AGENT JOSE COMPEAN WILL MAKE HIS FIRST APPEARANCE ON THE JOHN AND KEN SHOW TODAY at 4:00!
Border agents plead for ‘Christmas pardon’
A Border Patrol agent sentenced to prison along with his partner for shooting and wounding a man smuggling drugs into the U.S. will appear with a congressman tomorrow at a rally asking President Bush to offer a pardon.
Jose Alonso Compean and Ignacio Ramos, were sentenced to 12 years and 11 years, respectively, in October by U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, Texas. The drug smuggler was granted immunity for his testimony.
Compean will be joined by family; Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R, Calif.; Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist; and members of other border-security groups such as Friends of the Border Patrol at the courthouse in Santa Ana, Calif., at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time tomorrow. . .
Video Has DMV and Pranksters Red-Faced
RICHMOND, Va. Dec 20, 2006 (AP)— With their skin painted bright red, spray-on hair and oversized fake teeth, the Virginia men looked a little like teenagers from Pluto but the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles issued them driver’s licenses all the same.
But after videos of the prank gained notoriety on the Internet, it was the DMV’s turn to be red-faced, and has ordered the men to pose for new license photos or lose their driving privileges.
Posted on Youtube.com, the video features scenes of Will Carsola spray-painting his face and neck bright red and Dave Stewart painting the top of his head black and sticking a row of fake buckteeth in his mouth in an Asian caricature. They each enter the DMV office and return with real licenses with photos of their new likenesses. . .
Click HERE to see the outrageous photos
Wednesday, December 20th, 2006
Lawmaker won’t apologize for ‘Islamophobic’ letter
WASHINGTON (CNN)—A Virginia congressman will not apologize for writing that without immigration reform “there will be many more Muslims elected to office demanding the use of the Quran,” his spokesman said.
Republican Rep. Virgil Goode’s letter to constituents also warns that without immigration reform “we will have many more Muslims in the United States.”
Spokesman Linwood Duncan said Goode’s letter was written in response to complaints his office received about Minnesota Rep.-elect Keith Ellison’s request to be sworn in using the Quran. . .
An online outlet for road rage
Fast-growing site lets drivers vent—but privacy an issue
So there’s the Mercedes, driven by an oblivious woman who is chatting away on her cell phone and bam! She swerves across five lanes of Orange County traffic, heading for the exit, and then that poor little red car gets in the way …
Here’s another one, this time from Sunnyvale: “Driving while applying makeup (DWAM). Even though she needed it… bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic is not the place to apply it. Do us all a favor: Wake up earlier… arrive alive.”
And from Nevada: “Get the…out of the fast lane. It’s not for slow cars. If you’re gonna drive slow, then go to a parking lot and practice driving slow there. . .
Mark Buckman, co-founder of platewire.com will be on the show at 4:00
Unions: Swift & Co. hiring more whites
OMAHA, Neb.—Fewer Hispanic immigrants are being hired to replace meatpacking workers arrested at Swift & Co. plants in Grand Island, Neb., and Greeley, Colo., during last week’s immigration raid, union officials said Tuesday.
Local 22 union president Dan Hoppes said Tuesday that 40 to 50 new workers have been hired at the Grand Island plant since the raids.
“The lion’s share of those people were Caucasian,” Hoppes said. . .
Many of the ‘ADD generation’ say no to meds
FOR Devin Barclay, life with attention-deficit disorder has been a winding road. And seven years after he quit taking medication for the condition, “it’s still winding,” he says with a laugh.
But as the 23-year-old navigates his way into adulthood, he’s managed to pay the roadside distractions a little less attention. And he’s learned a thing or two about getting himself from one destination to the next without taking major detours.
In 1990, when Barclay was 7, he was diagnosed with ADD and began taking Ritalin — a stimulant medication that he and his parents referred to as “the thinking pill” — to help him sit still and pay attention in class. Over the next decade, almost 2 million American boys and girls were similarly diagnosed, an unprecedented growth of a medical condition that, before 1990, had been so rarely recognized that the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not even track it. . .
Tuesday, December 19th, 2006
Settlement talks reopen in bias case
Los Angeles officials have reopened talks with the lawyer for former firefighter Tennie Pierce as the two sides seek to settle a racial discrimination case that has upended city politics in recent weeks.
Although officials would not discuss the matter on the record, one person close to the talks said they are trying to strike a deal that would end Pierce’s case against the city and close debate over his attempt to secure a $2.7-million payout.
