Miscellaneous

New Website Design: Please Read With Caution

As you can tell (at least if you’ve seen a past version of this site), the design has changed mildly.  I remain loyal to blue, but certain other long-serving design elements have been ruthlessly and suddenly dumped, something I now…


Gang of Drunken Santas Attack Theater

Witnesses estimated the crowd of drunken Santas numbered about 50, and said that they rushed in through the front door of Hoyts Cinema in Christchurch, New Zealand, and began ripping down movie posters and smashing things. "They were all dressed…


Santa Groped

Once again, ’tis the season for Christmas-assault cases.  Most of these stories involve simple assault and battery upon (on sometimes by) Santa Claus, but this is the first such story I’ve come across in which someone touched his Kringle. A…


Drug Dealers Subject Buyer to Cookie Torture

Is it really "torture" if what you’re being burned with are freshly baked cookies right out of the oven? Well, obviously not, if you’re John Yoo, since this seems unlikely to cause pain equivalent to that caused by organ failure…


Accused Flasher Exposes Evidence in Court

Lawyers involved in a 60-year-old German man’s appeal of indecent-exposure charges were, for some reason, "stunned" when the man took his clothes off during a court recess. "The court withdrew for deliberations and during the adjournment the man removed his…



Opinion Corrected: Replaces “Iggidy” With “Wiggity”

While the facts of the underlying opinion in U.S. v. Freeman aren’t especially comical — it was an appeal from a conviction and sentence on drug-conspiracy charges — it does have some educational value.  The question was whether the district…



Maine Dentist Suspended for “Practice Run Amok”

Still reeling from the recent tusk-installation scandal, American dentistry was rocked again this weekend by revelations that a dentist in Waterville, Maine, had been suspended from practice for six months because of wild office parties and "terrifying" safety violations.  A…


Captain America to be Spared Jail Time

I like to salute great opening sentences when it’s appropriate, and especially when I’m not sure I could do any better.  So here’s this opening sentence, which began a story written on Tuesday by an unknown reporter at WFTV.com in…