Grandma's House

Federal appeals court grants Terri Schiavo's parents the right to seek rehearing -
A federal appeals court in Atlanta has granted Terri Schiavo's parents the right to file a petition for rehearing for an injunction that could allow their brain-damaged daughter's feeding tube to be reconnected.

Crystal Senger stopped at a convenience store to buy pop and cigarettes, and she saw the clerk being choked in a robbery attempt. She ran to call for help. Then she started throwing bananas.

"I was seven-for-seven," Senger said in a telephone interview Thursday. "They were green bananas — not the ripe mushy ones — so they hurt."

Senger said the suspect, who police said was intoxicated, was stunned from getting hit by the flying fruit.

Police said the suspect, who was not identified because of his age, stood more than 6 feet tall, and weighed about 300 pounds.

"He threw me around like I was nothing," said store clerk Ed Bingham, "and I weigh 220 pounds." Bingham said the suspect kicked and punched him for what "felt like forever."

Senger said the basket of bananas was the closest thing she could find. "If there would have been cans of soup on the counter, I would have thrown those at him," she said.

Alexiou said the woman, who asked officials not to identify her, is at minimal risk of contracting illnesses from the finger because the chili was cooked.

A bill proposed by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., would enable anyone to register to vote on election day and cast a ballot without a photo ID, proof of citizenship or other personal identification.

In a statement, Clinton said, "Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process.

A third section adds, "The following shall not constitute a 'material omission or information that specifically affects the eligibility of the voter': (1) The failure to provide a Social Security number or driver's license number. (2) The failure to provide information concerning citizenship or age in a manner other than" a simple statement that one is a citizen.

A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies:

1. "Take it easy, Doc. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!"
2. "Find Amelia Earhart yet?"
3. "Can you hear me NOW?"
4. "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"
5. "You know, in Arkansas, we're now legally married."
6. "Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?"
7. "You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out..."
8. "Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!"
9. "If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!"
10. "Hey, Doc, let me know if you find my dignity."
11. "You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?"
12. "God, now I know why I am not gay."

And the best one of them all....
13. "Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?"

Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday will propose establishing new rules for the use of military force, adopting a tough anti-terrorism treaty that would punish suicide bombers, and overhauling the United Nation's discredited human rights commission, according to a confidential draft of a report on U.N. reform.

A lack of funds has forced Australia's only frog hospital and disease surveillance group to shut its doors after six-and-a-half years of operation.

Public donations for the hospital and its larger entity, the Frog Decline Reversal Project (FDRP), have been minimal.

Ms Pergolotti says she believes this is because people view frogs as being "too far down the chain".

"So they'll help a baby bird or they'll help a wallaby hit by a car but when it comes down to an injured snake on a road or a sick frog that's below the line," she said.

Margaret — who has won awards for her giant rhubarb in local shows — left William with smarting eyes, double vision and needing painkillers.

Republican senators say Gov. Matt Blunt's plan to remove more than 100,000 people from Medicaid is an intermediate step to revamping what they call a bloated and broken government health care system for the poor. Democrats labored into early Tuesday morning to delay a vote on a bill that would enable much of the governor's plan. Republican legislative leaders planned to resume debate later Tuesday and bring the bill to a vote.

Among other things, the bill would authorize a reduction in the eligibility threshold for the disabled and elderly, currently set at the federal poverty level of $9,570 for an individual. Blunt's plan would cut that maximum income threshold to about $7,082 annually; a House appropriations committee endorsed a plan that would set the threshold at $8,135 per year.

U2
The O'Jays
Percy Sledge
The Pretenders
Buddy Guy

Cranberry police said a clerk at Gordon's Mini Market burst into laughter when the person wearing a Pluto mask walked into the store about 9:45 p.m. Tuesday.

The clerk was laughing so hard he didn't comply with the robber's demand to turn over the cash register money — so the frustrated robber left the store, police said.

One person died Sunday when an avalanche swept through a group of people taking an avalanche awareness class.

The head of the body charged with ensuring racial equality in Britain has suggested that black boys should sometimes be taught separately from white children in order to improve their school performance. Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said the measure could soon become necessary because of the continuing poor performance of male black pupils in GCSE examinations. But his comments are likely to be condemned by some as endorsing a form of segregation.

The "blogger" is Garrett M. Graff, a 23-year-old employee of a company called Mediabistro.com. His official title is "editor." The "blog" is FishbowlDC, a site decorated with all the little corporate features sites like Yahoo have. A contact email address which doesn't go to the "blogger." A disclaimer. A copyright notice. A site map. The "blog" has no comments, and there are no trackbacks.

A blogger pays his own bills. A blogger has comments, if at all possible. A blogger does his own writing or chooses a few friends to help. A blogger has trackbacks. A blogger links to other REAL bloggers, not the mainstream dorks Graff links to.

A blogger is not an "editor." A blogger does not receive a salary, unless it's from a corporation he himself formed as a result of making money from a genuine blog. A blogger does not have interns. A blogger--most importantly--has NO ONE to answer to.

Thanks to Walter's skill, he would be placed under El-i-chi's tutelage until Renno from his mission to England. Walter and Ba-lin-ta would continue to see each other every day, but the time they spent together would be limited.

A large fire was built in the pit outside the hut, and Ba-lin-ta was dispatched to the lodge of the Bear Clan to invite all members to a feast.

