When Life Gets Weird, The News Gets Weirder

A man suspected of leaving a backpack bomb outside a police station in a small Colorado mountain town tried several times to remotely detonate the homemade device using a cellphone but failed, according to court documents. 

David Michael Ansberry, 64, of San Rafael, California, was arrested this weekend in Chicago after surveillance video captured him at the stores where he bought the cellphones that he expected to trigger the explosive in the town of Nederland, investigators said. 

He was easily recognizable because he is 3 feet 6 inches tall and 100 pounds and wore a ponytail, a ball cap and using crutches. The Nederland police chief told investigators he spotted a man matching Ansberry’s description leaving a hotel as it was being evacuated during the Oct. 11 bomb scare.

From here.

I don't have any idea what all of this is about, but I've been at pretty much the exact spot where the bomb was left within the past year or so.

Sunday Mashups

and

Just because.

In other silliness, a recent headline captures the absurdity of the otherwise not notable story:

Police: 2 arrested after fight over crab legs turns violent

Human Sacrifice In Nepal

A Nepalese man with an ill child went to a local holy man who told the man with the ailing child that a human sacrifice of a boy was necessary to save the ill child. A ten year old boy was lured away and then kidnapped for the purpose. The human sacrifice ritual was carried out.

Three days later the missing boy's body was found. Local police say that five men have confessed to participation in the crime, and six more, including the holy man, have been arrested in connection with the crime. Life sentences are possible under Nepalese law.

CNN (at the link above) provides the following context for the killing:

The village, in the Nawalparasi district bordering India, is home to some of the country's poorest and uneducated people -- often known as "untouchables" in the traditional caste system. Both the victim and the accused in this recent killing are from this social class. 

Superstitions such as the sacrificial slaughter of animals such as water buffaloes, goats and chickens are common among the country's mainly Hindu population. The ritual killing of animals during the Gadhimai festival -- celebrated every five years -- takes place in the belief it will bring prosperity. 

"(It's) very unfortunate what happened," said Hari Prasad Mainai, Nawalparasi's chief district officer. "From the government level, we are going to launch (an) awareness program against these superstitions in the villages of Nawalparasi district."

Nawalparasi, Nepal (map from Wikipedia)

 A few observations:

* We still live in "a demon haunted world", to use Carl Sagan's words.

* Most deaths related to religious belief involve either denial of health care because of a belief that religious cures will suffice, or the executions or lynchings of suspects maleficent witches or sorcerers in the name of Muslim, Christian or animist belief systems.  Ritual sacrifice claims in the last few centuries or so have almost always been false, or the work of isolated mentally ill serial killers.

* It is notable that this ritual sacrifice was carried out with an intent to heal, rather than an intent to harm others, and was not a produce of any manner of Satanism.

* The apparent ready confessions of the many people involved is notable, although there may be more to the story to explain how they were obtained.  Still, it is often the case that people acting in what they felt at the time was a righteous manner, be it at the direction of a holy man, or in furtherance of a cause such as terrorists, often do confess.

* This case is one of many that establish that Hinduism as practiced, is not all peace and love, and has its brutalities.

* The fact that the individuals involved on all sides in this incident were Dalits probably helps to explain the swift and sure law enforcement action to punish those involved.  There may even be an element to this prosecution that punishes a caste-less holy man for the hubris of pretending to do a Brahmin's job.  It is not obvious that similar acts by more socio-economically established people who be handled the same way (although it might be that higher caste individuals would not have done it.)

* The story does not relate how the ill boy who was supposed to be cured by the sacrifice fared.  It could be that a willingness to confess was tied to his recovery (on the ground that the price was worth it), or his failure (on the ground that the justification for the act was undermined).

Does Your DA Have a Zombie Response Team?

The New York Times profiled Cabbo Parish, Louisiana, one of twenty-nine counties in the U.S. that account for half of its death penalty sentences (it is home to the city of Shreveport) and also has the highest per capita death penalty imposition rate of any county with four or more death sentences in the time period studied.  It also profiled acting district attorney behind the trend, Dale Cox.

