CHICAGO — Chicago police are investigating a vehicle that crashed into the downtown studio of WLS-TV (ABC-7) during the top of last night’s evening news, causing no injuries.
Just after 10 p.m., a loud noise was heard inside the studio and on the air, startling weekend anchor Ravi Baichwal.
A police spokesman, Officer David Banks, said early this morning that the investigation was only in its early stages.
Banks said it was not immediately clear why the male driver of a Mazda MPV with Indiana license plates plowed into the studio’s reinforced glass wall.
ABC 7 President and General Manager Emily Barr said the incident might have been deliberate, but there was no way of verifying that late last night.
For the last 13 years Jack has been the most popular boys’ name in the land.
But in multicultural Britain children named after the Muslim prophet Mohammed come a close second.
In a reflection of the increasing influence of Islam, figures released yesterday showed the most popular spelling of the name - Mohammed - had climbed five places to 17th in the annual list of top baby names.
However, when the seven other spellings of the name are taken into account, the total comes to 6,347 babies, making it the second most popular name of the year - up from 5,936 last year.
Although Jack topped the list with 6,772 babies, that figure fell 156 on last year, meaning if the trends were repeated next year, Mohammed and its variant spellings would be the most popular choice in England and Wales.
The other spellings are Muhammad, Mohammad, Muhammed, Mohamed, Mohamad, Muhamed and Mohammod.
The last national census in 2001 put the UK Muslim population at 1.6 million, but this will have grown substantially in the past five years.
And then there’s this gem…
U.K. Drivers Using Mobile Phones Face Jail
Drivers who use mobile phones face jail
By David Millward, Transport Editor and Christopher Hope
Motorists caught using a hand-held mobile phone while driving could be jailed for two years under tough new guidelines issued today by prosecutors.
Drivers who adjust sat-navs, tinker with MP3 music players such as iPods or send text messages at the wheel could also face prison sentences.
Police now check mobile phone records after road collisions to see if the driver was making a call
Prosecutions will be brought if by using the equipment a motorist is judged to have posed a danger to other drivers, such as causing another car to swerve.
Using a hand-held mobile while driving was outlawed in 2003, but it is estimated that half a million motorists flout the ban each day.
Hello Nanny State! Hey Brit’s: your being overrun by Muslim’s in preparation for the coming Caliphate, over-regulated and overrun by bureaucrats, and over-taxed by YOUR government.
The United States is still a free nation (for the time-being), and our politicians are colluding with corporate-America to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants. So now would be a good time to think about jumping ship and coming here. Oh wait, you’re not Mexican… so just forget I said that.
HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — An apparent ongoing dispute between three parents erupted into a physical fight at an elementary school’s Christmas program Tuesday night.
Children in the first through third grades at Oak Hill Elementary School had just completed about three-quarters of the program when three parents began fighting.
Witnesses said the fight lasted about 10 minutes, and, according to an account by principal Sara Roberts, started when a father approached a student about pushing his daughter while on stage:
According to witnesses, the argument started by a father who approached another student about pushing his daughter while on stage. The one parent (not of the student who pushed) told the father to not talk to a child about that but to take it up with the principal. At that point, two other parents (twin sisters) began yelling and shouting. I had to stop the program and remind everyone to be respectful to the children on stage. However, the yelling escalated further and thus the fight began.
The police were called to help by multiple members of the audience as well as a staff member who was directed to call by me. Once the police arrived, only a few people who were actually involved were questioned. However the twin sisters had left the school property by then.
In the account, Roberts writes that chairs were thrown, obscenities were yelled and three mothers physically punched each other while two other mothers attempted to break up the fight.
Great example to set for the kids. And people wonder why so many kids turn out to be self-centered brats?
Andrew Sullivan supports Ron Paul for the Republican presidential nomination. That’s a good thing. But he spends a considerable amount of time talking about how the war in Iraq has been lost… Perhaps, trying to convince himself.