Pierce, a nearly 20-year veteran of the Los Angeles Fire Department, sued the city after colleagues in his station house fed him dog food mixed with spaghetti sauce and then allegedly taunted him for months after the incident. . .
Outside Lawyers Wanted To Handle Harrassment Case
The Los Angeles City Council Tuesday asked the City Attorney’s Office to hire outside lawyers to handle the case of a firefighter who claims he was harassed by colleagues who fed him dog food.Without discussion, the City Council asked for outside attorneys to either negotiate another settlement or represent the city in court in the case of Tennie Pierce, who sued the fire department for not stopping his colleagues from harassing him.
A $2.7 million settlement for Pierce was vetoed last month by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. . .
Haidl attorney claims he’s owed $1 million
SANTA ANA – An attorney claims in a lawsuit that he hasn’t been paid more than $1 million he’s owed for representing the son of a former assistant sheriff in two sex-assault trials.
The suit alleges that Gregory Haidl and his father, Donald, reneged on an oral agreement made after the younger Haidl was arrested in July 2002, attorney Joseph G. Cavallo said this week.
Gregory Haidl, 20, and two of his friends were sentenced March 13, 2006, to six years in prison for the videotaped sexual assault of a seemingly unconscious 16-year-old girl at Donald Haidl’s Corona del Mar home. . .
Mount Hood rescue renews a cost debate
The search for climbers missing on Oregon’s Mount Hood is costing the county government there up to $6,000 per day, but national search-and-rescue leaders say that is just a fraction of the total costs of such a mission.
“Anytime you get involved with using heavy helicopters [in a rescue effort], the cost can run you as much as $5,000 an hour, and I understand they have been using three large helicopters in this search,” Randy Servis, president of the National Association for Search and Rescue, said in a telephone interview yesterday.
He said this highly publicized nine-day search for three climbers—one of whom was found dead Sunday—on the 11,239-foot mountain has renewed debate over whether subjects of a search or their survivors should reimburse governments for the costs of the search, if those missing were involved in a risky activity. . .
Zuhair Mahd of Denver made all the right moves to become a U.S. citizen after escaping poverty and rejection as a blind Palestinian-refugee teenager in Jordan.
He found a banker to buy him a ticket to Boston. He excelled in U.S. schools. He pioneered Arabic text-to-speech software and worked for IBM, honing skills that recruiters for the CIA and other agencies covet for the war on terrorism.
Then he applied for citizenship, passed the tests and waited for an FBI background check.
And waited. And waited. . .
Zuhair Mahd will be on the show at 6:00
Monday, December 18th, 2006
Theater of the Absurd at the T.S.A.
FOR theater on a grand scale, you can’t do better than the audience-participation dramas performed at airports, under the direction of the Transportation Security Administration.
Matthew Blaze’s Web SiteAs passengers, we tender our boarding passes and IDs when asked. We stand in lines. We empty pockets. We take off shoes. We do whatever is asked of us in these mass rites of purification. We play our assigned parts, comforted in the belief that only those whose motives are good and true will be permitted to pass through.
Of course, we never see the actual heart of the security system: the government’s computerized no-fly list, to which our names are compared when we check in for departure. The T.S.A. is much more talented, however, in the theater arts than in the design of secure systems. This becomes all too clear when we see that the agency’s security procedures are unable to withstand the playful testing of a bored computer-science student. . .
Bruce Schneier, a security consultant will be on the show at 4:00
Hopeful applicants look to find open jobs at Swift & Co.
Josh Solis, 37, formerly of California, stood in line at the Employment Services of Weld County along with about 40 other people in search of jobs on Thursday.
Most of the people were waiting in line for an application from Swift & Co., very few were seeking employment elsewhere.
“Swift has been on site for over a month,” said Linda Perez, director of Employment Services of Weld County. “They’re a good company and they pay good.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, 261 people were arrested Tuesday at Swift & Co.’s meat processing plant raid in Greeley. The positions left open by the detainees brought many people seeking employment at the Swift & Co. processing plant. . .
Health Officials To Consider Trans Fat Ordinance
(CBS) LOS ANGELES Health officials were asked Tuesday to determine whether Los Angeles County should adopt a policy that restricts restaurants from cooking with trans fats.
The Department of Public Health will return to the Board of Supervisors in 45 days with a report on regulation and calorie labeling of trans fats.
