Interesting story about how poorly college students performed on a civics test. Students at Harvard scored the highest, but still didn’t crack 70 percent. Take the test yourself and see how you fare.
Dustin Chester, a department manager at the Home Depot store in Murfreesboro, Tenn., saw a man standing next to a soda machine outside the store with a crowbar and a handful of cash.
Chester confronted the man, who took off running. Courageously, Chester ran after the guy, caught him and restrained him until police arrived.
For his efforts, he got a pink slip from Home Depot.
Chester was shocked to find out that for managers and most employees, catching and detaining thieves is against company policy.
“The district manager told me that we are supposed to let thieves walk away; it blew my mind,” said Chester, a one-time employee of the year.
The Home Depot said its policy, which directs workers to notify loss prevention specialists or police to handle criminal situations, is in place to protect its employees and customers.
“The associates involved were not following company policy, resulting in this disciplinary action,” said Don Harrison, spokesman for the Atlanta-based company. “Safety is a primary focus for our company.”
Hey Home Depot. You want to be a slave to your policies by firing Dustin? That’s fine. I’ll simply refrain from shopping at your slimeball store again. I’m sure a lot of other Americans will do the same thing.
As if I needed another reason not to patronize Home Depot. Lowe’s has always been far superior anyway.
A Colorado elementary school has banned the game of tag after a couple of parents complained about their children being harassed.
A new study shows that for young adults ages 13-24, time spent with family is what makes them happy.
Christianity Today’s Ted Olson cites an interesting Times of London story that reports on some of the plans the South Korean government has considered to free the South Korean hostages from the Taliban.
One of the plans involved kidnapping family members of the Taliban “as a way of applying pressure.”
Olsen denounces this idea.
“It’s hard to imagine, even if kidnapping innocents to secure the release of the aid workers had ‘worked,’ that the Christian aid workers would be very pleased,” Olsen writes. “It’s hard to imagine Paul writing to the Corinthians, ‘When persecuted, we persecute; when kidnapped, we kidnap…’”
Is Olsen right in his assessment? Is it possible for Christians to support such a tactic?
Mary Winkler, who shot and killed her husband while he slept, is a free woman.
She was sentenced in June to three years in prison. But the judge required her to serve only 19 percent of that - 210 days.
With 143 days of credit for time served, her sentenced boiled down to 67 days in jail. The judge gave her the option of serving 60 days of that in a mental health facility.
Her attorneys’ efforts to find a facility for her delayed her leaving jail. So, she served 12 days in jail and will have spent 55 days in the mental health facility.
What an outrageous injustice.
More teenage girls are following the examples of bimbos like Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan — with negative emotional and physical consequences, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.
What they found was a sort of “Girls Gone Wild” effect in which young girls are succumbing to the pressure of sexualization by posting nude pictures of themselves on the Internet, allowing boyfriends to photograph them in the nude and making their own amateur porn videos.
“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,” said Eileen L. Zurbriggen, PhD, chairwoman of the APA Task Force and associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, earlier this year in reference to the report.
The wife of an Alabama minister missing for more than four months has been located by police unharmed and working under an alias at a fast-food restaurant in New York state, authorities said Monday.
Louisiana police located Mary Byrne Smith alive and well in New York state on Friday. The 30-year-old kindergarten teacher had been working under an assumed name at a fast-food restaurant.
“We know it’s her,” Bossier City Police Chief Mike Halphen said at a press conference Monday. “She did not want us to disclose the reasons why she left, and she did not want us to disclose where she is living.”
Weird stuff.
A Tennessee mother fed up with her daughter’s misbehavior took an unusual tack in for latest punishment, making her stand on a busy street corner with an attention-getting sign.
Tashara Wilkins, 13, held a sign Sunday reading, “I don’t obey my parents, I’m a liar. I steal from my mom. I have a bad attitude.”
The judge who had filed a $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner for losing his pants lost his case yesterday and was ordered to pay the court costs of the defendants.
The court will also consider the defendants’ motion to recover the thousands of dollars they’ve spent in attorney fees.
At least there’s still some semblance of sanity in our court system, as this was certainly the right decision. Considering that the pants were from a blue and maroon suit, I’d say the cleaners were only trying to do Roy Pearson a favor by losing them.
From the stupid parents file, courtesy of AP:
A woman was charged with manslaughter in the death of her 4-month-old son after she told authorities she taped a pacifier to his mouth to keep it from falling out.
This is something I’ve been wanting for a long time. From Baptist Press:
With a goal of letting consumers choose which cable channels are appropriate for their homes, legislators have introduced the bipartisan Family and Consumer Choice Act with a possible a la carte system that would let viewers pay for only the cable networks they want while blocking those they don’t.
This would be fantastic.
The judge who has filed a ridiculous lawsuit against a cleaners who lost his pants (see here and here for more) may end up losing his job over the whole ordeal.
It’d serve him right.
Hat tip: Owen
A few weeks ago, I wrote about Roy Pearson, a judge who is suing a cleaners over a pair of lost pants. While Pearson originally was seeking $67 million in the lawsuit, he now wants “only” $54 million.
Really nice of him to reduce his demands to only $54 million. What a swell guy.
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Pearson should be disbarred and removed from office for this, and there should be laws that prevent this kind of stuff.
Looks like Rosie O’Donnell will release a book later this year, called “Celebrity Detox.”
I wondered if we could come up with some better names. How about “Fingernails on a Chalkboard: The Story of Rosie O’Donnell”?
Have at it.
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