Humanitarian of the Year

Christopher DiMeo has reportedly confessed to the cold-blooded murder of the Mr. and Mrs. Donnelly in Fairfield.

In light of this magnanimous gesture, his lawyers are asking the judge to force the prosecutors to drop the death penalty. As they explain:

The defense lawyers claim a guilty plea and a life sentence would end a process that could take an additional 10 to 15 years and cost state taxpayers millions of dollars.

"His guilty plea and sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of release would save Connecticut's taxpayers millions of dollars in desperately needed funds during this time of severe economic crisis in our state and our nation," they state.

What a nice guy!

Self-explanatory headline

Obama White House bars press from press award ceremony

- Los Angeles Times, via Instapundit.

St. Patrick's Day in Ireland

President Obama stopped in Ireland yesterday. From the UK's Sky News:

Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen was just a few paragraphs into an address in Washington when he realised it all sounded a bit too familiar.

It was. He was repeating the speech President Barack Obama had just read from the same teleprompter.

Mr Cowen stopped, turned to the president and said: "That's your speech."

A laughing Mr Obama returned to the podium to take over but it seems the script had finally been switched and the US president ended up thanking himself for inviting everyone to the party.

Mr Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the "teleprompt president" over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech.

(via Best of the Web.)

Mendeleev to the max!

The periodic table of awesoments.

Te Deum laudus *

Charles Freeman won't be the next Chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

(* laudus to the real Deus, not to Mr. Obama. What in the world was the President thinking?)

Life imitates Douglas Adams

From Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

Pages one and two had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of papier-mache and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.

From the Associated Press:

HONG KONG (AP) - Even the magpies are trying to blend in in the metal and concrete jungle that is Hong Kong. News reports said that a pair of common magpies built a nest on a tree in Hong Kong's Tuen Mun district using scrap metal twigs believed to have been collected from a nearby construction site.

The Sunday Morning Post reported the metal nest was discovered after some of the twigs started falling off the tree and hitting pedestrians.

Stubborn as a mule

The new administration is trying to decide whether to allow people to drive mules without a criminal background check.

(Ken at Popehat's observation is that it's all fun and games until someone flies a mule into the Capitol building.)

Kids today

What is it nowadays with kids dressing up as cops? A few weeks ago Lowering the Bar had the story of a 14-year old Chicago boy who dressed up as a police officer and showed up for work.

The boy, who had once been a member of the "Police Explorers" youth club, apparently showed up at a South Side police station wearing a regulation uniform and claiming to be an officer. A police spokeswoman said that a sergeant "later questioned the boy" and discovered he was not what he claimed to be. True, but according to at least one report, "later" turned out to be several hours later, and only after the "rookie" had been assigned a partner and ridden along on a patrol.

Then in Berlin two weeks ago, two children pretending to be paramilitaries were mistaken for thieves at a factory.

And finally, the Austrian Times reports that the police thwarted a ruthless band of teenage desperadoes who were dressing up in police uniforms and stopping motorists for speeding.

The police in Austria seem to be more on-the-ball than the Chicago police: the teens were caught when they stopped an off-duty policeman, who arrested them. (I liked their judge's money line: "I cannot believe anyone believed you were cops. I would have had a laughing fit!" Judges rarely get to make zingers like that except on TV.)

What's going on here? Is there some TV show that featured kids dressing up as policemen that gave teenagers a similar bad idea in three countries at the same time? Or should we blame the parents? I guess if starts happening in Iran, they'll blame Harry Potter.