One colorful detail stuck out from the usual kinds of facts reported in such a story:

[I]n 2012 . . . two senior assistant district attorneys, both of whom continue to prosecute capital cases elsewhere in the state, were forced to resign from the office after they obtained machine guns from a military surplus program through what an inspector general found to be falsified applications. The men had belonged to a group of prosecutors who participated in firearms exercises as part of a unit known as the Caddo Parish Zombie Response Team, sporting arm patches around the office and specialty license plates on their trucks.

From The New York Times.

Yes, that's right, the Cabbo County DA's office had an official, machine gun armed "Zombie Response Team" that received military weapons from the United States Department of Defense to meet their local zombie response needs.

Note that Dale Cox was not the District Attorney in the Parish at the time.

Lightning Strikes

A tree that is a half a block from my house made the TV news when it was struck by lightning on Wednesday night in a very weird way.  The strike spiraled around the trunk, rather than going straight down.  These kinds of lightning strikes are not unheard of and sometimes spare the tree entirely.

When you have a prophet in the neighborhood, weird things happen.

Wear A Gray Ribbon

It is the official way to recognize Zombie Awareness Month, which is May.

Lithuania Has Paramilitary Parking Enforcement

If you think that the Denver Boot is the cutting edge in tough on crime parking enforcement, you've obviously not been to Vilnius, Lithuania lately, where the mayor has taken to running over illegally parked cars with an armored personnel carrier.

Obvious, this is a highly wasteful and destructive approach to parking enforcement.  In contrast, here in Denver our last Mayor made a name for himself with merciful random act of kindness meter feeding to thwart parking enforcement, rather than paramilitary tactics, and the city council recently voted to relax a citizen adopted car impoundment ordinance.

But, when in Vilnius, stay out of the bike lane.

(It's actually a hoax, and is really is an add for a Swedish radio show, which makes it merely a safely entertaining pipe dream.)

Really Big Love and Bunhill Fields

Ziona Chana, a 66-year-old man in India's remote northeast who has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren -- and wouldn't mind having more. They all live in a four storied building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, media reports said. "I once married 10 women in one year," he was quoted as saying.

His wives share a dormitory near Ziona's private bedroom and locals said he likes to have seven or eight of them by his side at all times. The sons and their wives, and all their children, live in different rooms in the same building, but share a common kitchen.

The wives take turns cooking, while his daughters clean the house and do washing. The men do outdoor jobs like farming and taking care of livestock. . . . They are supported by their own resources and occasional donations from followers.

From here.

The man leads a Christian polygamous sect (called "Chana Pawl" after the patriarch's late father) founded in 1942 with about four hundred families as members in a single village, "this industrious group manufactures wooden furniture and aluminium utensils."

A brief historical account of the Chana puts it in the context of the "fact that it took barely 50 years for the entire Mizo community to embrace Christianity, then a totally alien religion, [which] has been attributed to the revival movements. . . . The first European missionaries arrived at Aizawl (then Aijal) in 1894, and 12 years later, revival movements effecting mass conversions started. Wave upon wave of revival swept the land until the entire Mizo community abandoned its old religion, animism, for the new religion, Christianity before the end of World War II." Mizoram State is about 95% Christian (Wikipedia puts the figure at 90.5% based on a 2001 census), and the vast majority are adherents of more traditional forms of the Christian faith, predominantly as part of Presybeterian denominations. It was granted statehood in 1986, twenty years after an armed insurgency movement began there. Another sect that arose in the same period consists of people who moved to the jungle and stopped wearing clothes. The revival movement also gave rise to a Jewish sect known as "Bnei Manashe" which has now mostly migrated to Israel.

Islam limits a man to four wives and has canons of interpretation that discourage the practice on the grounds that the fairness to all wives demanded by Islamic law is difficult to manage, although serial polygamy can circumvent this limit to some extent. The limit in Islam was a reform from prior law that permitted more spouses.