A 14-year-old Newton male, in an attempt to blow up a stuff toy duck with gunpowder and firework in the backyard of his Meadowbrook Road residence, burned himself and had to be treated at Children's Hospital on Feb. 18.

Police reports describe the boy's face as red, "like a sunburn," after the accident and noted his hair was singed, although Sgt. Ken Dangelo said he does not believe the youth was admitted for his injuries.

But Finance Director Sandra Converse said the city has a mandatory income tax return filing requirement for working-age residents -- whether they earned income or not.

"We don't know what people owe if they do not file," she said. "We wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't enforce this (filing rule). Sometimes people owe quite a bit of money and that's why they haven't filed."
Individuals who did not work "can file a zero return, telling us that they made nothing, that they did not work," Converse said.

Although Mr. Flores faces prosecution, Miss Basoria can't be charged because the new law -- like many others across the nation -- bans prosecution of mothers on the grounds that they have a legal right to end pregnancies.

Three blogs which published sensitive information about upcoming Apple products could be made to disclose where the leaks came from.

A California judge said in a preliminary ruling that bloggers should not have the same protection afforded to journalists under US law.

"Grandpa" Bredo Morstoel, who died in 1989, was frozen by his grandson and stored in a shed in Nederland, a town 35 miles northwest of Denver that began celebrating "Frozen Dead Guy Days" in 2002 to increase tourism.

Police arrested an 8-year-old boy who allegedly had a violent outburst in school, head-butting his teacher and kicking an assistant principal, when he was told he couldn't go outside to play with other students.

The 4-foot pupil was led away from Rawls Byrd Elementary School in handcuffs Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct and assault and battery.

A Florida judge will hear arguments next week on whether the state's social services agency will be allowed to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case with an investigation of alleged abuse by her estranged husband.

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Bradley Smith says that the freewheeling days of political blogging and online punditry are over. In just a few months, he warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.

Inside was a snake as thick as a child's wrist, its diamond-shaped head sticking 10 inches out of the toilet.

He fashioned a noose out of some PVC pipe and string and grabbed a dark green pillowcase. By now the snake had receded back into the bowels of the toilet. As Scavotto's wife, Beth, and 3-year-old, Ashlynd, looked on, the snake poked its head out again. Scavotto got the noose around its neck and pulled the string taut.

Then started pulling. And pulling. And pulling. And the snake kept coming.

"Get its tail into the pillowcase," he yelled to his wife.

"Where's the tail?" she asked.

Scavotto realized he had about 5 feet of snake and it was still coming.

Scavotto called his boss to tell him he'd be late because he'd had to wrestle a snake out of his toilet. His boss joked he would need a better excuse than that.

Scavotto told him he'd bring it in so he could see it. And he did.

"Then the tank drove up over the left side of the hood of the car and continued over the front window and roof, half a meter into the car. The tank driver clearly hadn't seen us. I leaned as far as I could into my wife while I felt the roof being pressed down into my left shoulder," Okkenhaug remembered.

"Then my left cheekbone was pressed against the roof and I shrunk down as far as I could. It was quite cramped and looking back it is incredible that I survived. I said a bad word when I understood the tank wasn't going to stop, when it was over me I can't remember what I thought," Okkenhaug said.

As sponsor of a resolution that would have the Senate honor the late W.E.B. Du Bois, Kerry is promoting a man who was fervently anti-American, a member of the Soviet-dominated Communist Party, and twice ejected from the NAACP for his opposition to racial integration.

It would not be the first time a nation has honored Du Bois. According to Daniel J. Flynn, writing in Human Events, the Soviet Union awarded him the Lenin Peace Prize, and Maoist China staged a national holiday in his honor in 1959.

Kerry promoted his Senate resolution, co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Edward Kennedy (Mass.) and Carl Levin (Mich.), by declaring, "Dr. Du Bois taught us that the promise of freedom is honored through action."

The reality is far different. Du Bois renounced his American citizenship and joined the Communist Party. In writing longtime Communist Party U.S.A. Chairman Gus Hall in 1961, the reflexively anti-American intellectual called communism "the only way of human life” and predicted that the free market was "doomed to self-destruction."

Here's just a small part of Du Bois’ pro-Communist record, as reported by Human Events:

During the Korean war in 1950, in which 54,246 American service men and women would die, Du Bois said that "the North Koreans are fighting exactly the things for which Americans fought in 1776."

Three years later, he eulogized Soviet dictator Stalin - one of history's worst mass murderers - as a "great" and "courageous" man, "attacked and slandered as few men of power have been." In his posthumously published autobiography, he called the crackdown on religion behind the Iron Curtain "the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world."

After a 1937 visit to Nazi Germany, he admitted that the Nazis had stamped out freedom, but nevertheless praised the Hitlerites for creating "a nation at work after a nightmare of unemployment; and the results of this work are shown not simply by private profits, but by houses for the poor; new roads; an end of strikes and labor troubles; widespread industrial and unemployment insurance; the guarding of public and private health; great celebrations, organizations for old and young, new songs, new ideals, a new state, a new race." He failed to mention concentration camps and the gas ovens that consumed millions. And while condemning anti-Semitism, Flynn noted, Du Bois called it "a reasoned prejudice" in Hitler's Germany.