New York Congressman Christopher Lee loses his shirt
The Republican family man quit his post Wednesday and apologized for sending a shirtless image of himself to a woman he met on Craigslist.
If the personal and political ramifications were not enough, even more dire are the societal problems brought to light. People are much too flippant with the rules in the electronic age: Always use separate phones and Internet aliases for freaky pictures, never ever include your face (even Favre knew that), and maintain to the grave that your account was hacked.
And really, my mom taught me to share. Turning Lee in for naked pictures is an undeserved slap in his mother’s face.
The smoking gun
Imagine you’re a guard for your local jail. It’s your job to break the ice with a brisk search and make the new guys feel at home. Well some days, you’re welcoming has to be a little warmer than others.
When Antoine Banks was booked into jail on a drug charge, the Louisville, Kentucky officers administering the pat down found a small baggie of crack cocaine tied inside his boxers. Suspicions aroused, the penal officers thrust deeper and in possibly the most thorough strip search ever, discovered another small baggie of crack cocaine hidden in Banks’ foreskin. No word on the proportions of the second baggie but both were turned in to evidence, presumably at the end of a long stick.
Lindsay Lohan pleads not guilty to felony theft
It’s true that Lohan is already on probation and if this alleged theft of a $2,500 necklace from a Venice Beach jewelry store sticks, she could face up to three years in PMITA prison. Whether she’s an entitled brat or misunderstood and legitimately troubled, the witch hunt for Lohan doesn’t make any sense. With Charlie Sheen back to work just two days after being hospitalized because of a porn star buffet (not illegal) with a healthy side order of cocaine (indubitably illegal), judges, prosecutors and the public are strangely fickle in whom they decide to punish.
Confidential memo leaks oil
A recently released U.S. Embassy memo from 2007 reveals the Saudis overstated their ability to meet raised production goals.
Enter Dr. Sadad al-Husseini, a former executive for Saudi Aramco who apparently spoke up strictly for confusion and comic relief when he said that while he’s pretty sure the world supply will plateau in the next 10 to 15 years, that global demand has met supply and just maybe Saudi reserves aren’t as rich as boasted, he doesn’t believe in “peak oil” theory. While you scratch your head at that, consider this also:
Tight corn stocks shock
The U.S. Department of Agriculture released a crucial corn report Wednesday detailing the miserable condition our corn is in. Demand for both ethanol (thanks a lot hippies and Dr. al-Husseini) and corn exported as food has doubled the price of the crop in the last six months and shrunken our reserves. But forget that by August we’ll only have 675 million bushels in reserve (5 percent of what we consume annually), expensive corn means expensive other food because corn feeds food. I’m talking meat.
As we run low on oil, we’re pursuing a fuel that, while clean, requires lots of arable land and will cut into the globe’s food supply.