The Hebrew Bible, in contrast, has numerous examples of polygamy, some of which involve political leaders with more than four wives, and neither the Christian Old Testament nor the Christian New Testament expressly prohibit polygamy (Reformation figure Martin Luther once wrote a letter privately acknowledging this in a case involving a minor European aristocrat, which his solus scriptura stance caused him to acknowledge was permitted).

Of course, Christian tradition from early on, in part due to the preachings of early church fathers such as Saint Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, has generally strongly disfavored polygamy in practice (with notable exceptions such as the early Mormons and some European Anabaptists). And, while polygamy has been banned by the main denomination of the Church of Latter Day Saints for more than a century and by Utah State law (as a condition imposed for it to receive statehood status), it has been quietly tolerated in communities like Hinsdale that are an open secret, and quietly practiced on a smaller scale in suburban Utah with only rare interruptions (usually for offenses other than polygamy itself) more of less continuously since it was legally banned.

I suspect, but do not know, that this arrangement in India is made possible legally by the facet of private law in India that assigns certain domains of the law, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance in same religion couples to religious authorities rather than secular legislatures and courts (a secular legal regime applies to mixed faith families):

Indian family law is complex, with each religion having its own specific laws which they adhere to. In most states, registering of marriages and divorces is not compulsory. There are separate laws governing Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and followers of other religions. The exception to this rule is in the state of Goa, where a Portuguese uniform civil code is in place, in which all religions have a common law regarding marriages, divorces and adoption.

The practice in India actually has roots in the laws of its British colonial rulers, and is rooted in the same freedom of religion concepts that developed into the First Amendment in the United States in a somewhat different manner at around the same time. "This system of distinct laws for each religion began during the British Raj when Warren Hastings in 1772 created provisions prescribing Hindu law for Hindus and Islamic law for Muslims, for litigation relating to personal matters." This was a natural concept for him because at that point in English history, marriage, divorce and inheritance of personal property (although not real estate) were governed by the clergy under canon law, rather than common law courts:

In the Church of England, the ecclesiastical courts that formerly decided many matters such as disputes relating to marriage, divorce, wills, and defamation, still have jurisdiction of certain church-related matters (e.g., discipline of clergy, alteration of church property, and issues related to churchyards).

Their separate status dates back to the 12th century when the Normans split them off from the mixed secular/religious county and local courts used by the Saxons. In contrast to the other courts of England the law used in ecclesiastical matters is at least partially a civil law system, not common law, although heavily governed by parliamentary statutes.

Since the Reformation, ecclesiastical courts in England have been royal courts. . . . practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts were trained in civil law, receiving a Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree from Oxford, or an LL.D. from Cambridge. Such lawyers (called "doctors" and "civilians") were centred at "Doctors Commons", a few streets south of St Paul's Cathedral in London, where they monopolized probate, matrimonial, and admiralty cases until their jurisdiction was removed to the common law courts in the mid-19th century. (Admiralty law was also based on civil law instead of common law, thus was handled by the civilians too.)

At the time Hastings made his decree, for example, cemetaries were also segregated by faith under applicable English law, with dissenting religions tolerated, but restricted to cemetaries such as the famous Bunhill Fields that was active at the time (and was elevated to the highest level of historical preservation in England on a par with sites like Number 10 Downing Street, this week as a legacy of the path taken by the British towards religious toleration) despite the fact that it had and continues to have an established chruch, the Anglican Church (prior to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church). Notable residents of Bunhill Fields, who would have been subject to persecution and punishment similar to that of political prisoners in authoritarian regimes today in most countries outside England included:

•William Blake (1757-1827), poet, and his wife Catherine (1762-1831)
•John Owen (1616-83), Congregational minister
•Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John and Charles Wesley
•Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe
•John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim's Progress - his elaborate tomb includes an effigy of Bunyan and bas-reliefs of scenes from his great allegory
•Isaac Watts (1674-1748), hymnwriter
•George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - in the Quaker Gardens, next to the Bunhill Fields Meeting House

