Catcher Gary "The Kid" Carter, a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame, died Thursday after battling a malignant brain tumor since last year. He was 57. Carter was an 11-time All-Star who was part of the 1986 World Series champion New York Mets team. He hit a single in the bottom of the 10th in game 6 to help the Mets rally over the Boston Red Sox. He also played for the Montreal Expos, San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers. read more
A sovereign citizen in Washington, recently sentenced to three years for threatening to "arrest" the mayor of Kirkland, is suing federal prosecutors for allegedly conspiring against him using poor grammar. David Russell Myrland calls their actions "backwards-correct-syntaxing- modification fraud." In January, a suit filed by Myrland accused federal prosecutors and Department of Homeland Security officials of violating his civil rights through "babbling-collusion-threats" and "grammar-second-grade-writing- level-fraud." read more
Though numerous irregularities have been discovered in the vote in the Maine caucuses, the state's GOP Party Chairman Charlie Webster said he will not release updated results from the additional caucuses and Mitt Romney will remain the declared winner. Romney's 194-vote margin of victory has been narrowed as misreported or erroneous vote totals from different caucuses are revealed, but Webster said it doesn't matter. "We are not going to release them [the missing votes]," he said. "People can whine and complain and plead, but I'm not going to make them public." read more
Two Washington state cops have purchased plots next to Josh Powell's young sons to prevent him from being buried next to the boys he murdered. "The bottom line is, Josh Powell will not be near those two boys," Pierce County Sheriff's Sgt. Ed Troyer told a radio station Weddnesday. Troyer and Sheriff Paul Pastor used their own money and funds from Crime Stoppers Tacoma-Pierce County to pay for plots at Woodbine Cemetery in Puyallup, Wash.
Twenty five million tons of debris from the tsunami that struck Japan 11 months ago is on a slow-motion collision course with the west coast of the U.S. The flotsam could include parts of houses, cars, boats and even human remains. "I would not be surprised to see some fishing vessels by April, and the main mass of debris start arriving a year from this March," said oceanographer and beachcomber Curtis Ebbesmeyer. "All debris should be treated with a great reverence and respect." read more
A Texas jury has awarded $20 million to a rape victim who sued her Houston apartment complex for failing to notify residents an attempted rape took place a few weeks earlier next door. The victim, raped for 10 hours in February 2009 at her The Promenade Cullen Park apartment, was awarded $7 million for physical pain and mental anguish, $5 million for future mental anguish and $8 million for conduct forbidden by Texas law. "The apartment complex issued a notice that an apartment had been broken into -- the same warning that they would send out if a bicycle was stolen off a balcony or a TV was stolen out of an apartment," said the woman's attorney, Troy Chandler.
A former county commissioner in Kentucky has left substance abuse treatment and pleaded not guilty to charges of soliciting prostitutes and trafficking in a controlled substance. Archie Wilson, 60, a married Republican known for bringing his bible to county meetings, allegedly paid Amanda Lay to have sex in local motels and gave her cocaine and pills. A second woman told police he paid her to "engage in shows or sexual encounters." Wilson resigned from office Feb. 2. read more
The Drudge Retort has been sponsored this week by Politically Direct, Current TV's political shows. Cenk Uygur hosts The Young Turks at 7 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Central, Keith Olbermann follows with Countdown an hour later and then Jennifer Granholm leads The War Room.
A Chicago city alderman wants to forbid police from cutting electronic communication during the G-8 and NATO summits in May, stopping an anti-protest tactic employed by government authorities in Egypt and San Francisco. "We're putting down a marker and saying, this has happened in other places and we don't even want it considered here," said Alderman Ricardo Munoz. San Francisco's transit authority BART has been the first and only government agency in the U.S. to block such communications to quell social unrest.
Since President Barack Obama moved to require Catholic hospitals and universities to offer their employees contraceptive health benefits, Republicans have accused the administration of an unprecedented attack on religious freedoms. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) accused Obama of "a direct violation of the 1st Amendment." But years before the current controversy, Huckabee and other GOP lawmakers and governors around the country backed similar mandates. read more
Andy Worthington: Last month was the 10th anniversary of the opening of the "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo, and as this year progresses it is appropriate to remember that there will be other grim 10-year anniversaries to note. This week, one of those 10-year anniversaries passed almost unnoticed. On February 7, 2002, as Andrew Cohen noted in The Atlantic ... "President George W. Bush signed a brief memorandum titled 'Humane Treatment of Taliban and al Qaeda Detainees.' The caption was a cruel irony, an Orwellian bit of business, because what the memo authorized and directed was the formal abandonment of America's commitment to key provisions of the Geneva Convention. This was the day, a milestone on the road to Abu Ghraib: that marked our descent into torture -- the day, many would still say, that we lost part of our soul."
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Former Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski said in an interview with Charlie Rose of CBS that a war with Iran would not be in the interests of the U.S. "We deterred the Soviet Union, which was much more threatening than Iran ever will be. We deterred China. We are deterring North Korea. We can deter Iran," he said. "Do you want another war in that part of the world? Do you want the price of oil to go up? ... I don't understand how anyone can seriously argue that this is in the American interest. read more
Dave Mustaine, leader of the heavy metal band Megadeth, is backing Rick Santorum for president. "I was completely oblivious as to who Rick Santorum was, but when the dude went home to be with his daughter when she was sick, that was very commendable," Mustaine told MusicRadar.com. "I think Santorum has some presidential qualities." He called Newt Gingrich an "angry little man," questioned Mitt Romney's vast income and compared Ron Paul to insecticide: "98 percent of it's inert gases, but it's the two percent that's left that will kill you."
The bruising primary fight appears to be taking a toll on Mitt Romney. Fifty three percent of independents now have an unfavorable view of Romney, up nine percent from last month, in a CNN/ORC International poll. Romney also loses a hypothetical matchup with President Barack Obama, 51 percent to 42 percent, in a new Pew Research Center poll.
A leak of confidential documents from the Heartland Institute reveal the inner workings of the libertarian think tank whose mission is to discredit scientific research on climate change. The documents, revealed by DeSmogBlog, include one that details how the group is spending $100,000 to spread the message in K-12 schools that "the topic of climate change is controversial and uncertain -- two key points that are effective at dissuading teachers from teaching science." Another document reveals that the group is paying $5,000 a month to American physicist Fred Singer, who has said rising global temperatures could be good for humankind.
