“Accused car-crushing kingpin” is a helluva title to earn in life, even if it means you and 30 other people have been indicted on racketeering charges in connection with dozens of snatched cars. It says you’ve become interesting. It might also indicate, according to a nice and deep O investigation, that you benefited from a light touch, for various reasons, by police and the DMV (who could have shut the whole operation down years ago if they’d pressed a little harder).
Here’s a question. Portland State, as a wide-open urban campus, occasionally struggles with sexual assault cases while relying on Portland cops who have other places to be besides the campus 24/7. So does that mean the campus should commission it’s own gun-carrying police force?
Yes, it got worse for Oregon’s first lady. Cylvia Hayes addressed Willamette Week‘s report of her formerly secret “green card” marriage to an Ethiopian college student 17 years ago, confessing to accepting $5,000 during a moment in her own life when she was low and broke.
Even homelessness in Portland manages to look twee and charming under the ever-fascinated gaze of the New York Times.
The Nobel Peace Prize makes sense again! This year’s recipients? Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban over her education crusade, and Kailash Satyarthi, an Indian activist who’s braved violence in his fight to end the exploitation of children.
Republican-backed voter ID laws are as insidious as their critics claim. A study in four states in 2012 found reduced turnout among African Americans and young people. Which is why it was heartening to hear this morning that the US Supreme Court and a federal appellate court have blocked those laws in two more states: Wisconsin and Texas, respectively.
Everyone thought Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s hardly seen leader, would show his face to celebrate one of the cult state’s high political holidays—at a ritual venerating his grandfather’s mummified corpse. He didn’t show up. “Coup” is only a few letters away from ‘gout,” one reason previously floated for his weeks-long vanishing act.
Hong Kong’s protests have flared back to decent strength now that another weekend’s upon us, with thousands of angry people filling the streets after the government pulled out of talks over the future of the Chinese territory’s elections.
“Right now, the math still favors the virus…. The number of Ebola cases in West Africa has been doubling about every three weeks. There is little evidence so far that the epidemic is losing momentum.”
Over in Texas, where the man who brought America its first in-the-wild Ebola infection has died, people have begun to notice the differing and more thorough responses brought to bear between that case, involving a Liberian immigrant, and what’s potentially a second one, involving a law enforcement officer.
The Palin family brawl has been detailed in police reports and it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a pleasant redneck fight: “a knockdown, drag-out affair of sucker punches, heavy drinking, bloody mouths, name-calling and a shirt hastily removed.” No one will be charged.
The worst roommates imaginable? The 6,000 brown recluse spiders living in the walls of a house in Missouri.
Jan Hooks is dead. Long live Jan Hooks.
DOES YOUR BOSS FROWN UPON CUSS WORDS AND ULTRAVIOLENCE AND STEVE URKEL? THEN DON’T WATCH THIS WHILE YOUR BOSS IS LURKING. (Hit the jump.)
Get More: Comedy Central,Funny Videos,Funny TV Shows