Of course, if you weren't a King, the scope of matrimonial law at the time was pretty meager. For the most part, it consisted of granting women "separation from bed and board" in particularly dire cases (legal separations still exist today, I've litigated them, but are now chosen by parties due primarily to religious beliefs rather than because divorce in unavailable as an option for lack of proof of fault). Divorces were about as common as death row pardons are today, they happened, but were highly exceptional. Unlike the inheritance laws for real estate, in which the most senior male heir received everything in order to prevent the fragmentation of the estate, personal property inheritance in canon law was similar to that under modern inheritance laws that divided it amongst all of a person's closest living descendants.

Ideas Interrupted

Every once and a while, I start to make a blog post, get interrupted, and it ends up with some links and some half finished analysis in my blogs collection of draft posts. The analysis is often unsalvagable, either because it was too fragmented, or because it was topical and now untimely, but the links are often worthwhile references, so I don't delete the draft posts. In an effort to clear my backlog of draft posts, here are some interesting links that I collected and might have blogged about over the last few years, that didn't make it to the front page. Think of it as a director's cut.

* A Gallup Survey looks at who identifies as a Republican and looks at eight year trends as of May 2009. At that low point, the Republican party was older, more conservative and more religious than it had been in the past. The young, liberals, moderates, the less affluent and more secular voters left it in droves.

* The removal of the President of Hondorus in 2009 may have had sound legal justification.

*"The U.S. Court of Appeals on Wednesday released a ruling in favor of a group of zombies who say they were wrongfully arrested while protesting consumerism during the 2006 Aquatennial." From here (ruling here).

* Tampa cops apparently don't like clowns any more than Minneapolis cops like zombies.

* "Leading theories of the Eleventh Amendment start from the premise that its text makes no sense." From here.

If you have been taught that the United States Constitution was a document of near perfection, you haven't studied enough constitutional law. The Eleventh Amendment is a good example of both this truth, and of the limits of a "plain text" understanding of the document.

Leading theories of the Eleventh Amendment start from the premise that its text makes no sense.

From here.

The text of the Eleventh Amendment reads:

The judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extent to any suit in law or equity commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by citizens of another state, or by citizens or subjects of any foreign state.

It amends the following language of Article III, Section 2 of the United States Constitution (language naiively modified by the Eleventh Amendment emphasized):

The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority; to all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and counsuls; to all cases of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or more states; between a state and citizens of another state; between citizens of different states; between citizens of the same state, claiming lands under grants of different states; and between a state or citizens thereof and foreign states, citizens and subjects.

In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction.

The Eleventh Amendment has been read by prevailing constitutional law to include not just the edits to Article III that its plain text encompasses (shown above), but also to establish a substantive doctrine of sovereign immunity for state governments, with selected exceptions, and embellished with permissible strategies to avoid the limitation.

For example, while local government are treated as part of the state government for most purposes, many local governments and independent governmental agencies as distinct from the state government for Eleventh Amendment purposes. Also, the case law permits suits against governmental officials for actions that they have taken in their official capacity, rather than seeing them as benefiting fully from sovereign immunity from suits against states in federal trial courts. State permission is inferred when states are parties to bankruptcy cases (or alternately, state sovereign immunity is abrogated in those cases). In practice, the exceptions swallow the rule, which has been narrowed to prohibiting in practice only suits for money damages against the parts of state governments which are financed with tax money.

More particularly, going beyond the express terms of the Eleventh Amendment, the Eleventh Amendment has been held to prohibit citizens of a state from suing their own state on a federal question theory in federal court, despite the fact that this isn't clearly prohibited by the terms of the U.S. Constitution, if the suit is commenced in the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Eleventh Amendment is routinely applied in this way.

