Online story: "SAN FRANCISCO -- When James Lee Crummel hanged himself in his San Quentin Prison cell last month, he had been living on Death Row for almost eight years – and he was still years away from facing the executioner. * California's automatic death penalty appeals take so long that the state's 723 condemned inmates are more likely to die of old age and infirmities _or kill themselves – than be put to death. * Since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, California has executed 13 inmates, and none since 2006. But 20 have committed suicide, including Crummel, who abducted, sexually abused and killed a 13-year-old boy on his way to school in 1979. Another 57 inmates have died of natural causes. The ponderous pace of this process has helped make the state's death row the most populous in the nation, and it has generated critics from all quarters." -- "generated critics from all quarters"? When more death row criminals have died from natural or intentional causes than have experienced their sentence, it's a wonder the ACLU is not suing California for failure to carry out justice in a speedy manner. --- Online story: "The class, AFAM 280: Blacks in North Carolina, landed on the school calendar just days before the semester started, with 18 football players enrolled, along with one former player. The students’ advisers knew that there would be no instruction, but school officials were not aware that would be the case, chancellor Holden Thorp said in an letter to school trustees." -- We grew up with stories of courses like "Underwater basket weaving" being a course offering to keep athletes academically eligible, but those were at colleges high percentages of non-alumni ardent fans. Now it's apparent UNC, one of the last bastions of liberal elitism outside California and New England, has bitten the sports apple. --- From a fellow BCer: This is an excerpt form a commentary written By Matt Patterson (columnist - Washington Post, New York Post, San Francisco Examiner) aimed at his liberal followers: " Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job? * Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers, would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard - because of the color of his skin. * Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin - that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is." -- Just gotta love it when liberals examine themselves... and don't like'm. Unfortunately, it ain't gonna change their votes. --- First, the City Manager had to have his own personal $33,000.00 stumpgrinder in spite of the fact it will take more money to operate and maintain it annually than was paid for out-sourced services when needed. Now he wants a 100' vertical reach bucket truck for $300,000.00. Haven't seen the design specs, but you have to wonder whether that thing will compact itself low enough to even be moved along city streets because of utility wires, but again, how much more money will be spent annually in operating/maintenance versus out-sourcing such when needed. What I think we have going on is a ego trip so the City Manager can go to City Manager Conferences and compete in the "mine's bigger than yours" conversations. --- L-E headline: "Spain bank rescue buys Europe time " -- "Buys Europe Time"? What a ludicrous assumption. You can delay the inevitable, but sooner or later, the game resumes where it left off. --- Creating jobs is not that difficult. All government really has to do is make being a small business owner able to have fun and enjoy his/her work. DIM&DUMBERats just don't get it...it's non-government job thing. --- L-E headline/story: "Small Calif. town shocked by family murder-suicide * Father was wanted for murder in India * In Selma, community members were also disappointed that police did not send Singh back to India when his warrant came to light, Pannu said. * a process that prompted the Indian government to seek his extradition days later in the 1996 death of a prominent lawyer and human rights activist in Kashmir, a disputed region in the Himalayas. " -- Excuse me, but was the guy even legally in our country, or was this just one of those California "sanctuary cities" with a 'don't ask, don't tell, don't deport" local option?