Booming system?!?! Car go bye bye!!!

ST. LOUIS

City police would be able to seize cars blasting loud music under an ordinance passed Friday by the Board of Aldermen.

The ordinance, which would take effect once signed by Mayor Francis Slay, prohibits the use and even installation of some enhanced speakers.

Alderman Craig Schmid's proposal easily had enough votes to pass, but only after aldermen turned up the volume on their own concerns. Impounding a car for playing loud music is too severe, opponents said, and ripe for abuse.

"It's almost idiotic for us to take somebody's car for something like that," Alderman Stephen Conway said.

Schmid said he wanted to send a "strong message" to drivers who cruise through residential areas, jarring neighbors and rattling windows.

"I analogize it to auditory graffiti," Schmid said.

***I like my music loud but shen it rattles the walls in someone's house, that is way too loud!!

Sure it LOOKS like a dead body.....

MILWAUKEE -- Milwaukee police are now considering the body found encased in concrete in a Milwaukee rental house over the weekend a homicide. Police were investigating another case when they found the remains buried in a basement near 27th Street and Concordia. At least two families are now wondering how they could have lived there with a dead body for so long and not even have known it. "You could see like a little lump in it, and then it looked like a foot sticking up, kind of, but with cement over it," past resident Cortez Thurman said.

Thurman said his family always joked about a dead body buried in the basement of their old home. "I used to lift weights down there and everything, and we used to always joke around, like, what if it's a dead body up under there?" Thurman said. But it was always just a joke until the family saw the scene played out on the news over the weekend. A dead body was in the basement encased in a concrete block, and police said it likely had been there for at least five years. "I used to play down there. I used to watch my brother and them lift weights down there. I used to sit on that body," Zaporah Thurman said.

***I used to sit on that body!!! That is tooooooo funny!!

Don't politicians do this stuff all the time?

WASHINGTON -- The staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan wiped out references to his broken term-limits pledge as well as information about his huge campaign war chest in an independent biography of the Lowell Democrat on a Web site that bills itself as the "world's largest encyclopedia," The Sun has learned.

The Meehan alterations on Wikipedia.com represent just two of more than 1,000 changes made by congressional staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives in the past six month. Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.

Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said he authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker.

The change deleted a reference to Meehan's campaign promise to surrender his seat after serving eight years, a pledge Meehan later eschewed. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.

*** *giggle*

Carving up some trouble

Andy Cunningham, of Hermitage, was divorced last fall.

He says he hasn't seen his two daughters, Christian, 11, and Jade, 9, for almost two months.

So when Jade's birthday came up recently, Cunningham wanted to give her a different kind of gift that would be around for a long time.

Cunningham, a truck-driver, drove to a waterfall in White County -- one of the last places he had taken his two daughters. And as a gift to Jade, he carved her name in a tree, took a photograph of the tree and sent it to a sister-in-law, who he says gave it to the children's mother.

He also had written a poem to his daughter.

"Behind these trees, I cried, wishing you were here by my side," the poem said.

After seeing her dad's carving, his oldest daughter, Christian, wanted her name carved in a tree. So a few days later, he put his knife to work again and sent the photo to Christian.

While his daughters like the tree-carvings, someone else apparently didn't. It wasn't long before he learned the White County Sheriff wanted to see him.

Earlier this week, Cunningham visited the Sheriff's office and discovered her had been indicted for vandalism for his handy work.

The girl's father says deputies gave him an orange jump suit to put on, shackled his ankles and put him behind bars for almost two hours before he could post a $1,000 bond.


***Hmmm I wonder who could have ratted him out?!?!? Hmmm?!?!?

Don't drink and post.....

TROY, Mich. -- A judge who sentenced three teenagers to probation threw them in jail after he saw them ridiculing him and drinking alcohol on a Web site. The girls appeared before Troy District Court Judge Michael Martone last spring for drinking at their high school prom. He gave them probation and ordered them not to drink alcohol again. The teens went off to college and Martone thought their cases were over. But several months later he searched for his name on the Internet and came across a Web site posted by one of the students. On the site, the girls were shown chugging shots and posing with beer cans stacked nearly to the ceiling. The site also had an abbreviated obscenity directed toward the judge. Martone gave the girls 10 to 30 days in jail. Two of them spent the holidays behind bars.

***D'oh!!!!!

No Mommy No!!!

pregnant woman is in custody after police said they found three of her 14 children taking refuge in an abandoned house in Milwaukee. Police spokeswoman Anne Schwartz said the 9-year-old twin boys and 6-year-old boy had scars and bruising to their backs, buttocks and faces. The 35-year-old woman's six oldest children had been previously removed from her home by child welfare officials. The remaining eight have since been removed. The children range in age from 3 to 20.

The three were found Thursday night in an abandoned house near 35th and Brown with no heat, water or electricity. Police said the children had created a "safe house" where they'd go to escape their mother's beatings. Authorities said the floor was covered with garbage and feces. The three children found in the abandoned house told police their mother regularly punches them with her fist and hits them with belts and a broomstick.

***Sheesh. What a loser!!!

And he got a raise?!?!?

A Shawano probation and parole agent who was fired in 2004 for accessing Internet pornography and other inappropriate sites for hours a day over at least five months has his job back - with a raise.

He also will receive a year of back pay.