The Eleventh Amendment is, in fact, applied to limit the authority of the federal government to sue states, since allowing citizens of a state, but not non-citizens of a state to sue a state in federal court on a federal question seems absurd, even though this is not expressly banned by the Eleventh Amendment.

The Eleventh Amendment, by its terms, also does not apply to admiralty suits, as opposed to those arising "in law and equity," although the case law does not draw such a clear line, as the U.S. Supreme Court explained in California v. Deep Sea Research, Inc., 118 S.Ct. 1464 (1998).

The article linked explains this situation:

Anti-federalists threatened to undermine this case for the Constitution by arguing that the state-citizen diversity provisions of Article III — authorizing suits "between" states and out-of-state citizens — could be construed to permit suits against states (and thus imply federal power to enforce any resulting judgments against states). Although Federalists denied this construction, the Supreme Court proceeded to read Article III to permit out-of-state citizens to sue states. Federalists and Anti-federalists quickly joined forces to restore their preferred construction of Article III.

In adopting the Eleventh Amendment, they saw no anomaly in prohibiting “any suit” against a state by out-of-state citizens because they did not understand the Constitution to authorize any suits against states by in-state citizens. Federal question jurisdiction did not expressly authorize such suits, and the Founders likely would not have perceived any real need for such jurisdiction given their understanding that the Constitution conferred neither legislative nor coercive power over states. Because the Eleventh Amendment, as written, made sense in light of the nature of the Union, the absurdity doctrine cannot justify departing from the terms of the Amendment.

In other words, this author too finds that the Founders didn't really believe that Article III really meant what it actually says.

Since suits against states in federal courts other than the U.S. Supreme Court are prohibited by the clear language of Article III, it would have been possible, and probably more desirable from the point of view of matching case law to the actual language of the U.S. Connstitution, for the U.S. Supreme Court to simply adopt of refusing to exercise its power to hear suits between private parties and states in non-admiralty cases on forum non conveniens grounds, rather than jurisdictional grounds, rather than creating the expansive concept of state sovereign immunity. But, this isn't how the doctrine has evolved.

Curiosity Saved The Cat

Curiosity has an undeservedly bad reputation. A West Denver cat escaped death when the cat's home exploded today, because the cat left the house to explore the neighbor's yard. No one was killed and the damage beyond the house was minimal. One worker suffered a minor injury. Somebody's insurance company (possibly multiple somebodies) is likely to make a large payout to address the damage to the house and its contents soon.

Deadly Force Not Authorized For Bike Theft

Intentionally running into a bicyclist with our van is deadly force. Deadly force is legally justifiable to stop some crimes. Bike theft isn't one of them. And, you look particularly bad when the person you run down in an illegal use of deadly force is just some innocent dude who didn't steal your kid's bike.

This all seems very clear in the Mile High City. But, down in Colorado Springs, not so much.

A Colorado Springs man was arrested Monday after deliberately striking a bicyclist with his Dodge van, police said.

Timothy Hombs was driving his Dodge Caravan around 2:15 p.m. near Palmer Park Boulevard and Wooten Road when he spotted an "unknown party" riding on what he thought his son's stolen bike," according to the Colorado Springs Police Department crime blotter.

Hombs "intentionally" struck the bicyclist with his van to stop it, got out of his vehicle and approached the person he believed to be a bike thief.

The bike, however, wasn't his son's, the blotter said.

The victim, fearing he was going to be assaulted again, punched Hombs in the face.

The victim suffered minor injuries to his leg, was treated at the scene and released, police said.

Hombs was treated at the scene for a facial injury and was arrested on suspicion of second-degree assault.

Needless to say, the creep in the van deserved the punch in the face and is so shameless in his ignorance of appropriate behavior that he feels no need to lie.

Pay The Lawn Guy

Historically, one of the most common ways for a regime to be brought down is for soldiers to revolt because they are not paid. Not paying the lawn guy isn't quite as bad, but can still have grave consequences.

