Al-Qaeda Trial in Kentucky?

As reported here recently, two Iraqi men - Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohamad Shareef Hammadi - were arrested for conspiring to aid the terrorist group Al-Qaeda from their home base of Bowling Green, KY.

According to FOX News, the FBI claims to have identified two of Alwan's fingerprints on an unexploded bomb that was recovered by U.S. troops in Iraq.

The Obama administration has announced its intention that Alwan and Hammadi be tried in Federal Court in Bowling Green, but Mitch McConnell has voiced opposition to this plan. He fears the risks of holding an unprecedented terrorism trial in Kentucky, and notes the costs and logistics of trying to provide security for everyone involved will be a huge problem.

"There's no reason in the world to be subjecting any American city to all of the complexities and security problems related to trying a foreign terrorist in a U.S. court," McConnell said. And I don't often agree with what Mr. McConnell has to say, but in this instance, I am right there with him. While I don't share his view that the terror suspects should be denied a normal trial and shipped off to a kangaroo tribunal at Guantanamo, I do agree that Kentucky doesn't need to be put at further risk from psychopaths. It's bad enough that so much attention has already been called to Kentucky being directly involved in the alleged death of Osama Bin Laden, and now by holding an Al-Qaeda trial here, we're practically begging for trouble.

I say hold the trial, but hold it somewhere else, not in my backyard. Hold it in the desert someplace, or in an underground bunker or an undisclosed location. President Obama has painted a target on our state's head once already this year, let's not make it even worse than it already is.

United Kentucky Liberation Front?

According to Louisville.com, a man tried to rally attention for his "United Kentucky Liberation Front" group by sending pornography to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, John Boehner, Ron Paul, Mitch McConnell and others.

I'm trying to think of another example that might knock this one out of the running for the most monumentally idiotic PR move in the last two hundred years.

I can't think of any. I think this guy's got it sewn up.

This incident apparently occurred last summer, but the man was only taken into custody on June 9. According to the Louisville.com article, "If convicted, Edwards faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison. He faces maximum potential penalties of 30 years in prison, a $500,000 fine and supervised release of at least five years and it could be any term of years including life."

What does porn have to do with liberating Kentucky? Well, this guy says he only added the porn images to his mass e-mail to "get noticed" to help promote his cause. Groan. And what cause, pray tell, is that? This "United Kentucky Liberation Front" advocates the secession of Kentucky from the United States. That in itself actually doesn't sound like such a bad idea to me sometimes, but how many brain cells does it take to understand that doing something like this is only going to turn the public against you and kill any chance your silly organization ever had of ever making any headway in the future?

I googled a bit and found this cut-and-pasted Topix post in which someone from this group laid out their thinking:

It is largly unknown that Kentucky is actually not legally part of the United States. The United Kentucky Liberation Front has recently done some research into the subject and has written this report on it. These are the laws keeping Kentucky an Indepedent nation.
1. Proclamation of 1763 reserved Kentucky for Native Americans, but was broken though it was supposed to stay in effect after the United States took over.(additionally there are no federally or state recognized tribes in this land).
2. In the Treaty of Paris (1783) the British delegation declared only the 13 colonies free states. It also said that loyalist land and property was to stay in their possession, this includes Native American land. This is supported by the fact that none of Florida or Canada became America.
3. In 1784 a constitutional convention was held in Danville in which General James Wilkinson proposed secession from the United States and in 1785 there was a petition to Virginia to become “free and independent”.
4. In 1850 Kentucky was declared a commonwealth, and is the only commonwealth outside the original 13 colonies. Since the original colonies banded together originally as a confederation, implying they were all republics. Therefore Kentucky is an independent republic not banded with the original 13 colonies.
5. Before the civil war, Kentucky was a slave state and declared itself neither Union nor Confederacy. During the war though, it had both a Union and Confederate government and was admitted to the Confederacy in 1861. It was also had the only Union Capital that the Confederacy captured. Additionally Kentucky is the birthplace of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Finally, when Lincoln asked the Governor of Kentucky for troops, Governor Magoffin replied “I will send not a man nor a dollar for the wicked purpose of subduing my sister southern states.” This all proves that Kentucky was technically a state of the Confederacy, but was never readmitted to the Union and was not occupied by the Army during the reconstruction.
6. In the Montevideo Convention (Article 1), which was signed by the United States, states that the state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a permanent population (over 4 million); a defined territory (the state of Kentucky); government (the legislative, executive, and judicial branch of the state of Kentucky); and capacity to enter into relations with the other states (Kentucky was de facto recognized by Spain in 1787, and the Kentucky Government has given awards to numerous foreign officials such as Winston Churchill or Yahya Jammeh).
7. Native American rights are broken by government. There are currently no recognized tribes in Kentucky, even though it was originally set aside for natives. Currently the Cherokee Tribe of kentucky, Kentucky Cherokee Heritage Group, the Ridgetop Shawnee, and the Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky are striving for recognition.