A. Henry Hempe, a Madison arbitrator, ruled in November 2005 that the agent, Thomas DeLeon, should have received a one-day suspension instead of being fired for the repeated infractions. The decision stems in part from the Department of Corrections' "relatively light discipline for first-offense misuse of state computers," he wrote.

DeLeon was reinstated in December. Department officials are preparing a payment of about $45,000 for back wages.

The department must also pay any medical expenses for DeLeon that would have been covered by the state's insurance plan during his yearlong absence, the arbitrator ruled. The order prohibits DeLeon from using the Internet.

During the time DeLeon was viewing pornography at work, he was being paid for more than 10 hours of overtime a week, according to department documents requested by the Journal Sentinel under the state's open records law.

State Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) called the decision "outrageous" when told of it Tuesday, but said there was little the department could do.

***I figure the raise is so he can afford to access the porn at home.

Elevator fall down go BOOM!!

A routine trip down the elevator to a parking garage that would have started the weekend instead turned into a terrifying ordeal for five people when their elevator plunged five levels and hit the bottom floor. The rare fall occurred around 4.50 p.m. yesterday at the National Life building on University Ave. and Elm St. The building houses the Ontario head office of Industrial Alliance, a Quebec-based financial services and life insurance company. The three men and two women inside the hydraulic elevator were taken to nearby Mount Sinai Hospital and St. Michael's Hospital with serious compression fractures and broken legs and ankles, emergency officials said.

***That is one of my fears. Since I have so much extra weight on me, I always check the maximum load on any elevator I get on.

Machete assault... SELF DEFENSE?!?!?!

The woodsman who allegedly covered himself in "war paint" before assaulting two men with a machete this week is a decent, well-educated man, according to locals.

Wayne Stephen Parks, 57, has been living in the wilderness here for the past five years, in a makeshift tent near the CSX tracks, the site where he allegedly "hacked" two men with a machete Tuesday night following an argument at his forest quarters.

The story in this small community is a bit different: Hunters say Parks was defending himself and his land.

"He was a good man to me," said Roy Necaise, 37. "We'd go back there and visit him all the time; he's never hurt nobody."

Necaise said his 15-year-old son would often go alone to visit Parks, whose living quarters are virtually isolated from the rest of the community. Investigators hiked more than a mile through rough country to get to his home.

Kevin LaFontaine, who also hunts deer in the same woods, said Parks would sometimes leave to get food and supplies, but that's it.

"I hunted all around him, and we've never had any problems," LaFontaine said.

Authorities believe the victims were passing through town earlier that day on a train, which often stops in the area to switch tracks.

County investigator John Luther said three men allegedly spent the day with Parks, but only two were assaulted. The men were treated for machete wounds at Hancock Medical Center.

***Well there is our defense, your honor. 8 billion people in the world have not been attacked by my client!!!

Police shoot off duty officer trying to apprehend attackers!

In a tragic case of mistaken identity, police shot and critically wounded an off-duty officer as he pointed a gun at a suspect outside a fast food restaurant early Saturday, authorities said.

Eric Hernandez, 24, was hit three times and was hospitalized in extremely critical condition, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

The officer who pulled the trigger, identified only as a 20-year veteran of the force, was being treated for trauma at another hospital.

Hernandez had been in line at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx shortly before 5 a.m. when he was assaulted by a half-dozen men, Bloomberg said. It wasn’t immediately clear what sparked the fight, but it was captured on the restaurant’s security camera.

A White Castle employee called 911, and Hernandez—with his gun drawn—ran into the parking lot after his assailants, Bloomberg said.

He apparently subdued one of the suspects, and when a patrol car arrived, was pointing his gun at a man on the ground.

One of the two officers, apparently believing Hernandez was about to shoot,in the car opened fire, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.

***All I can say is wow!!!! I feel sorry for all of the people in the story. Except the dudes that jumped Hernandez, of course.

R.I.P: Anna Malle

A retired porn star still easing into a life outside the adult film business has died in a car crash on a dangerous stretch of highway south of Las Vegas.

Anna Hotop-Stout, 38, known to the adult film world as Anna Malle, died Wednesday after the car she was traveling in collided with a pickup truck while making a U-turn. She had not been wearing a seat belt, Nevada Highway Patrol officers said.

In her 15-year career, Hotop-Stout made more than 300 films, about one-third of them with her husband, retired porn actor Hank Armstrong.

She was born near Havana, Ill., raised in Fort Madison, Iowa, and began working in the porn industry in California in the early 1990s, Armstrong said Friday. Her first film "Here Comes Anna Malle" was released in 1994. One of her favorites was 1995's "Naked Desert," her husband said.

Hotop-Stout had retired from the film business a year ago and was working at a Bloomingdale's wedding registry in Las Vegas, Armstrong said.

"She didn't want to be known as the old chick that had to work," he said. "She wanted a normal life again."

***While I am not familiar with her work, honest, 10 years in the business is a looooonggggg time!!

Planning a homicide? Watch CSI!!!

When Tammy Klein began investigating crime scenes eight years ago, it was virtually unheard of for a killer to use bleach to clean up a bloody mess.

Today, the use of bleach, which destroys DNA, is not unusual in a planned homicide, said the senior criminalist from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Klein and other experts attribute such sophistication to television crime dramas like "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which give criminals helpful tips on how to cover up evidence.

Prosecutors have complained for years about "the CSI effect" on juries — an expectation in every trial for the type of high-tech forensic evidence the show's investigators uncover. It also appears the popular show and its two spinoffs could be affecting how some crimes are committed.