In the last two years India has lost two large ammunition dumps to fires caused by unmowed grass. Two soldiers were killed and a village was evacuated in connection with the fires. The grass next to the ammunition wasn't mowed because the military was not willing to pay enough to get anyone to mow it. Apparently, India didn't have any soldiers available to do the work. Government defenders claim that they had been taking a stand against a law mower bidding conspiracy, but that won't bring their expensive ammunition dumps or dead soldiers back.

Press Release Of The Day

We completely understand the public's concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission," Harry Schoell, chief executive officer of Cyclone, said in the statement.

-- From here.

The quotes is, alas, not snark and involves a real DARPA funded biomass eating robot. The Company claims that it does not eat meat. Still, don't forget, "Soylent Green is people!"

Uber-Frivilous

An extraordinary number of people, institutions, and inanimate objects have wronged Tyrone Hurt. In just the last couple of years, Hurt has sued the Declaration of Independence, Black’s Law Dictionary, the United Nations, agencies of the District of Columbia and the Federal Government, and various courts and their officers. Hurt has claimed the existence of state supreme courts violates the Eighth Amendment, requested the Secret Service and the President’s Cabinet be declared unconstitutional, and demanded the deportation of a Spanish-speaking government employee.

Nor are the slights Hurt suffered mere glancing blows; he routinely demands trillions of dollars in damages.

From the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The appellate court revoked his permission to file appeals without paying filing fees, dismissed forty-four pending cases from him, and barred him from filing future civil appeals without paying the required fees.

There is a whole subculture of people who abuse the court system, tax collection system, and the public records document filing systems in weird ways disconnected from reality. Most, however, draw from a core, relatively unimaginative set of crank theories involving the nature of citizenship, a few dozen myths of about the legality of the tax system, and the legitimacy of the government.

None of them would have been so creative as to have sued the Declaration of Independence, or Black's Law Dictionary, and I can't even begin to fathom how state supreme courts could violate the Eighth Amemdment -- other amendment's perhaps, but not that one.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a study of the impact of deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill on litigation like Hurt's.

I would be the first to acknowledge that there are meritorious in forma pauperis cases (the U.S. Supreme Court considers a number on the merits every year, often ruling in litigant's favor), and that many involve run of the mill fact situations.

But, it is also undeniable that in forma pauperis litigation by people without lawyers (called pro se parties), in suits against the government or people affiliated with it, lack procedural and/or substantive merit in the overwhelming majority of cases (easily exceeding 90%).

It is notable that the very mild sanction of denying someone permission to pursue litigation without payment of filing fees (which are trivial compared to attorneys fees in typical lawsuits), can have a dramatic impact on the amount of non-meritorious claims filed without further judicial intervention.

The status quo raises two concerns.

One fear is that these individuals impose an economic burden on the court system, public officials and government lawyers. They do impost a cost, but, in my experience these cases can usually be dispatched quickly in an initial motion to dismiss or a motion for summary judgment brought early on in a case, and the judicial system is quite efficient in processing non-meritorious claims through magistrate and law clerk review of pleadings in a timely manner compared to other civil litigation.

The greater lurking fear that I have is that the deludge of non-meritorious pro se, in forma pauperis lawsuits harden judicial officials against these kinds of cases in general, even when they do have merit.

There are also two classes of cases that are a concern.

The more common situation is that of prisoner's petitions, which is already the subject to special (and in my opinion not terribly well crafted) federal legislation. Special constitutional concerns are present in this kind of case, since the vast majority of cases involve constitutional rights, the vast majority of litigants are indigent so filing fees could in addition to banning non-meritorious cases also ban a whole class of valid cases from securing review, and state action is an important reason by the petitioner's cannot afford to pay the filing fees. Most of these cases either seek collateral review of convictions, or concern prison conditions.

The less common situation involves pro se, in forma pauperis cases brought by non-prisoners. One alternative to the current approach of having judges ruling on motions to waive the requirement to pay filing fees, would be require filing fees in all cases and to establish a charitable foundation to pay the filing fees (typically a few hundred dollars per case) of people unable to afford to pay them. Nothing would prevent private parties who felt that this charitable foundation was too restrictive to do likewise.

