Ashley Tisdale’s nose was just fine.
(When your autistic child adores Disney XD, you have time to ponder such things.)
Defining manslaughter down
Mother Jones runs a short article on the Buckhalter case pending in the MSSC — whether allegedly contributing to a miscarriage by taking drugs can support a manslaughter indictment.
We note that smoking may contribute to the risk of miscarriage. Amniocentesis can, rarely, cause a miscarriage.
TGIF = The Gin Is Fake?
New Jersey, making excellent use of its resources as opposed to states that prosecute high schoolers for dating their classmates, has announced the results of “Operation Swill,” busting restaurants & bars for passing off well liquors as top-shelf (and even worse things: food dye in rubbing alcohol?).
What strikes us is that of 29 busted bars, 13 were in TGI Fridays. That begins to sound like “company policy.”
Good to know they can do that
On the MSSC’s handdowns list today:
EN BANC
2013-EC-00699-SCTMarcus Wallace v. Election Commission of The Town of Edwards, Mississippi Hinds Circuit Court 2nd District; LC Case #: 252-13-3; Ruling Date: 04/24/2013; Ruling Judge: William Gowan, Jr.; Disposition: We hold that the circuit court erred in failing to grant Wallace’s petition for mandamus, and we reverse the circuit court’s judgment and remand this case with instructions to the circuit court to grant Wallace’s petition for mandamus. We further find that, under this Court’s authority to suspend the rules, and in light of imminent ballot printing deadlines, no motion for rehearing will be allowed and this Order shall be deemed final in all respects. We direct that the mandate in this matter shall immediately issue. The Appellee is taxed with all costs of this appeal. Agree: Dickinson and Randolph, P.JJ., Lamar, Kitchens, King and Coleman, JJ. Pierce, J., Objects to the Order With Separate Written Statement Joined by Waller, C.J., and Chandler, J. Order entered.
Because the MSSC’s docket refreshes only once per day, during the early morning hours, the order and objection aren’t posted yet. Worth remembering that, if time is of the essence, it’s possible to convince the Court to preempt rehearing and issue a same-day mandate.
May 23, 1943, a date which should live in infamy
DeLong’s “WW2 Liveblogging” takes an unexpected turn to Dave Barry:
In December 1941, shortly after Pearl Harbor, a Pennsylvania dental surgeon named Lytle S. Adams thought of a way that the United States could fight back against Japan. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has undergone dental surgery that the idea he came up with was: attaching incendiary bombs to bats and dropping them out of airplanes. The idea was that the bats would fly into enemy buildings, and the bombs would go off and start fires, and Japan would surrender.
So Dr. Adams sent his idea to the White House, which laughed so hard that it got a stomachache.
No! That’s what you’d expect to happen, but instead the White House sent the idea to the U.S. Army, which, being the U.S. Army, launched a nationwide research effort to determine the best kind of bat to attach a bomb to. By 1943 the research team had decided on the free-tailed bat, which “could fly fairly well with a one-ounce bomb.” Thousands of these bats were collected and — remember, we are not making any of this up — placed in ice-cube trays, which were then refrigerated to force the bats to hibernate so bombs could be attached to them.
On May 23, 1943, a day that every school child should be forced to memorize, five groups of test bats, equipped with dummy bombs, were dropped from a B-25 bomber flying at 5,000 feet. Here, in the dramatic words of the article, is what happened next:
Most of the bats, not fully recovered from hibernation, did not fly and died on impact.
Researchers continued to have problems with bats failing to show the “can-do” attitude you want in your night-flying combat mammal. Also there was an incident wherein “some bats escaped with live incendiaries aboard and set fire to a hangar and a general’s car.”
A previously unsuspected comic
The guys at Kung Fu Monkey, which I had lapsed out of reading, have come up with an online comic, Arcanum. The Sidhe are coming … and boy, are they pissed.
Woman Who Cracked 3 Separate iPhone Screens Expecting Baby Boy This August
“This is a huge responsibility, and I know I’m up for it,” said Curtis, who currently has a few pen caps and three pieces of loose change scattered across her living room floor, as well as two electrical outlets she is completely unaware of. “I’ve been reading up on the topic, but I think at the end of the day the main thing about being a mom is just to give your baby all the love and affection you’ve got, and everything else will fall into place. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
“Whoops!” added Curtis, once again dropping her phone.
