"A new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that a majority of the public support allowing openly gay men and women to serve in the military.
Seventy-nine percent of Democrats said they support permitting gay men and lesbians to serve openly. Fewer Democrats however, just 43 percent, said they were in favor of allowing homosexuals to serve openly."
The polled Republicans apparently were a bit less confused, mostly recognizing a connection between the words gay and homosexual...
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A federal agent sizing up Nick George might peg him as Most Likely To Be Recruited By The CIA. He's a physics major at a top college, he minors in Middle Eastern studies, speaks Arabic, has lived in Jordan and is adventurous enough to have backpacked through Sudan and Egypt.
At Philadelphia International Airport last August, his interest in the world got him handcuffed.
The Wyncote native was detained for five hours after Transportation Security Administration screeners grew suspicious about something in his pockets.
Arabic-language flash cards.
Security technologist Bruce Schneier said,
"This is just stupid". "There's no other way to explain it. Someone saw these Arabic language cards and just freaked. It should have taken TSA 15 seconds.
"Terrorism can't do this to us. I think only we can do this to ourselves."
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Brockton, Mass., is shoveling $180,000 in tax revenues and insurance money over to a 6-year-old because elementary school officials had called him a "sex offender" for tweaking the waistband of a 7-year-old girl's panties.
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A Gainesville man was charged late Tuesday with interrupting a working police dog by commanding the dog to sit. According to Gainesville Police Officer David Blizzard, Porter was pulled over for operating a car stereo so that it was audible more than 25 feet beyond the vehicle.
A police dog was brought to the scene to walk around Porter's car to determine if there was probable cause to search the car for drugs.
According to Blizzard's report, Porter "began stating loud commands to 'sit' and 'sitz,' which interrupted the K9 from his duties. The K9 stopped twice while walking the vehicle and looking in the direction of (Porter) who was giving those commands."
A small plastic bag found under the front passenger seat contained marijuana residue. Porter was being held at the Alachua County jail on Wednesday.
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One-armed man hunted for stealing single cufflink
Headline from The Daily Telegraph, London --------------------------------------------Train traps Callahan woman in her yard
CALLAHAN — Aretha Brown is a 66-year old woman with back trouble who has had to crawl between two train cars almost every time she has left her yard this year.
On Dec. 27, CSX put about 40 connected train cars on one of the three tracks that crosses the path between her home and nearby Pickett Street. Since then, Brown has had to crawl under the train cars when she goes to the store, to her mailbox on Pickett Street, to church or if she does anything else.
“My house is falling apart and I can’t get anyone to come and make repairs because they won’t climb under the train,” Brown said.
It is also hard to carry groceries while crawling under the train, and when she goes to church she has to be careful not to get her nice clothes dirty. She said she also banged her shoulder against the train and it hurt for several weeks.
CSX said Friday the parked cars are storing supplies for construction crews performing routine maintenance on the railroad tracks in the area, and that location seemed best. It didn’t know about Brown’s house.
Brown’s sister, Mae Hailey, said she asked CSX in early January to move the cars, or to disconnect the cars in front of Brown’s house so she could walk between them, but the railroad refused. Spokesman Gary Sease said CSX preferred to find a new location for all the cars.
CSX also plans to build an access road within the next two to four weeks that would allow Brown to reach Pickett Street without having to cross any of the tracks, Sease said.
Brown said her parents bought the house more than 30 years ago and the family has always walked over the tracks.
At times Brown will walk 300-400 yards past the train cars to get to Pickett Road. But when she does she has to deal with mud puddles, foliage, bushes, trash and other barriers that are between the tracks and the road.
“I actually get dirtier walking around the train than I do when I go under it,” she said. “It also takes me about 20 minutes to walk around it.”
To get to her house from Pickett Street, Brown has to walk over several pieces of wood that serve as a de facto bridge over a ditch, climb under the couplings between railroad cars, and then walk on another plank of wood, a very unstable bridge over a large puddle.
Brown lives in the old, white house with nine cats, who are outside most of the time. There is an adjoining house her sister and niece Rita Hailey used to live in before they gave up in frustration and moved out a few weeks ago.
Her brother, Frank Cheavers, still lives in the adjoining house.
Brown is thinking of moving and laughed when asked if her family would sell the two structures.
“I really don’t think anyone would want to buy this,” she said.
On Friday afternoon, Brown climbed under a rail car and walked out to Pickett Street where her sister was waiting. Mae Hailey owns the family car and was picking up Brown so they could go shopping and mail some packages.
“When people hear about this they think we’re a bunch of yahoos in Callahan,” Hailey said.
She’s glad to be out of that house and in a mobile home on Dixie Avenue. Before the sisters departed, Hailey commiserated with someone who had just climbed under the train to get back to Pickett Street.
“If you think it’s bad now,” she said, “you should see what it’s like after dark.”
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