“Trans fat increases your bad cholesterol and reduces your good cholesterol and for those reasons, among others, increases your risk of having a heart attack or other cardiovascular disease,” Dr. Jonathan Fielding, the county’s public health director said. . .
Dr. Jonathan Fielding will be on the show at 6:00
Friday, December 15th, 2006
California judge: Lethal injection may be unconstitutional
SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP)—A federal judge who imposed a moratorium on executions in California ruled Friday that the state’s method of lethal injection is at risk of violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
California’s “implementation of lethal injection is broken, but it can be fixed,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel said.
Fogel’s decision came on the same day that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in that state after a botched execution this week. . .
Lethal injection takes 34 minutes to kill inmate
STARKE – Angel Nieves Diaz, the self-styled ‘’Daddy of Death’’ for the Machete Men Puerto Rican terror gang who was implicated in at least three murders and two brutal prison breaks, spent his last moments Wednesday inveighing against the taking of a life—his own.
‘’The state of Florida is killing an innocent person,’’ Diaz said from the gurney on Death Row. ``The state of Florida is committing a crime, because I am innocent. The death penalty is not only a form of vengeance, but also a cowardly act by humans. I’m sorry for what is happening to me and my family who have been put through this.’’
What happened to him next looked agonizing. Grimacing, Diaz took 34 minutes to die from the drugs pumped through him. At times he seemed to be squinting and at other times he appeared to be flexing his jaw. . .
Violent bigotry on rise in area
Hate crimes in Los Angeles County surged 26 percent last year, fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment, white supremacist activity and racial tension in schools, jails and neighborhoods, officials said Thursday.
Bucking national and statewide trends – and reversing three years of declines – the number of hate crimes countywide hit 633, with about half involving violence, says the report from the county’s Human Relations Commission.
Hate crimes against blacks rose 47 percent – from 156 to 230 – while anti-Latino incidents soared 179 percent – from 19 to 53. Specifically anti-Mexican crimes rose 71 percent, from 41 to 70. . .
The season to rejoice—or recoil
Corporate bosses eager to spread a bit of holiday cheer are getting a big “bah humbug” from some of their employees.
Many workers say they would rather skip the annual office party.
That cheerlessness reflects the stilted nature of many corporate holiday gatherings, experts say, as well as cascading family events during December. Many employees profess fear of making a boneheaded move in front of the boss after a couple of rum-laced eggnogs. Lawyers who handle workplace disputes say harassment cases predictably spike after holiday parties. . .
APOCALYPTO
This was a film no one knew much about until Mel had that anti-semitic drunken breakdown earlier this year. Then the focus became “will anyone go see a Mel Gibson movie now that he has done this?” To me the focus should have been, “will anyone go see a movie with a no name cast, subtitles, and a plot that seems undecipherable from the trailers?” Well, the answers to both those questions is apparently, “yes”. It made over 14 million last week, good enough for number one at the box office. But here’s what surprised me the most – it’s a very conventional story. It could have been set in the Old West with Clint Eastwood, or in a modern day city with Tom Cruise, because it’s the well tread storyline of “man loses wife and kids to invaders, must kill many to get them back”. (more…)
Thursday, December 14th, 2006
For firefighter, sense of brotherhood shattered
Before he was Big Dog in the fire station, he was Big Fella because of his giant frame and Bigfoot because of his size 15 boots. Before there was the dog food in his spaghetti, there was the noose draped over his station locker and the white flour sprinkled in his bed.
And before Tennie Pierce became the Los Angeles Fire Department’s $2.7-million man — a symbol of racial discrimination to some and political correctness gone wrong to others — he was an ordinary firefighter, who had spent 17 years pledging allegiance to the department’s notion of brotherhood.
That allegiance began unraveling two years ago, when a firefighter at Pierce’s Westchester station mixed dog food into his dinner — a practical joke intended to “humble” him, the department’s investigative report said, for “declaring himself Big Dog” in a volleyball game. . .
Councilwoman vows to bring rental ordinance back
ESCONDIDO ——Councilwoman Marie Waldron said Thursday that she is not backing down in her fight against illegal immigration, even though the Escondido City Council has essentially killed an ordinance proposed by her that would have punished landlords for renting to illegal immigrants.
The Council announced Wednesday night that it had halted its efforts to defend in court the city ordinance. Waldron, who was re-elected in November, originally proposed the rental ordinance.
“This is one glitch in the battle, not a defeat,” she said. “I intend to make the ordinance stronger and more defensible. . .
Marie Waldron will be on the show at 4:00
