Denver, Colorado, has been named as the most "Dangerously Drunk City" in America by the fitness experts at Men's Health (who probably don't even drink because they're more concerned about six packs of ABDOMINALS). Rankings were based on DWI arrests, alcohol-related traffic deaths, and alcohol-related liver disease fatality rates.
Rounding out the top five were El Paso, Texas; Anchorage, Alaska; Albuquerque, New Mexico; and Kansas City, Missouri. The odds-on favorite, New Orleans, placed sixth; New York came in at a disappointing 95th, though Big Apple residents can take solace in the fact that the methodology screwed them since the only people in town driving drunk are likely the cabbies, who are experts at the practice. (Also slighted: Gate D at the Meadowlands, which sadly does not count as its own geographic entity).
The Mile High city most recently held the top prize in 2004. The rankings mavens at Forbes, though, may take issue. In 2006, the mag named Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as the nation's most sloshed, followed by Minneapolis, Minnesota; Columbus, Ohio; Boston, Massachusetts; and Austin, Texas.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Friday, April 11, 2008
Fucking Kill Me Now.
NEW HAVEN, Connecticut (AP) -- Contraband candy has led to trouble for an eighth-grade honors student in Connecticut.
Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate.
School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo said the New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy.
Michael's suspension was reduced from three days to one, but he has not been reinstated as class vice president.
Superintendent Reginald Mayo said Wednesday the principal was just trying to keep students safe, but he would review the decision to suspend Michael.
Michael says he didn't realize his candy purchase was against the rules, but he did notice the student selling the Skittles February 26 was being secretive
Michael Sheridan was stripped of his title as class vice president, barred from attending an honors student dinner and suspended for a day after buying a bag of Skittles from a classmate.
School spokeswoman Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo said the New Haven school system banned candy sales in 2003 as part of a districtwide school wellness policy.
Michael's suspension was reduced from three days to one, but he has not been reinstated as class vice president.
Superintendent Reginald Mayo said Wednesday the principal was just trying to keep students safe, but he would review the decision to suspend Michael.
Michael says he didn't realize his candy purchase was against the rules, but he did notice the student selling the Skittles February 26 was being secretive
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Cheese Factory, Cement Factory, 4 Wives... Just What I Need.
ELDORADO, Texas - A polygamist compound with hundreds of children was rife with sexual abuse, child welfare officials allege in court documents, with girls spiritually married to much older men as soon as they reached puberty and boys groomed to perpetuate the cycle.
The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that broke open the case, by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, officials still aren't sure where the girl is.
Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the compound in Eldorado.
Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Another 136 women left on their own.
"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.
McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children.
An unknown number of men were being held at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units.
Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit said.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would "beat and hurt" her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.
The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her, and that she was several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to "the outsiders' world" but didn't know where.
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls' husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have sex with lots of men."
At the end of the call, she began to cry.
Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was among the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate allegations of abuse.
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, "resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators," the affidavit said.
Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed closets as a form of discipline, the affidavit said.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. They are likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities 54 years ago in a similar raid.
That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known — an event that decades later a former community member recalls as traumatizing.
"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when authorities raided the remote community of Short Creek — now known as the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Authorities took 200 children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of polygamy."
Bistline was not rounded up in the 1953 raid, but the woman he married later in life was 15 when she and her seven siblings were shipped to Phoenix, pulled from the friends and family who constituted their whole world. Nearly two years passed before they were allowed to return, he said.
Most of the current sect members are descended from families from the Arizona-Utah community.
The 1953 Short Creek raid also changed the community, said Carolyn Jessop, the former wife of the man believed to be running the Eldorado compound.
The distinct pioneer-style dresses, worn over long underwear year-round and sewn by the women, became part of the dress code after the 1953 raid as each generation added more restrictions, said Jessop, who left the community five years ago.
Despite the new hardships for the children and women in Texas, Bistline said the raid is appropriate if children are being forced into marriages.
"This situation in Texas is a justifiable raid," he said.
But another FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, had a different view.
"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last year.
The Texas investigation is the state's first with FLDS, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect founder Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.