Alllllrighty then.

There are so many confused legal points in this diatribe (not to mention misspelling and incoherent grammar) that I'm not even going to bother picking it all apart here. The part about the Native Americans is right on, of course - and I do support the survival efforts of groups like Southern Cherokee Nation of Kentucky. But the Cherokee Nation doesn't need fools like this ruining their cause by mailing porno to Palin. With allies like that, who needs enemies?

Al-Qaeda in Kentucky?

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that two Iraqi men have been accused of conspiring to aid the terrorist group Al-Qaeda from, of all places, Bowling Green, Kentucky - where they've lived since 2009.

According to the CSM:

"Waad Ramadan Alwan and Muhamad Shareef Hammadi, both of Bowling Green, have entered not guilty pleas and are being held pending a pretrial detention hearing. They were charged in a 23-count indictment returned last week.

Mr. Alwan is accused of conspiring to kill US nationals abroad, distributing information on the manufacture and use of improvised explosive devices in Iraq, and plotting to transfer Stinger missiles to Iraq.

Mr. Hammadi is charged with attempting to provide material support to Al Qaeda in Iraq, and conspiring to transfer Stinger missiles."

Stolen Italian Icon Found at Speed Museum

Very interesting piece today from the New York Times about a painted gatefold icon that was stolen in Italy in 1971. 40 years after it vanished, it turned up in a dusty back storeroom of Louisville's Speed Museum.

The Speed's not to blame, though - they acquired the piece from a reputable gallery in New York for $38,000 in 1973, just two years after it had been purloined. How it got to that gallery is a matter that is still being investigated by the Department of Homeland Security. (Seriously? Since when do they handle 1970s cold-case files of burglaries in Italy?)

According to the article:

Under a settlement negotiated by the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and announced on Monday, the Speed will soon turn over the painting to Homeland Security, which will transfer it to Italian cultural authorities. (The collector who owned the painting in 1971 has since died, and the authorities will be responsible for determining who is entitled to it now.)

Before that, however, the museum will show the painting, which it has not exhibited for at least a decade, from June 9 to July 3 as part of a small exhibit that will, according to the museum’s director, Charles L. Venable, “contextualize it in a larger world of provenance research and repatriation of works of art.”

Kentucky Case Ends In Greater Police Powers

The Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 decision, has given police greater powers to force their way into your homes, thanks to a Kentucky marijuana case.

Police officers who loudly knock on a door and "hear sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed" may now legally break down the door and enter your home without a search warrant. That's right, without a search warrant. And what defines "sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed"? Well, the police get to determine that for themselves. In other words, they've been given carte blanche to do whatever they want. (Like they don't already in some places.)

Residents who "attempt to destroy evidence have only themselves to blame" when police burst in, said Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. I think it's amazing that Mr. Alito is already assuming, hypothetically, that the police are automatically in the right and that evidence was really being destroyed. If someone flushes a toilet, does that count as "sounds that suggest evidence is being destroyed"? Or running their sink's garbage disposal?

Historically, police have not been allowed to just bust their way into a home without a search warrant. That's now officially over. Just like a lot of other things.

The Los Angeles Times tells how we got here:

It began when police in Lexington, Ky., were following a suspect who allegedly had sold crack cocaine to an informer and then walked into an apartment building. They did not see which apartment he entered, but when they smelled marijuana smoke come from one of the apartments, they wrongly assumed he had gone into that one. They pounded on the door and called "Police. Police. Police," and heard the sounds of people moving.

At this, the officers announced they were coming in, and they broke down the door. They found Hollis King smoking marijuana, and put him under arrest. They also found powder cocaine. King was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Did you catch that? They "heard the sounds of people moving." That's all. These idiot cops broke down the door - and the WRONG door at that - because they "heard the sounds of people moving." And they got away with it. And now the Supreme Court has handed all other cops in the nation a license to do the exact same thing with impunity.

Law-abiding citizens like you and me now have to fear that some moron is going to bust down our door if they make a huge mistake like these officers did, and smash it down if they "hear us moving."

