Sean Penn's taken out an ad in the NY Times defending his trip to Baghdad.
The full text is at Penn's site. It's quite wordy so assuming you don't feel like wading through a few thousand words of Penn's ramblings Yahoo sums it up pretty well.
At the end Penn exhorts us to take part in the democratic process and vote. I will, every time I vote against people like Penn by not seing his movies.
A gunman who stormed into a suburban post office and took two employees hostage surrendered Wednesday, shortly after giving up the hostages in exchange for a six-pack of soda. ... ``We can resolve this thing without anybody getting hurt,'' one negotiator shouted to the gunman through a bullhorn. ``Let everybody go and let's just get this resolved.''After about three hours of negotiations, the gunman released the hostages after officers delivered a six-pack of Dr Pepper to him, using a long stick to pass the soda through a door.
Soon afterward the man, shirtless and wearing long shorts, walked out with his arms raised and surrendered to officers, who led him to a patrol car.
--DDN
For David Horton, a kiss was much more than just a kiss. It was his ticket back to jail.Horton, 24, attended a Reds game May 7 with his girlfriend, even though he knew authorities were looking for him because he had failed to show up in court to answer a drug-related charge.
Police had been unable to find him -- until the couple turned up on the "Kiss Cam" at the Reds game.
In 1999, Horton was convicted of felonious assault for stabbing two men. He was given a four-year prison sentence and served 2½ years before he was granted judicial release.
He was paroled Oct. 21, 2002, but had to stay out of trouble and report regularly to his parole officer.
Horton, however, was arrested March 27 and indicted in Hamilton County for trafficking and possession of cocaine. He is accused of selling 48 grams of powder cocaine and having another 454 grams of the drug on him.
Horton didn't tell his parole officer about the new charge, but the officer found out and put out a warrant for his arrest. Horton was released from jail when he made bond on the drug charges, but failed to appear at his next court appearance.
Horton was sitting in the front row at Great American Ball Park with his pregnant girlfriend as the Reds played the St. Louis Cardinals. In between innings, the couple decided to participate in one of the schmaltzy features at the stadium by smooching, hoping to be featured on the "Kiss Cam."
Unluckily for Horton, they were captured by the camera and shown on the scoreboard video screen.
Even more unlucky for Horton, his picture on the big screen was seen by the wrong person -- his parole officer.
"Out of all the coincidences, we had 20 or 30 thousand people at the ballpark and who do they put on the kiss cam? And then who is there but his parole officer," said Richard Goldberg, Horton's attorney, Wednesday after a hearing before Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Melba Marsh.
The parole officer, Goldberg said, contacted a Cincinnati police officer at the game. They found out where Horton was sitting, walked to his seat and arrested him.
Horton refused to leave at first, wanting to see whether the Reds held on to their 2-1 lead. The Reds eventually won 4-2.
"They took him away and his girlfriend was left sitting there with an empty seat," Goldberg said.
Now, Horton may have lots of time to watch baseball games -- on television.
In addition to the time he faces for a parole violation, the drug charges against Horton carry a maximum prison sentence of 18 years.
...the series finale of Buffy has aired. Sad to see one of the wittiest and funniest shows on TV go.
China has "taken care of Taiwan's SARS outbreak." Never mind that Taiwan is independent from China and China was in no way involved in treating SARS in Taiwan.
It's a Science Fiction movie, not an action movie. Of course it's gonna cover the more philosophical stuff.
A pretty whacked out guy.
Halder's anger centered on university employee Shawn Miller, a school computer-lab assistant Halder believed had hacked his site, thereby destroying his life. He pursued Miller, whom he described as an evil man, through the civil courts and in numerous complaints to the university president, the campus police, the Mayor of Cleveland, the FBI and even the US House and Senate Judiciary Committees, but his pleas for justice were ignored at each turn."The end result of all of these outright evil actions will be that society will end up paying a severe price," Halder had warned in one such communique. . . .
Halder . . . believed he possessed the secrets to peace and prosperity for all mankind and graciously shared these nuggets of wisdom via his Web site -- until someone deleted its entire contents from his computer.
"I try to solve mankind's problems through the Internet," Halder explained in a court deposition against Miller. "In a few seconds, the evil man wiped out everything that it took my lifetime to create," he later whinged in an e-mail to school officials. . . .
--From Volokh/The Register
I don't mind the look of the new $20 bill, but I don't quite get why we need a new design so soon after the latest one. Why didn't they just do this the last time. I'd also like to see the $1 bill redesigned so it looks something like the new ones.
Just be aware that a group of lower-ranking government employees from Washington did pretty much the exact same thing. For future complaining please at least come up with a rant that either excuses or chastises them.
Cold Fury delivers this fisking of Arby's new Pot Roast sandwich. I'd just like to take this moment to once again curse Subway for discontinuing the Asiago cheese bread. Damn them!
Gunman opens fire on Case Western campus.
I spent my Freshman year of college at Case Western and while I found out that it wasn't the right place for me, and as an Engineer I have issues with any building with no 90 degree angles, my thoughts go out to the victims and everyone else up at Case.
Instapundit
