Janklow Says He’ll Resign
FLANDREAU, S.D. (Dec. 9) – Rep. Bill Janklow planned the official close of his political career to coincide with his sentencing in the traffic death of a motorcyclist, a decision that also means the special election to fill his seat will be held during South Dakota’s June 1 primary.
Janklow, a dominating force in South Dakota politics for 30 years, appeared stunned as the verdict was read Monday: guilty of second-degree manslaughter, reckless driving, running a stop sign and speeding for an Aug. 16 crash that killed Hardwick, Minn., motorcyclist Randy Scott, 55.
Within two hours, Janklow announced his resignation.
”I wish to inform you that because of present circumstances, I will be unable to perform the duties incumbent on me in representing the people of South Dakota as their U.S. representative,” Janklow, 64, wrote in a letter to be delivered Tuesday to House Speaker Dennis Hastert.
”Therefore I wish to inform you that I will resign from the House of Representatives, effective Jan. 20, 2004.”
That’s the same day he’s scheduled to be sentenced.
Second-degree manslaughter carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The conviction would have prompted an investigation from the U.S. House ethics committee without the resignation.
Jim and Dorothy Anderson of Miller said Janklow did the right thing in resigning. They, like many others who reacted to Janklow’s convictions, doubt he will spend any time in prison.
Dorothy Anderson said she thinks Gov. Mike Rounds should pardon Janklow because he has been publicly disgraced and that is punishment enough.
”I think Governor Rounds should pardon him because he didn’t go out and deliberately do this,” she said. ”Things can happen. That’s why they’re called accidents.”
No, an accident is when you spill a glass of milk. Public Disgrace? Who gives a rats ass. The guy killed someone in the process of breaking the law. He deserved to be prosecuted and sentenced just like everyone else.
December 2003
The 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States
Very funny and at the same time, informative. Check it out here
No sleep…of course
Tossed and turned until about 2am. Finally got up and got on the couch. Managed to get a couple of hours of sleep. At least I will sleep well tonight, I am sure.
Turkey day for Bush
Apparently President Bush paid a visit to Baghdad for Thanksgiving. In a photo op, he picked up a tray with a Big turkey on it, apparently unaware that it was not real. Form the Washington Post:
Nevertheless, the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the “Mission Accomplished” banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States.
Credibility? What the fuck are these guys thinking anyway. Can’t they find something a bit more serious to talk about. Apparently not with the economy coming back and production levels higher than in years.
Pearl Harbor
My granfather died when I was pretty young. Younger than 10 anyhow. One thing I remember clearly about him was that he was missing a fingernail. Just never grew back. He was in a prisoner of war camp, I believe in the phillipines. Not too sure off the top of my head.
The point is that this is the 62nd anniversary of pearl harbor. Remember that? Over 2000 people, mostly servicemen, died that day. Alot of people bitched and moaned about us joining the war. They said alot of the same things that are being said today about the war in Iraq.
Everyone should take a moment and say a prayer for all of our servicemen and women of the present, as well as the past.
Molesting Priest Beaten to death
CNN –
(Dec. 7) — A retired Roman Catholic priest who admitted molesting three altar boys in 1995 was found beaten to death at his home, police said Saturday.
Joseph Pilger, 78, was found dead in his home Friday night. An autopsy Saturday found the cause of death to be multiple blunt force injuries, according to the Fayette County coroner. The death is being investigated as a homicide.
Pilger lived alone until the past month, when a young man began staying with him, said his neighbor, Karen Owens. Owens said Pilger’s car, which had been at his home earlier in the day, was missing Friday night.
Pilger pleaded guilty to sexual abuse in 1995 for abusing three altar boys in 1968 and 1969, when he was their pastor in Morganfield in western Kentucky. He was sentenced to five years’ probation beginning in January 1995.
Earlier this year, Pilger was named in a sex-abuse lawsuit against the dioceses of Lexington and Covington. Pilger declined to comment on the allegation.
12/07/2003 09:07 GMT-5
? 2003 Cable News Network LP, LLLP. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.
I don’t know about anyone else but I am certainly not mourning for the sick son of a bitch
Lord of the Rings
Ran across this link while hanging out at stupid evil bastard. Check out The Two Towers the way it was meant to be seen.
Apple iTunes
I decided to download and check out iTunes a couple of weeks ago to test it out. I am interested in finding a decent music service so that my children and myself will be able to DL stuff. I had a library of several thousand MP3’s at one point, but over the last few months I have gone through it, deleting the ones that I do not actually own. I have an LP/cassette/CD library comprised of around 500 or so albums, so have been able to keep quite a few of the mp3’s that I downloaded over the years. Eventually I will get around to copying my LP’s and cassettes to MP3, just never seem to find the time.
So I downloaded iTunes and installed it. I am not very impressed. It installs two services that run all of the time whether you are using the software or not. Damn, this is as bad as quicktime and realplayer and their damn tray icons. It takes fully 60-120+ seconds for the software to even load on my machine, although it is not NEW, a P4 1800 with over 1 gig of RAM is not a crawler.
I let the software sit for a week or so before I decided to take the plunge. I had to go through registration on Apples website and then entered my credit card info. Picked out a song, something off a live Queensr?che CD. It said it downloaded it, looked like it went through the process, but when I tried to play it, received a message that the file could not be found. I searched through the music directory, it created two directories, Queensr?che and Queensryche (no umlaut). Weird. No files in either. I had iTunes check for purchased music, it decided it needed to re-download the file, still nothing on my hard drive, but it is now listed twice in the damn iTunes database.
Tried to check for purchased music again, received the message that all purchased music had been downloaded, even though the file was NOWHERE on disk (and yes, I do know how to find hidden and missing files). Had to email their tech support, who reset something the next day. Tried to download it again, went through the entire process, still no damn Queensr?che song. I emailed them again, detailing the processes I had gone through, including going through their knowledge base and doing all sorts of stuff. This time they escalated it to their “engineering”. Two days later (today), they emailed me that they had checked the file on their end, and there were no anomolies with it, everything was fine. Also, as a gesture of good will, they will refund my .99 cents. What a deal you dickweeds, I was going to dispute the damn thing with my credit card company anyway.
One thing I am glad is that the customer service was decent. No-one acting like I was some kind of dumb-ass. Thank god. I was in tech support for several years and know the attitude well :>
Guess I will continue looking for a decent music service. Something like kazaa or Napster would be nice. I have no problem paying for the service as long as the shit works.
Fossils of the machine
I have been working ona new skin (a port actually) for the last month or two. Almost finished and ready for upload.
It is actually a port of an Enlightenment theme by Dark Alloy. I have finished most of the icons, and am using IconX to make them bigger, and resizable. Also using DesktopX for my HA bar, which uses a bit of VBscript to communicate with a COM object over the network (with my HA server, running Homeseer). I am using the CursorXP theme Prey, and the Windowblind skin is Fossils of the Machine, ported by me. The wall, eTheme, and icons are available for download from Dark Alloy’s site. The Winamp skin is steamgoth. Do a search for it at winamp.com
Should be making it available here and at wincustomize before the week is out, then I guess I need to start updating all of my old skins.
Another Eminent Domain abuse
Here is yet another example of eminent domain abuse. When the fuck are Americans going to crawl off the couch and quit watching TV and demand that this shit stop. Every local goverment that wants to put in a new subdivision or super Wal-Mart can just legally force you out of your home since the Supreme Court opened that door.
Eminent Domain is supposed to be used for the public interest, such as new schools, a highway, a fire station. Not to increase tax revenues in a particular area.