Ruth-Bader Ginsburg, apparently the only member of the Supreme Court who still has a soul left, dissented from the rest of the herd and said the decision her fellow lawgivers made "arms the police with a way routinely to dishonor the 4th Amendment's warrant requirement".

NYC Sues Kentucky Cigarette Company

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an article about how NYC's Mayor Bloomberg has filed a federal lawsuit against "a Kentucky-based ring of firms" that have allegedly been selling cigarettes in New York City illegally.

How does that work? Well, it's complicated. You can read the WSJ article yourself, and I urge you read other sources on this matter as well, but the bottom line is this: the taxation of cigarettes is essentially a scam (like most taxes). And when it came to the attention of Mr. Bloomberg that someone was selling cigs and not bothering to mess with his insane and unfair bureaucracy, well, of course he's foaming at the mouth. Just as any other mobster would when they found out someone that ain't got ethics was chiselin' in on their fix, see.

If I own a hammer - if I really own it - it's mine and I can do whatever I want with it, including sell it to you at a yard sale. If you own a pack of cigarettes, theoretically it's just as much your property as your hammer. By what right does some old man behind a desk call the cops and call you a "smuggler" if you sell your pack of cigarettes to some housewife in Forest Hills? Especially when that old man is a billionaire many times over already.

Of course, they say "well, governments must tax things, to pay for important things like roads and schools". That's the same line they used when America invaded the Phillipines in 1899 and forced our ways upon their society. And all this unfair taxation (didn't we start this country in order to get away from this in the first place?) is really paying for all sorts of pork-barrel-project garbage that the public didn't ask for, didn't want, and can't do anything about. Just like in the Phillipines.

It's not about politics - both parties do "tax and spend" equally, and both are taxing things that ought not be taxed (they're even seriously talking about taxing soda pop now) - and Bloomberg has never really been able to decide whether he's a Democrat or a Republican anyway. (I am neither, for the record.)

Having said all that, the WSJ lists the Louisville-based "Chavez, Inc." as a primary defendant in the investigation, and they have something of a bad reputation, although that means nothing to me. I don't necessarily believe everything I read on the internet, not even my own blog. According to WFPL, Chavez Inc. was raided by federal agents in late 2009 and all of their assets were seized, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Kentucky has an ongoing civil lawsuit against them.

The report also says, "Lawyers for Chavez have said the company was not legally obligated to collect taxes on out-of-state sales."

Chazez, Inc. has also been in trouble with the FDA for allegedly flouting Obama's reprehensible ban on flavored cigarettes, which instantly left tobacco stores across the nation stuck with product they could no longer sell, including clove cigarettes.

I don't know anything about these Chavez folks - I just read the papers and the internet same as you - but it certainly seems as if much of their activities fall under that growing group of citizens whose activities were once perfectly legal and they were made into criminals overnight by the stroke of some corrupt politician's pen.

The solution, of course, is less taxation, less government, and more outrage when someone nib-noses into another person's business and tries to tell them what they can't do. (I understand this philosophy is a major plank of the Tea Party, but I'm not one of them, either.)

UK's Foot-Puncturing Maniac

Sick sad world. Just sat down at my desk, Starbucks in hand, feeling good and radiating cheerfulness about mankind on this shiny happy sunny day. And then I find this crazy story from the Lexington Herald-Leader being retweeted by our friend Peter at The Kaintuckeean. Apparently a man is going around the University of Kentucky's W.T. Young Library puncturing people's feet for reasons I can't even begin to speculate on.

"At about 6:15 p.m., a man crawled under a study desk and used an object to puncture someone's foot, police said. The man was described as white, between 5 feet, eight inches and 6 feet tall, with short hair, possibly a buzz cut. He wore a hat and bright orange shorts or shoes. He was last seen walking toward the vending machines in the basement of the library.

UK police later learned of a second, similar assault; this led police to seek the public's help in locating possible suspects. The second incident took place on the same day, at the same location."

Having been a UK student myself, and having worked for years at their radio station WRFL-FM as music director and late-night jazz DJ, I can tell you that there are way too many weirdos and psychos wandering around campus; people who are not students and have no business being there. I remember once having to run over to WRFL in the middle of the night to defuse a scene with a drunken Henry Earl pounding on the radio station door incessantly with all his might, and angrily ranting like a madman. The DJ doing the overnight shift was the only person in the station and she was terrified, not knowing that Henry was (mostly) harmless. When I got there and inquired what the hell he was doing, his response was "I need a cigarette."

Short of turning UK's campus into a total police state, though, I'm not sure how one goes about keeping the crazies out.

