Property Protected by Guns; Seven-Year Old Killed by Shotgun Fire in Dark – A 7-year-old boy who loved playing outdoors and riding on the back of his daddy’s Harley died Saturday morning after a Liberty County, Texas couple opened fire on him and three other alleged trespassers. Donald Coffey Jr., his father and friends were on their way back from joy riding near a levee and swimming in the Trinity River around 9 p.m. Thursday when homeowners Gale and Sheila Muhs fired at them with a 12-gauge shotgun, police say. The boy, struck in the face, was among eight people, including four children, who had been on the river outing. Four people, including another child, were shot. The ordeal happened over two or three minutes in “pitch darkness.â€
The men stopped to use the bathroom and got out of the Jeep near the Muhses’ home in the Westlake subdivision south of Dayton when a woman’s voice boomed through the darkness, Nelton said. In a message peppered with expletives, she said, the voice ordered the group to get their vehicles off the property. “And then I heard a shot and our windows were blown out,†Cindy Nelton said.
The Muhs home is fronted by a sign warning: “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be reshot!! Smile I willâ€
Cheney Says He’d Take Limbaugh Over Powell as a Republican – On CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday morning, Bob Schieffer had asked Cheney who he’d prefer as spokesman for the GOP: Rush Limbaugh or Colin Powell. Powell has said that Republicans need to move to the center and that Limbaugh diminishes the party by injecting nastiness into public life. Limbaugh has responded that Powell is “just another liberal†and should become a Democrat.
Choosing between the two men is apparently easy for Cheney, despite the fact he worked alongside Powell for four years during the first Bush administration. “If I had to choose in terms of being a Republican I’d go with Rush Limbaugh,†Cheney said. It seems that Colin Powell just isn’t nasty enough to be a real Republican in Cheney’s eyes.
Conservative Group Aims to “Swift Boat” Health-Care Reform – Rick Scott, founder of a group called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, is a multimillionaire investor and controversial former hospital chief executive. Scott was ousted as head of the Columbia/HCA health-care company amid a fraud investigation in the 1990s.
Scott has become the leader of the opposition to health-care reform plans that Congress is expected to take up later this year. Scott is using $5 million of his own money and up to $15 million more from supporters to try to build resistance to any government-run program.
The campaign is being coordinated by CRC Public Relations, the group that masterminded the “Swift boat” attacks against 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry, and is inspired by the “Harry and Louise” ads that helped torpedo health-care reform during the Clinton administration.
Fair and Balanced Fox News Provides Date for Sarah Palin’s Husband – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin couldn’t make the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday, so she sent hubby, Todd, who had a whale of a time. Todd happily lapped up the attention from his tablemates and rarely left the side of his date for the evening, Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren. The two became so close that we caught them hanging out together well past midnight at Capitol File magazine’s annual after-dinner bash.
Meghan McCain a Real Pain at D.C. Dinner – At White House Correspondents dinner Saturday, Meghan McCain wanted to admit three people although she had only two tickets. The security guard sent her to talk to someone to sort out the situation, but Meghan got bratty and nastily told him, ‘We’ll just stand here then,’ like an insolent child,†our source said, adding that after dealing with the guard, “She muttered to her friends, ‘Does he even know who the f— I am?’ †An insider said, “Those tickets were harder to get than gold dust and Meghan blatantly only had two and thought she didn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.†The vocal McCain “was complaining about everything from the air-conditioning to the wait,†said the insider.
CBS Sports Golf Analyst Talks About Killing Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid – CBS Sports golf analyst David Feherty was among five Dallas residents who wrote for “D Magazine” on former President George W. Bush moving to Dallas. “From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though,” Feherty wrote toward the end of his column. “Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there’s a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death.”
Attorney General of Texas is Threatening Women Who Have Been Raped That Their Credit Will be Ruined – Greg Abbott, the attorney general of Texas is sending letters to women who have been raped threatening their credit will be ruined unless they pay for the part of the criminal investigation known as the rape kit.
(A rape kit is a set of items that specially trained medial staff use to gather and preserve evidence of a sexual assault. A woman can decline the process, which can take up to four hours, but going to an emergency room and undergoing this additional intrusion helps document the attack and gives law enforcement evidence it needs to investigate the crime and prosecute the rapist.) The cost, according to CNN/ KPRC, runs $1,200 to $1,800.
Has the state’s attorney general lost his mind? Do these penny-pinching bureaucrats have no decency, no shame at all? [What has happened to their ability to empathize?]
RNC Chairman Bashes “Empathy”; Shows He Doesn’t Know What the Word Means – RNC Chairman Michael Steele, guest-hosting for radio talk show host Bill Bennett, got all gangsta and up in the grill of them libruls for actually wanting a Supreme Court Justice to be “empathetic”:
Good morning y’all, we’re back in the house. We’re talking a little bit of Constitution and a little bit Supreme Court. And a whole lot of saving America’s judicial system and saving our rights as citizens and not having empathetic judges decide cases, but rather judges who are actually understanding the rule of law and what the Constitution and those laws are all about. And how to apply the facts to the law and the law to the facts. And adjudicate my case. I don’t need some judge sitting up there feeling bad for my opponent because of their life circumstances or their condition. And short changing me and my opportunity to get fair treatment under the law. Crazy nonsense empathetic. I’ll give you empathy. Empathize right on your behind.
Does he even know what empathy means? Empathy is
Empathy and our political worldviews
Terrorist Traffic Via Syria Returns – A Syrian pipeline used by Al-Qaeda in Iraq to smuggle Islamic fighters into Iraq has been reactivated after a short lull. “We do think that the knowledge of these networks exists at least within the Syrian intelligence community,” the paper quoted an unnamed senior US military official as saying. “What level, if it’s low or high up, we just don’t have a good gauge on. There was a period … where we were probably seeing less than half a dozen foreign fighters being pushed through the network.” More recently, he said, the estimate has risen to 20 a month, and various intelligence sources have noted an increased “demand call” in Iraq for foreign fighters.
Regards,
Jim
Andy Hailey