Authorities investigation the Eldorado compound have described FLDS members as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and living quarters has triggered some trouble.
On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of felony tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger.
He declined to give details on the arrests or how Levi Barlow Jeffs might be related to the FLDS leader.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders have filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.
The documents released Tuesday also gave details about the hushed phone calls that broke open the case, by a 16-year-old girl at the West Texas ranch who said her 50-year-old husband beat and raped her. Days after raiding the compound, officials still aren't sure where the girl is.
Officials have completed removing all 416 children from the ranch and have won custody of all of them, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner told reporters in San Angelo, about 40 miles from the compound in Eldorado.
Court documents said a number of teen girls at the 1,700-acre compound were pregnant, and that all the children were removed on the grounds that they were in danger of "emotional, physical, and-or sexual abuse." Another 136 women left on their own.
"Investigators determined that there is a widespread pattern and practice of the (Yearn for Zion) Ranch in which young, minor female residents are conditioned to expect and accept sexual activity with adult men at the ranch upon being spiritually married to them," read the affidavit signed by Lynn McFadden, a Department of Family and Protective Services investigative supervisor.
McFadden said the girls were spiritually married to the men as soon as they reached puberty and were required to produce children.
An unknown number of men were being held at the ranch while authorities completed the search of the gleaming 80-foot-high temple, a cheese-making plant, a cement plant, a school, a doctor's office and housing units.
Church lawyer Patrick Peranteau did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment Tuesday.
The compound was raided Thursday after the 16-year-old girl called a local family violence shelter March 29 and 30, using someone else's cell phone and speaking in hushed tones to avoid being overheard, McFadden's affidavit said.
The girl said she was not allowed to leave the compound unless she was ill. She told the shelter that her husband would "beat and hurt" her when he got angry, including hitting her in the chest and choking her while another woman in the house held her baby.
The girl also said her husband sexually assaulted her, and that she was several weeks pregnant. The girl told the shelter her husband went to "the outsiders' world" but didn't know where.
Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for church member Dale Barlow, who is believed to be in Arizona, but the girls' husband is not identified in the court documents released Tuesday.
In the March 30 call, the girl told the shelter she was being held against her will. If she left, church members told her, "outsiders will hurt her, force her to cut her hair, to wear makeup and (modern) clothes and to have sex with lots of men."
At the end of the call, she began to cry.
Meisner said the agency still didn't know whether the 16-year-old was among the children removed from the ranch. Child welfare officials have been interviewing the children in search of the girl and to investigate allegations of abuse.
Investigators said some of the children were unwilling or unable to provide the names of their biological parents or identified multiple mothers.
The boys were groomed to be ready to marry underage girls upon adulthood and engage in sexual activity, "resulting in them becoming sexual perpetrators," the affidavit said.
Children in the sect were deprived of food and forced to sit in closed closets as a form of discipline, the affidavit said.
Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints predicted an uneasy adjustment to foster care. They are likely the grandchildren or great-grandchildren of those taken by Arizona authorities 54 years ago in a similar raid.
That raid a half-century ago and the one this week pulled children of polygamist families from the only community and culture they'd ever known — an event that decades later a former community member recalls as traumatizing.
"It was total misery for them," said Ben Bistline, now 72. He was 18 when authorities raided the remote community of Short Creek — now known as the twin towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. Authorities took 200 children into custody as part of an effort to wipe out a "nest of polygamy."
Bistline was not rounded up in the 1953 raid, but the woman he married later in life was 15 when she and her seven siblings were shipped to Phoenix, pulled from the friends and family who constituted their whole world. Nearly two years passed before they were allowed to return, he said.
Most of the current sect members are descended from families from the Arizona-Utah community.
The 1953 Short Creek raid also changed the community, said Carolyn Jessop, the former wife of the man believed to be running the Eldorado compound.
The distinct pioneer-style dresses, worn over long underwear year-round and sewn by the women, became part of the dress code after the 1953 raid as each generation added more restrictions, said Jessop, who left the community five years ago.
Despite the new hardships for the children and women in Texas, Bistline said the raid is appropriate if children are being forced into marriages.