Murderabilia

In 1997, a 14-year-old Paducah boy named Michael Carneal, endlessly tormented by school bullies and increasingly hearing voices in his head of a group of entities calling themselves The Danes, finally snapped.

On December 1 of that year, he brought a .38 handgun to school and opened fire upon the school's Christian prayer group, killing three and wounding five more. He then placed his pistol on the ground and said, "Kill me, please". He had been reading the Stephen King novel Rage which, coincidentally, was also in the possession of Dustin L. Pierce, a senior at Jackson County High School in McKee, who held his classroom hostage at gunpoint in a nine-hour police standoff in 1989.

Despite the fact that he was only a child, he was sentenced to life in prison in LaGrange.

Now, probably out of boredom being in a high security institution surrounded by far scarier people than himself, Carneal has turned to art as an outlet. People are actually purchasing his artwork, which inevitably draws the ire of people who don't want prisoners to be able to do anything, have anything, achieve anything.

It all started years ago when killer clown John Wayne Gacy started getting rich in prison selling his crude paintings, and someone decided that maybe it wasnt such a good idea for murderers to profit from their crimes. When you phrase it that way, it does sound logical, but on the other hand, there isn't much "profit" involved when you're in prison for life and all you can really buy with your windfall is stale, overpriced Reese's Cups at the prison commissary. I mean, the guy's in jail for life, it's not like he's living the life of Riley in the VIP room of a Monte Carlo casino.

It's also part of a growing trend to dehumanize prisoners, and to take away any shred of a reason to live for these people. Sooner or later, the same people who say "prisoners shouldn't be able to sell their art" will be saying "you know, prisoners shouldn't be allowed to watch TV or read books either. They committed horrible crimes, so they don't deserve to do anything enjoyable ever again." This mindset that prisons are supposed to be hellish only guarantees that these men and women will only become hardened sociopaths more than ever. No wonder recidivism rates are through the roof.

An organization called "Kentuckians Voice for Crime Victims" (do they have a website? I couldn't find one) has publicly decried the sales of Carneal's artwork and writings, even though Carneal is not actually directly receiving any cash from these transactions. The Courier-Journal devotes a disproportionate amount of a recent article to the opinions of some anti-prisoner-trade activist named Andy Kahan from Texas. According to the article, "Kahan estimates that about half of the criminals get some form of payment, but he argues it's just as wrong for third-party dealers to profit."

By this logic, no one would be allowed to write true-crime novels or even cover the news for profit.

Having said that, the websites offering Carneal's work - such as Ghouls Like Us, Serial Killers Ink, and Murder Auction - don't really seem like serious patrons of the arts. Rather, they seem like a bunch of unhealthy serial-killer fetishists who might need to be checked for Danes themselves.

(As a cigar enthusiast, though, I have to admit that my curiosity perked up just a tad when I learned that Ghouls Like Us is selling a cigar butt from another infamous Kentuckian, Charles Manson, and hyping it by saying "now you can say you've shared a cigar with Manson!")

FBI Fugitive Dead in Kentucky

This morning I came across this story from WSAZ-TV in Arkansas, telling of an FBI fugitive from "an Arkansas cult" turning up dead in a rural home in Lawrence County.

John Erwin Kolbek has been the subject of a national manhunt by the FBI since 2008, facing charges of assaulting people - including women and children - while working for Tony Alamo Ministries. If you remember Rev. Alamo (pictured below with his wife Susan), he's currently serving 175 years in the slammer for various alleged atrocities committed at his compound near Texarkana. Alamo, known as prisoner #00305-112 around the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Indiana, will be out of prison in 174 years. However, his ministry still carries on, more successful than ever - his message is still carried by radio stations around the world and the church has published an extensive series of rebuttals against Alamo's accusers.


Kolbek died of a heart attack shortly after his estranged wife placed a 911 call trying to get medical help for him under an assumed name. According to WSAZ, "John Kolbek died a short time later, but it wasn't until his body was taken in for an autopsy that authorities realized he was wanted by the FBI." Reports state that Kolbek had reached out to his wife from an undisclosed location in the Somerset area.

I'm curious about why Kolbek chose Lawrence County and Pulaski County, Kentucky as a place to hide out. Early speculation seems to be that he has not been in Kentucky very long, but no reasons are being given to support that thesis.

The incident is sure to stir up renewed interest in the Alamo case, which is still a bone of bitter contention for many who believe their ministry's founder was framed.

