Christopher Hiscock, 33, got only a year’s probation after his guilty plea for trespassing on a ranch in Kamloops, B.C. Since no one was home at the time of the trespassing, Hiscock fed the cats, prepared a meal, shaved and showered, took meat out of the freezer to thaw, made some coffee, started a fire in the fireplace, did some laundry, put out hay for the horses, and even wrote some touchingly personal notes in the resident’s diary (“Today was my first full day at the ranch.” “I have to remind myself to just relax and take my time.”) In court, he apologized. “I made a lot of mistakes,” he said. “It is a beautiful ranch. Gorgeous. I was driving by and I just turned in.”<\/p>\n
Tag Banned; Rover, Red Rover In Jeopardy<\/strong><\/p>\n Two suburban Minneapolis elementary schools hired a consulting firm to advise officials on kids’ recess. The leading recommendations were elimination of “contact” games in favor of, for example, hopscotch. Some parents objected; recess, they said, should be more freestyle, unstructured. Consultants also advised to de-emphasize refereed games with rules in favor of monitors who simply praise children’s effort. One Minnesota principal noted improvement. He said there are fewer fights and nurse visits now. But one parent said her child feels that recess is no longer really “playing.”<\/p>\n Compelling Explanations<\/strong><\/p>\n An alleged black gang member, Taurus Brown, 19, who was arrested in Clearwater, Fla., for having a marijuana cigarette casually tucked behind his ear as he talked politely to a white police officer, tried to flee on foot but was quickly taken down. Police said that when he was asked why he ran, Brown said, “I don’t like white people touching me. White people do weird stuff.”<\/p>\n Unclear On The Concept<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 The Washington Post wrote that the Merit Systems Protection Board is “a personnel court of last resort” for federal employees unfairly punished by demotion or firing. Timothy Korb needed the board when a federal agency suspended him in 2013, allegedly for revealing at a staff meeting that the agency’s actual case backlog was much worse than it was letting on. Korb’s employer, ironically, is the Merit Systems Protection Board. In September 2015, an administrative law judge upheld his claim of having been treated unfairly.<\/p>\n Legislators In Action<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 In a recent resolution, Blount County, Tenn., Commissioner Karen Miller called for her fellow commissioners and state officials all the way up to the governor to prepare for “God’s wrath” for recent national policies regarding same-sex marriage and so forth. Miller’s resolution calls on God to spare Blount County by the “safety of the Passover lamb.” In October, the commission tabled the resolution, 10-5, but Miller promised to reintroduce it.<\/p>\n \u2014 By September, Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser were finally out of the Michigan Legislature. Gamrat was escorted out by guards after her formal expulsion. Courser simply resigned after the pair did a clumsy job of revealing their sexual affair. Courser’s original defense strategy was to plant a bogus story of a gay sex scandal that he planned use to discredit any news about the real affair as hysteria. When that plan failed, Courser issued a 1,900-word plea, in which he liberally quoted the Bible; acknowledging his hypocrisy; and asked for “salvation” from his colleagues. They didn’t come through for him.<\/p>\n The Weirdo-American Community<\/strong><\/p>\n The FBI and Las Vegas police say that once Rick Van Thiel’s porn industry career ended (when someone stole his video equipment), he “decided to go into the medical field,” becoming “Dr. Rick,” and claiming to have expertise in performing dozens of abortions, circumcisions and castrations, as well as providing cancer treatments and root canals. Van Thiel, who had no licensing, promoted “alternative” remedies. He worked out of an office in a Nevada compound of trailers that one “patient” described as something out of a horror movie. When he was arrested, Van Thiel, staunchly defended his medical abilities, which he said he acquired by watching YouTube medical videos. In court, he will be acting as his own lawyer.<\/p>\n Perspective<\/strong><\/p>\n \u2014 In June, Tennessee’s much-publicized program to kick drug users off of welfare rolls wound up its first year by cutting off fewer than 40 people out of 28,559 people on public assistance. Nonetheless, the sponsoring legislators said they were pleased with the program and planned no changes. The state paid a contractor $11,000 to conduct 468 drug tests, but did not disclose staff costs of processing applications, deciding whom to test and managing cases.<\/p>\n \u2014 A year-long investigation by GlobalPost revealed that at least five U.S. or European Catholic priests disciplined for sex abuse have surfaced in South America, where they minister in impoverished parishes in Paraguay, Ecuador and Peru. Catholic facilities in Brazil and Colombia now employ shamed sex-abusers from Belgium and San Antonio, Texas. The Belgian priest had been allowed to start an orphanage for street kids. GlobalPost claims the Vatican declined “repeated” phone calls for comment.<\/p>\n Armed And Clumsy<\/strong><\/p>\n More men who accidentally shot themselves: A 16-year-old boy, in the leg \u2014 for the second time in three months (and in the same leg each time; Tulsa, Okla., September). A road-rager waving a gun at a motorist, who jarred his trigger finger as he crashed his car (Estero, Fla., September). Christen Reece, 23, shot in the head while he was demonstrating to friends his gun’s safety (Navajo County, Ariz., September). A man celebrating his 21st (and final) birthday (Dallas, July). A 49-year-old man who failed the “removing the magazine does not clear the chamber” test (Mims, Fla., June). Martin Hoyer, 51, who failed the “waistband is not a holster” test (Wenatchee, Wash., September).<\/p>\n Weird News Classic<\/strong><\/p>\n Before Arthur Horn met his future bride Lynette (a “metaphysical healer”) in 1988, he was a tenured professor at Colorado State, with a Ph.D. in anthropology from Yale, teaching a mainstream course in human evolution. With Lynette’s “guidance,” Horn resigned from Colorado State. In September, 2009, he lectured at a conference in Denver. He stated that he had come to realize that human beings evolved from an alien race of shape-shifting reptilians that continue to control civilization through secretive leaders.<\/p>\n People With Issues<\/strong><\/p>\n Miami-Dade police arrested Eddy Juan, 52, two weeks after someone matching his description was reported at a library at Florida International University, crawling under tables and sniffing women’s feet. He was charged with violating a previous sex-offender registration order.<\/p>\n Least Competent Criminals<\/strong><\/p>\n Paul Neaverson, 61, was convicted in England’s Maidstone Crown Court for a robbery his own lawyer called “ridiculous.” Neaverson had gone to a NatWest bank in Rainham, pointed a knife at a cashier and demanded that money be placed “on the table” or “into his account” at NatWest, according to the police report. Earlier, he had walked out of an HSBC bank when the teller balked at his robbery demand. He was sentenced to two years in prison.<\/p>\n \u2014 John Morgan, 28, and Ashley Duboe, 24, were charged in September with robbing the Savings Bank in Ashville, Ohio. Morgan had posted Facebook photos of himself riffling through his newly acquired stack of bills, which he called a “McStack.” He wrote, “I got six bands bra … I’m doing rrree=aaaalll good.” Police sought out the Facebook page because they knew Morgan was on parole from a 2010 bank robbery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Christopher Hiscock, 33, got only a year’s probation after his guilty plea for trespassing on a ranch in Kamloops, B.C. Since no one was home at the time of the trespassing, Hiscock fed the cats, prepared a meal, shaved and showered, took meat out of the freezer to thaw, made some coffee, started a fire [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[65,40],"yoast_head":"\n