Let's be clear: we have lost this war. We have lost because the initial, central goals of the invasion have all failed: we have not secured WMDS from terrorists because those WMDs did not exist. We have not stymied Islamist terror - at best we have finally stymied some of the terror we helped create. We have not constructed a democratic model for the Middle East - we have instead destroyed a totalitarian government and a phony country, only to create a permanently unstable, fractious, chaotic failed state, where the mere avoidance of genocide is a cause for celebration. We have, moreover, helped solder a new truth in the Arab mind: that democracy means chaos, anarchy, mass-murder, national disintegration and sectarian warfare. And we have also empowered the Iranian regime and made a wider Sunni-Shiite regional war more likely than it was in 2003. Apart from that, Mr Bush, how did you enjoy your presidency?
McCain, for all his many virtues, still doesn't get this. Paul does.
First of all, the Left can neither stomach, nor afford, a victory in Iraq. Too much of the Left’s time, effort and momentum has been invested in our defeat in Iraq. Let’s be crystal-clear on that fact.
The stated goals of the invasion have largely been achieved. The biggest goal being the toppling of the Saddam Hussein regime.
It’s true that large stock piles of WMD’s were never found. But that makes no difference. Iraq is no longer able to produce WMD’s. So in that sense America was successful. The outcome would have been the same even if large WMD stock piles had been discovered.
Mr. Sullivan goes on to say we have not stymied Islamist terror, but rather stymied terror we helped create. Again, I’ll agree that the initial occupation of Iraq caused an increase in resentment of us, not less. But we have stymied Islamic terror in a very big way. Al Qaeda made Iraq its central front in its war against the West. And we’ve dealt them a mortal blow on two fronts: we’ve beaten them militarily, and American forces now occupy the moral high-ground. They’ve virtually given up on Iraq. An event that is well documented by bloggers and other journalists embedded with front-line troops for more than just a few days.
As for Iran, they are nearly surrounded on all sides by American forces. They obviously feel threatened, so I hope this President and the future President can resolve differences with that country without using military force. Besides, the men and women serving overseas need a well-deserved rest.
Our soldiers have done remarkable work in spite of poor post-invasion planning on account of the current administration, powder-keg politics in Iraq (and here), a biased media, troop-bashing liberals and blow hard politicians who put politics ahead of our national interest.
I’ll always support law and order, and the men and women of law enforcement. But I won’t support oppressive government policies. With every new expansion of government, we take another step towards Nanny-Statehood.
It seems to me, the founding of our constitutional Rebuplic flew in the face of the European elites at the time. Ever since then there have been forces at work, both internal and external, to remake American society as a European-style socialist state.
America has a very unique system of government. Once the progressives have finished remaking the country in their own image, we’ll have no freedom left other than that which the government allows us to have. And America will be no different than any nation in western-Europe. The God-given right to have a government for the people, by the people will be lost forever.
From Ronald Reagan’s farewell address to the Nation, January 11th, 1989:
Ours [the founding of these United States (sic)] was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: “We the people.” “We the people” tell the government what to do, it doesn’t tell us. “We the people” are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world’s constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which “We the people” tell the government what it is allowed to do. “We the people” are free. This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I’ve tried to do these past eight years.
But back in the 1960s, when I began, it seemed to me that we’d begun reversing the order of things–that through more and more rules and regulations and confiscatory taxes, the government was taking more of our money, more of our options, and more of our freedom. I went into politics in part to put up my hand and say, “Stop.” I was a citizen politician, and it seemed the right thing for a citizen to do.
I think we have stopped a lot of what needed stopping. And I hope we have once again reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.
Refresh your memory, read or listen to the entire speech. For your convenience, I’ve included an in-line MP3 player so you can listen to the speech right now. Click the play button below.
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to 2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans, data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in 2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to $524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion, or 18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom 166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of income at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been under way for more than 25 years.
And the “money shot” quote:
Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington who characterizes the Bush administration’s policies as YOYO economics, based on You (Are) On Your Own, said the differences in income growth explained why so many Americans have told pollsters that they are feeling squeezed.
“A lot of people justifiably feel they are working harder and smarter, they are baking a bigger and better pie, and yet their slice is not growing much at all,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It is meaningless to middle- and low-income families to say we have a great economy because their economy looks so much different than folks at the top of the scale because this is an economy that is working, but not working for everyone.”
Umm… aside from the really stupid quote about baking a bigger pie, is anyone else getting that pre-rape tax-increase feeling?
below.