The Man With the Hook

Ever heard the common urban legend about "the man with the hook"? A young couple is listening to the car radio making out in a secluded Lover's Lane spot when a hook-handed serial killer attacks and kills them. Although Edward W. Edwards doesn't have a hook for a hand, he was an early suspect in the double murder of a pair of young Oregon lovers under similar circumstances in 1960. Larry Peyton's body was found with multiple stab wounds in a park in November 1960 and his girlfriend Beverly Ann Warren turned up 43 days later, hidden in another location and also stabbed to death.

Edwards, you'll recall, was arrested in his Louisville trailer park home back in 2009 and arrested for the 1980 murder of another pair of lovers, Tim Hack and Kelly Drew in Wisconsin. It was soon discovered that Edwards was a serial killer with a predilection for young couples, and before long, cold case files started coming out of the woodwork with previously-unnoticed connections to Edwards. Edwards may or may not have been the inspiration for the "Man With the Hook" legend, but some are starting to suggest that he may even be The Zodiac Killer, or at least responsible for some of the murders attributed to him.


I've been toying with writing a book about Edwards, but I recently read The Peyton-Allan Files, by investigator Phil Stanford, which totally blew me out of the water and makes me rethink the whole thing. Stanford, a native of Portland, has done meticulous research in the deaths of Peyton and Allan, and has gone straight to the horse's mouth and contacted Edwards in prison.

Edwards was in Portland when the Peyton-Allan murders occurred, and was even arrested and brought in for questioning because of a suspicious gunshot wound he had. Edwards escaped from jail before he could be interrogated, an experience he details in his bizarre autobiography Metamorphosis of a Criminal.

I highly recommend Stanford's book, which you can obtain here or here or here.


Among the most interesting of Stanford's revelations is that Edwards at one point was claiming to be a CIA agent on a secret mission for the U.S. Government's intelligence bureau. Although it's highly likely this was just another scam from a lifelong con man (he also posed as a psychiatrist while on the lam), I'm intrigued by the idea that Edwards may have had possible CIA connections.

It is true that many ordinary people over the years have been used by the CIA for one-off jobs, but not actually employed as bonafide agents. Sometimes it happens that these people - waiters, cab drivers, street hustlers - develop an exaggerated sense of importance and go around declaring themselves to be "working for the CIA", which of course the agency must then deny.

Edwards is now 77 and in rapidly declining health. Who knows how many more of his crimes remain unknown and unsolved? While he's still breathing, we need more researchers like Stanford to dig for the truth about his complicated and twisted life.

Statewide Tobacco Ban?

The anti-smoking forces are looming over Kentucky's civil rights like the Death Star over Alderaan once again. The Courier-Journal is reporting that a bill proposing a statewide tobacco ban is now before the Kentucky legislature.

I oppose any attempts to curtail tobacco usage, even though I don't even smoke, myself (aside from an occasional fine cigar after a good meal or a puff of my pipe whilst striking a Sherlock Holmes-esque pose at my fireplace mantle), mainly because I tend to oppose any attempts to curtail people doing whatever they want to do within the law. I repeat, within the law. And there's the rub, you see: tobacco is legal. You'd think we were talking about Heroin or something, the way the rabid anti-smoking militants carry on.

And speaking of drugs, I find it odd that powerful and influential people are on a tirade against tobacco instead of doing something about Oxycontin and Crack and Meth, all of which are major problems for Kentucky's well-being. If these do-gooders would use a tenth of the resources and funding and effort they spend railing against tobacco to instead help put a stop to the Oxycontin pipeline, Kentucky would be a much safer place. But for some reason, they prefer to make second-hand smoke their pet bugaboo. Why is that, I ask aloud? Qui bono?

I believe diet sodas like Diet Coke to be far more harmful than all the tobacco in the Commonwealth, containing as they do dangerous artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet, Splenda, and Acesulfame-K, as well the equally dangerous High Fructose Corn Syrup. Hell, everything we eat nowadays has corn in it, and not just any corn but genetically modified Monsanto corn. As Ivan Stang once opined, "Cocaine's pretty damn unhealthy, alright, but at least it isn't half our kids' diet."

Nevertheless, you don't see me mounting some goofy campaign to ban these substances, because I do believe it's your right to eat and drink cancerous crap if that's what you really want. Or to play golf amongst nerve gas, even.

Similarly, partially hydrogenated oils are one of the deadliest substances in our food supply, and yet they still are consumed on a daily basis by you and I. Whining about second-hand smoke when you eat and drink poison - literal poison every day of your life - is a little like living inside a septic tank and consuming raw sewage, yet complaining that someone else passed gas.