"This situation in Texas is a justifiable raid," he said.
But another FLDS member now living in the Texas Panhandle, Samuel Fischer, had a different view.
"It's religious persecution," said Fischer, who moved to a ranch near Lockney with his two wives and 12 of his children from Hildale, Utah, last year.
The Texas investigation is the state's first with FLDS, but prosecutors in Utah and Arizona have pursued several church members in recent years, including sect founder Warren Jeffs, who is serving two consecutive sentences of five years to life for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old wed to her cousin in Utah. He awaits trial on other charges in Arizona.
Authorities investigation the Eldorado compound have described FLDS members as cooperative, but the house-by-house search of the temple, factories and living quarters has triggered some trouble.
On Monday, 41-year-old Leroy Johnson Steed was arrested on charges of felony tampering with evidence — a day after 19-year-old Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested on misdemeanor charges of interfering with the duties of a public servant, said Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger.
He declined to give details on the arrests or how Levi Barlow Jeffs might be related to the FLDS leader.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders have filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn't have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
Cops bust high school root beer kegger
WAUSAU, Wis. - Cars lining the street. A house full of young people. A keg and drinking games inside. Police thought they had an underage boozing party on their hands.
But though they made dozens of teens take breath tests, none tested positive for alcohol. That's because the keg contained root beer.
The party was held by a high school student who wanted to show that teens don't always drink alcohol at their parties. It has gained fame on YouTube.com.
Dustin Zebro, 18, said he staged the party after friends at D.C. Everest High School got suspended from sports because of pictures showing them drinking from red cups.
The root-beer kegger was "to kind of make fun of the school," he said. "They assumed there was beer in the cups. We just wanted to have some root beer in red cups and just make it look like a party, but there actually wasn't any alcohol."
Zebro purchased a quarter-barrel of 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer, and by 10 p.m. Saturday, the scene outside his rural Wausau home had all the makings of a teen drinking party — cars, noise and kids.
Kronenwetter Police Chief Daniel Joling said an officer was dispatched to the home March 1 on a complaint of cars blocking the road.
Juveniles began coming out of the house after the officer used his squad car's loudspeaker to warn that cars would soon be towed, Officer Jason Rasmussen wrote in his report.
Nearly 90 breath tests were done, and officers even searched locked rooms for hiding teens.
"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it," Joling said. "If one kid had come there, even hadn't drank there, but had come there and had been drinking and had left and crashed and burned, then what would the sentiment be? Why didn't the police check everybody out?"
D.C. Everest schools Superintendent Kris Gilmore did not immediately return a message Friday.
But though they made dozens of teens take breath tests, none tested positive for alcohol. That's because the keg contained root beer.
The party was held by a high school student who wanted to show that teens don't always drink alcohol at their parties. It has gained fame on YouTube.com.
Dustin Zebro, 18, said he staged the party after friends at D.C. Everest High School got suspended from sports because of pictures showing them drinking from red cups.
The root-beer kegger was "to kind of make fun of the school," he said. "They assumed there was beer in the cups. We just wanted to have some root beer in red cups and just make it look like a party, but there actually wasn't any alcohol."
Zebro purchased a quarter-barrel of 1919 Classic American Draft Root Beer, and by 10 p.m. Saturday, the scene outside his rural Wausau home had all the makings of a teen drinking party — cars, noise and kids.
Kronenwetter Police Chief Daniel Joling said an officer was dispatched to the home March 1 on a complaint of cars blocking the road.
Juveniles began coming out of the house after the officer used his squad car's loudspeaker to warn that cars would soon be towed, Officer Jason Rasmussen wrote in his report.
Nearly 90 breath tests were done, and officers even searched locked rooms for hiding teens.
"It was a tremendous waste of time and manpower, but we still had a job to do, and our officers did it," Joling said. "If one kid had come there, even hadn't drank there, but had come there and had been drinking and had left and crashed and burned, then what would the sentiment be? Why didn't the police check everybody out?"
D.C. Everest schools Superintendent Kris Gilmore did not immediately return a message Friday.
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