prize afterwards named the Ansari X prize in her honour won by SpaceShipOne, which two years ago launched the first manned space flight funded by private investors. However, it is in the more earthly field of female liberation that Ansaris journey of discovery could have the greatest impact, particularly in Iran where many women are treated as second-class citizens.
Continued on Page 49
Washington Post Radio, which debuted three months ago with an unusual newspaper-on-the-radio format, has turned out to be less than stop-the-presses news for listeners, ratings released yesterday show.
"Boring" is the word you're looking for...
WTWP-AM/FM, which broadcasts a blend of news and talk programming featuring Post journalists, ranked No. 21 among 40 or so local stations during the April-to-June period, according to Arbitron Inc., which surveys listeners. The station drew less than 1 percent of the audience (a 0.9 share), and just 0.8 percent of those ages 25 to 54, the audience segment that advertisers most covet. "It's in the low range of what we expected," said Jim Farley, one of the key architects of the station, which signed on March 30. Farley is vice president of news and programming for WTOP AM-FM, which is owned by Bonneville International Corp., the company that also owns WTWP. (The Post is Bonneville's programming partner on the station but has no ownership stake.) For a station that touted itself as "NPR on caffeine," a large amount of WTWP's audience came not from its daily news discussion shows, but rather from its broadcasts of Washington Nationals games. The games helped boost the station's evening ratings to a 1.8 percent audience share, which is exactly twice its average share the rest of the time.
That NPR flavor doesn't help. Over the course of almost 40 years, I got used to tuning in to WTOP for news and weather (sports don't interest me). WTOP's still around, on FM, and I can hear it for most of my drive to work. WTOP and WTWP are competing under the same roof, and WTOP simply does it better. They've had lots of practice. WTWP sounds like the Washington Post, but not the news pages.
I'd also submit that their call letters are terrible. WAPO would be immediately catchier and make far better jingles: "WA-Po Ra-dio". In news entirely unrelated to this article, a WTWP producer (the guy in charge of the Nats' coverage) was robbed and beaten quite badly this week at a rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike. Be careful out there!
Farley, however, said the station's programming was being widely, if briefly, sampled, accumulating an average of 205,000 people per week. That figure beats more established stations, such as sports-talker WTEM-AM (173,600 per week), and nearly matches guy-talker WJFK-FM (208,500). "We're getting people in the house," Farley said. "If they stick around longer, we will move up quickly" in the ratings, which are based on listeners tuning in at least 15 minutes at a time.
I think they bought a strong slot, put their stuff on it, and now they're watching their slot slide.
The advent of WTWP triggered a complicated shift on the dial among Bonneville's portfolio of local stations, and listeners might still be having trouble finding the station, said Tina Gulland, the Post's director of radio and TV projects. WTWP took WTOP's former frequencies (107.7 FM and 1500 AM) and WTOP moved to WGMS's spot (103.5 FM); WGMS moved to the position occupied by the late Z104 (103.9 and 104.1 FM).
WGMS is Washington's commercial classical music station. Now I'm stuck with Baltimore classical music station, which is public radio. It's not too bad, but it leaves classical music listeners with only one choice.
"Overall, it's a credible, not earth-shattering start. . . . It's still early," Gulland said.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2006 00:00 ||
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#1
Realizing their newspaper circulation is poor, thet are reaching out to other markets. Sounds to me like they are in a diversify to build back the market share mode.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/23/2006 9:33 Comments ||
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What, their PBS shows aren't bringing in the big bucks?
Posted by: ed ||
07/23/2006 10:09 Comments ||
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It's that "framing" thing again. Their message isn't getting out 'cos its just not accessible to the masses. Also the wingnuts unfairly occupy all the best bandwidth. Stupid wingnuts and their stupid mass audiences. Buncha sheep.
The DC media rumormills indicate there is much unrest within Fortress WaPo. The bosses are requiring lots more work from their remaining staff, including blog contributions and writing for the radio, much of it unpaid. The local alt weekly had a funny graphic of the WaPo reporters as galley slaves, all chained to their laptops.
#4
The greatest reason to hate NPR is its destruction of commercial classical music stations. Baltimore had 2 (two!) in the 60s and 70s. WGMS was great. Now it's just boring NPR everywhere but Chicago.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
White House political maestro 
Washington Post Radio, which debuted three months ago with an unusual newspaper-on-the-radio format, has turned out to be less than stop-the-presses news for listeners, ratings released yesterday show.