How about the pollution in Kentucky's air, water and soil caused by Rubbertown, DuPont, and places like Valley of the Drums and Maxey Flats? And these sites are only famous because people found out about them, as opposed to the sites that are still buried out there that you don't know about. Second-hand smoke, compared to what unfathomable chemicals that factories are semi-legally allowed to belch into our air from their smokestacks, is not on the top of my list of things to stress about.

How can you decisively point the finger of blame for any given person's lung cancer when we're swimmming in a sea of mostly-invisible car exhaust at all times, and blobs of ozone float around us constantly? And even though people make jokes like "I believe such-and-such lived too close to the power lines as a kid", it's no joke that people are living too close to the electromagnetic fields of power lines and power stations, and no one is doing anything about it.

And I bet most of these "OMG, your second hand smoke is killing me" people use cellphones. Guess what? You're dead already. Game over.

(Even the ones who don't use cellphones can't escape the radiation from cell towers, which are increasingly being hidden so you won't even know when you're leaning up against one.)

Aluminum is a very toxic metal, yet we cook our food in pans made of it, then wrap the leftovers in foil made of it. We use aluminum-based deodorants, day in and day out. In 1993, the World Health Organization announced their findings that autopsies of Alzheimer's disease victims showed abnormally high concentrations of aluminum in their brains, yet since then absolutely nothing has been done to reduce the public's aluminum intake.

A recent exhaustive analysis of 173 brands of bottled water was recently conducted, and only three of them got an "A". One brand that I often drink was given an "F".

As if arsenic and cryptosporidium in tap water aren't bad enough, did you know that the world's water supply is increasingly contaminated by antidepressants, antibiotics, and other prescription drugs that most municipal water treatment plants cannot remove with their conventional filtration systems? Sewage treatment plants can't eliminate it either, nor can they eliminate MRSA or Clostridium difficile, a truly terrifying superbug which Kentucky is sixth in the nation for reported cases.

Do some Google-cizing around the web and you'll find that practically everything under the sun is being touted as "bad for you" by some nutritional expert or other - peanuts, fish, corn, wheat, protein, caffeine, alcohol, dairy products, red meat, even soy. And we're surrounded by toxic BPA-laden plastics that leach estrogen-mimicking chemicals and more. And don't even get me started on Monosodium Glutamate. The sheer information overload of studying all the data from all these experts will either make you move to a desert island or throw your hands up and say, "The hell with it, it's hopeless trying to be healthy. I'm going to the store to buy a pack of hot dogs and a carton of Luckies."

(So what is the solution? There isn't one. I say, just live your life and let the Lord take you when he decides.)

Did you know that toxic coal ash sludge is now being used as an ingredient in the asphalt on Kentucky roads? It's kind of a complicated and unwieldy subject, and frankly, it's pretty boring - even to me - to read about, and it lacks the clear-cut charm of other causes. You know, causes that people can set up donation-raking organizations for, to whip citizens into a hysterical frenzy over to further their own ambitions. But that doesn't make the coal ash any less toxic a substance being introduced into Kentucky's environment.

How about getting tough on crime before we tackle smoking? There are places in Louisville that are essentially places of total lawlessness and danger, even as the LMPD prefers to spend its time combating perfectly legal strip clubs, and citizens like me who get pulled over and fined for nothing more than forgetting to buckle my seat belt. And let's not forget the LMPD's problematic history of framing innocent people for crimes they didn't commit. Maybe the new Louisville mayoral administration should clean house and start the LMPD all over again, from the bottom up and the top down.

But second-hand smoke? Come on. You're arguing about burnt toast in a burning house.

Finally - and I don't think you need me to remind you of this - I hear tell that it's a statistical certainty that we're all going to die in the end anyway.

Enjoy every sandwich!

Man Shaves Woman's Arms, Pours Kool-Aid On Them

And then there's this suave dreamboat who's on WLKY's crime report for assault, stalking, and more. Police say he assaulted a woman because he thought she had a phone number written on her arms.

27-year-old Tommy Gunn (that's his name, I'm not making this up) forcibly shaved the woman's arms and poured Kool-aid over them, apparently because he thought this is the traditional, time-tested "Hints from Heloise" way to make a secret invisible phone number written on a woman's arm magically appear. He then, according to WLKY, "struck her and dunked her head in water."

Keep in mind that we haven't heard Mr. Gunn's side of the story, of course, and I'm sure he has a perfectly good explanation for his psycho behavior. Like... er.... um.... well, I can't imagine what that might be, but I'm sure it would be a fascinating insight into the human condition.