Presumably, far fewer non-meritorious pro se party cases would be filed, particular by repeat frivilous litigants, in this kind of system. The fees that were filed would help pay for the costs that these cases impose upon the judicial system. This would improve the credibility of pro se parties generally in the court system, and would also provide a useful screening tool for lawyers considering taking on pro bono clients.

Do You Want Tenure With That?

Sometimes articles published in scholarly journals are less than scholarly, such as one just published with the following abstract:

Law professors dress scruffily, and we need to do something about that.

It makes you wonder about the merit of articles with less comprehensible abstracts.

Beware Of Lion

Residents of rural El Paso County, Colorado near Colorado Springs have sighted what appears to be a wild African lion roaming their fields. No local African lion owners, however, seem to have any missing African lions, which are, of course, not native to Colorado. The only African lion known to teleport into non-native habitats on a regular basis, called Aslan, has not previously been sighted in Colorado Springs, despite the presence of many C.S. Lewis fans in the area. As Drudge would say, with fewer words, this is a developing story.

Solving The Problem Of Doug Bruce

Jeff Peckman has offered up a citizen's initiative to place an ordinance on Denver's November ballot.

According to the proposal, the 18-member ET commission would "create a responsible, common-sense strategy for dealing with issues related to the presence of extraterrestrial beings on Earth," among other tasks.

This seems as sensible a way to deal with the scourge of Doug Bruce as any. More power to him. He needs about 4,000 signatures and must make it through a review and comment period this Thursday at 2 p.m.

His 2003 "Safety Through Peace" initiative, which "would have required the city to implement stress-reduction techniques" received 32 percent of the vote.

Witch Hunts Continue

In some parts of the world, there are still literal witch hunts.

Nolan Yekum and her husband Paul were lynched in Kilip village [in Papua New Guinea] in the jungle-clad western highlands two weeks ago after villagers believed they used black magic to kill a neighbour.

The villagers dragged the couple from their home and hung them from a tree and left them to die . . ."We managed to loosen the noose to get our feet on the ground ... we were able to free ourselves," he said. "My wife, who was about seven months pregnant, delivered the baby while struggling to free herself. It was a painful experience for me and her." . . . Women suspected of being witches are often hanged or burnt to death [in Papua New Guinea].

British Deny Using Bioweapon in Iraq

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic. . . .

UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer said: "We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area."

From the BBC via the Huffington Post via Above the Law (with illustration).

What would you expect the British to say if they were introducing man-eating badgers? Yup, that was us?

These are the people who brought us the saying:

An Ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

Obviously a conspiracy.

Clueless Doc?

Joseph and his wife, Sarah, had only nine hours to prepare for the arrival of their daughter, born May 22 at Memorial Hospital North.

They got the shocking news Sarah was pregnant around noon that day. They were excited, thinking Sarah was maybe a couple of months along. But by that afternoon, they were checking into the hospital, and their surprise full-term baby was delivered by Caesarean section at 9:22 p.m. . . .

“All the usual questions are, ‘well didn’t you miss a period?’ Well, yes, I missed several, but I’m used to that. I had no cravings. No morning sickness.”

She also didn’t have the obvious pooched-out belly, and she’s not a particularly large person who might disguise a pregnancy. She was really tired, but she attributed that to the rigors of caring for 3-year-old Adrianna, who was adopted. . . .

The Terrys believed they couldn’t have children. Sarah Terry has polycystic ovarian disease, which can cause infertility. Sufferers often have irregular or absent menstrual cycles and typically carry extra weight in the belly and hips.

Not only did friends and family not notice Sarah Terry was pregnant, the fact even escaped a doctor. Sarah Terry had an annual exam in March, and the possibility of pregnancy wasn’t mentioned, she said. She also had a mammogram in April.

From The Colorado Springs Gazette via Out in Left Field.