Cat Mutilator Sought

According to the Courier-Journal, a group called the Shamrock Arrow Fund is upping the ante on a reward previously posted by the Humane Society for information leading to the arrest of whoever killed and mutilated two cats behind the Kroger at 5001 Mud Lane, Jefferson County.

The article says, "One of the cats was an orange, declawed, tiger-striped cat 6 to 8 years old, according to Louisville Metro Animal Services. It had white under its chin, on the tip of its tail and on all four paws. There was an area on its back that appeared to be a site used for administering medication. The second was a gray, declawed tiger-striped cat that appeared to be 2 years old."

If you have any information related to this case, contact the Louisville Metro Police via their anonymous tip line: 574-LMPD. Let's find this psycho and give him the Russell Swigert treatment.

Louisville Judge Advocates "Prison Justice"

It would have been nice if Louisville Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman could have kept her mouth shut and simply sentenced child-murderer Cecil New II to a well-deserved sentence of either life in prison or the death penalty. Unfortunately, she seems to have looked to television's Judge Judy as a role model, and apparently believes her position entitles her to be as irrational and hateful as her whims dictate.

To the astonishment of many, Judge Judith announced that she was giving New a sentence of life imprisonment deliberately, so that he would be forcibly subjected to "prison justice" at the hands of his fellow inmates, as opposed to the relative safety of the isolation that comes with Death Row.

With glee, the Judge told New she chose life imprisonment for him specifically because he will be among "bigger, meaner men who have nothing to lose, or who are armed."

That's all well and good - I mean, New is a scumbag and my own personal views on justice have more to do with the Wild Wild West than modern jurisprudence - but there's just one problem. Even though everyone jokes about "soap on a rope" and "sharing a cell with Bubba", there technically is not supposed to be such a thing as "prison justice". By deliberately using the threat of being assaulted by fellow prisoners as a sentence, she is basically admitting that such things happen in Kentucky's prisons and that's it's just fine with her.

"Or who are armed?" Wait, she's admitting that prisoners get away with having weapons in Kentucky prisons? And she's admitting she's okay with it? And that she's now essentially in collusion with these prison loonies, giving them carte blanche to do anything if they can get away with it?

I can see it now, some thug with tattoos all over his neck kills a fellow inmate and then pleads, "duh, that Judge I saw on the teevee acted like it was a normal part of prison life."

To condone prison violence, and to use it for her own ends, makes this Judge nearly as sadistic, barbaric and inhuman as the psychopath she is sentencing.

Beard-Eating Assault Mined for Comedy Gold

The news media is buzzing like flies today, over the sentencing of the criminals who allegedly assaulted a Lawrenceburg man. According to reports, the man faced gunpoint and knifepoint as the assailants cut his beard off and forced him to eat it.

Apparently, reporter Cathal Kelly of the Toronto Star thinks it's something to make mirth of, with puns like "his hunger for justice". And oddly, though Kelly used this WLEX story as its source, the quotes were altered to reverse WLEX's editorial cleanup of the man's grammar.

WLWT couldn't help punning either, although they were slightly more subtle: "A central Kentucky man said he's waiting for justice to be served after two men shaved his beard, then made him eat it."

(And of course, the kind of people that enjoy sites like Fark won't be disappointed by their coverage.)

The idea of beard-eating is intrinsically humorous, of course, there's no denying it - there's an old Johnny Ryan comic strip that comes to mind - but correct me if I'm way out of line here, assault and violence isn't funny, even if the victim is wearing a Confederate Flag hat. I'm sick to death of media/internet snarkiness that reflexively, as a rule, now feels mandated and obligated to use people's misfortune for bread-and-circuses entertainment.

A few years back, I actually saw a "news" story on local TV about an elderly woman who tripped and fell and injured herself, and waited a long time before anyone found her. These capped-teeth talking heads actually peppered the story with puns like "went on a trip this fall" and actually dared to invoke the monumentally unfunny cliche "Help, I've fallen and can't get up".

I'm all for making fun of criminals, of course - I mercilessly heckle sociopaths from this microscopic podium in the ocean of internet noise. But I oppose "news" stories that make fun of the victim, an act which places the reporters themselves in the sociopath seat, and encourages the audience to slough their civility and come along for the rude ride.

Graves Vandalized in Millwood

Some sick individuals are stealing people's gravestones in the Vol Layman Cemetery in Millwood. From the Grayson County News-Gazette:

Vandals that desecrated the graves of three World War II Veterans and a Korean War Veteran in Grayson County have stolen the special grave markers provided by the Veterans Administration.

Aileen Stewart, widow to one of the WWII Veterans whose grave marker was stolen, came to the cemetery with her son Carl Stewart JR. and viewed the damage first hand.

Her husband had fought in the war and she told stories of the time he spent defending his country.

“He fought for the freedom that these people are enjoying today and look what they have done," said Stewart. "Once he spent three months in a fox-hole and when he was finally able to take off his boots his skin peeled off with the boot."

A fourth vandalized grave has been discovered at the nearby Frank-Embry cemetery, same M.O. as the others: a military plaque removed from its concrete base.

Anyone with leads or tips on these crimes is encouraged to contact the Grayson County Sheriff's Office at 270-259-3024.

Killer Pleads "Caffeine Insanity"

This from WXIX-TV: " A Northern Kentucky man accused of strangling his wife is poised to claim excessive caffeine from sodas, energy drinks and diet pills left him so mentally unstable he couldn't have knowingly killed his wife, his lawyer has notified a court."

According to the story, Woody Will Smith, 33, goes to court today for the May 2009 death of Amanda Hornsby-Smith. Woody's attorney, Shannon Sexton, has filed notice with the court of the defense's intent to argue that Mr. Smith was rendered "temporarily insane" because he ingested large quantities of caffeine for several days before he snapped.

Sound idiotic? Of course it does. And yet, it's not impossible that Smith may walk. In 2009, a man ran down two WSU students in his car, pleaded insanity induced by having consumed two cups of Starbucks coffee, and got away with it.

According to the News-Tribune, Smith used an extension cord to strangle his wife, then used extension cords to bind her hands and feet together. Smith claims to have been drinking a half-dozen soft drinks and energy drinks per day, plus diet pills.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, say they can prove Smith is lying, and that their own medical expert is prepared to testify that there was no evidence Smith had consumed diet pills or energy drinks.

Man Kills Wife Over Breakfast

According to MSNBC, a Breathitt County man facing eviction proceedings snapped last night, killing his wife, his stepdaughter, and three others who lived nearby in the same trailer park.

Neighbors say Stanley Neace stormed around the trailer park in his pajamas, firing dozens of shots from a 12-gauge shotgun, and then he went back into his own trailer and committed suicide.

Reportedly, what set Neace off was an argument with his wife over how she prepared his morning eggs not to his liking.

Tombstone Filled With Marijuana

Customs agents at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport were recently baffled by a tombstone that someone tried to ship via air from overseas. Apparently, it's just something that is never done - the costs to ship a giant heavy slab of stone via air are immense, and why would anyone do that when gravestones are almost always made to order in the vicinity of the cemetery in which it's to be used?

Upon further inspection, the agents started noticing other oddities - there was no last name on the headstone, assuming the senior in "Delroy Senior" is a suffix and not a surname. Being "late of England and Jamaica" was also puzzling to them, although I'll grant slack that someone could have genuinely considered themselves to have been of both places.

But once they inspected it closely, they found the stone was actually ordinary cheap poured concrete painted with a faux-finish to look like granite. The drug-sniffing dogs were called in and they immediately went off like a geiger counter at the BP disaster site. As it turns out, the fake tombstone was hollow inside and filled with 50 pounds of marijuana.

According to cincinnati.com:

Bell said efforts to find the stone’s sender – or the intended recipient – have failed because everyone involved used fake names and addresses.

“Everything came up as a dead end,” Bell said.

15 Second Man

Okay, everyone's already talking it to death and it is sort of funny - 'cept it ain't - so let's address it here and then quickly move on.

As everyone's nattering about around the water cooler lately, Rick Pitino was forced to make some weird and embarrassing statements in the course of his court testimony - namely, that his lovemaking to Karen Sypher lasted all of fifteen seconds.

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, folks. Have a good laugh at someone else's expense, because that someone has achieved more in his lifetime than you ever could - even if you devoted the entirety of your short remaining years on this planet to it.

As Joe Kennedy once said to Frank Sinatra, "the bigger the man, the bigger the mistake." That's life.

Now that Pitino has been vindicated and the psycho-stalker who tried and failed to ruin his life has been found guilty of extortion, how about we in the media grow up a notch or nine and minimize our coverage of reckless gossip about the personal lives of celebrities - even when it's newsworthy? I double dog dare you.

(Of course, I know it'll never happen; that's not the direction society is moving in nowadays. Ask Tiger Woods about that.)