In BC, Canada, you can buy the mining rights to your neighbors' land for a $25 permit and 17 cents an acre, and you can do it all from the comfort of your office chair.
posted on Jun 15, 2006 - View this thread

Home-brewing of biodiesel is under attack in Salt Lake.
posted on Jun 11, 2006 - View this thread

You're a naughty one, Mr. Grinch.
posted on Nov 26, 2004 - View this thread

Little Jesse Koochin remains hooked up to a ventilator at Primary Children's Medical Center, oblivious to the controversy that has erupted around him. Doctors at the Salt Lake City hospital pronounced the 6-year-old cancer patient brain-dead this week and want to remove life support. Jesse's parents, Steve and Gayle Koochin, insist their youngest child is alive and believe they can bring him back to health with alternative medicine. Hospital officials maintain the boy is dead and has begun decomposing.
posted on Oct 14, 2004 - View this thread

When he was seven years old, Brandon Maxfield was accidentally shot in the face, becoming permanently paralyzed below the neck. [More inside]
posted on Aug 9, 2004 - View this thread

Having half of your skull missing isn't a disability. Here, take this hockey helmet, and have a nice day.
posted on May 14, 2004 - View this thread

Ling Chan gave up everything to come to America. "Chan arrived in the United States with no knowledge of English, no support network, and a dependent child...she was happy to land a janitorial job with AXT Inc., a Fremont, California semiconductor manufacturing firm...on a four-person cleaning crew, scrubbing the boxes used to ship semiconductor wafers around the factory...after a few weeks, her colleagues -- mostly Chinese immigrants, like herself -- whispered that this was no ordinary dust: It could give you cancer." [via Fark, of all places]
posted on May 8, 2004 - View this thread

You just knew that as soon as gay marriages were legal they'd be screwing in the trees, and damned if it didn't happen.
posted on Apr 22, 2004 - View this thread

"We need to keep them out of here," said Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the motion.

Rhea County, Tennessee commissioners have voted 8-0 to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislation amending Tennessee's criminal code so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature. If Rhea County sounds familiar, it may be because it was the setting for the Scopes Monkey Trial.
posted on Mar 17, 2004 - View this thread

Hear ye, hear ye! Supreme Court arguments now available in MP3 format, thanks to the OYEZ project. Arguments include Roe v. Wade and Bush v. Gore.
posted on Aug 6, 2003 - View this thread

Senator Orrin Hatch [R-Utah] , chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, favors legislation allowing copyright holders to remotely destroy the computers of illegal file traders. Hatch, an accompished songwriter in his own right, is quoted as saying that damaging someone's computer "...may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights." Apparently the good Senator is forgetting that our legal system is based on the presumption of innocence.
posted on Jun 17, 2003 - View this thread

BanTransFats.com is the website of a non-profit corporation founded by Stephen Joseph, an attorney who is suing Nabisco to keep them from selling Oreo cookies to children. He believes that trans fats (partially hydrogenated oils) are so dangerous that children shouldn't eat them. If the suit is successful, I foresee a network of underground Oreo dealers getting kids hooked on Mini Oreos as a "gateway cookie", hoping they'll move on to the harder DoubleStufs.
posted on May 12, 2003 - View this thread

Welcome to Amerika? Tom Ridge (with the blessing of George W.) thinks it's time to re-examine the Posse Comitatus Act with an eye toward giving the Armed Forces more power to act in a domestic law enforcement capacity. After having the National Guard here during the Winter Olympics, I'm not so keen on seeing armed soldiers patrolling the streets again.
posted on Jul 21, 2002 - View this thread

The city of Enoch, Utah, population 3467, has an annual animal-control budget of $25,000. A budget this small means that Enoch's Animal Control must display some creativity when it comes to dealing with the problem of stray or unwanted animals. Mark Havnes of the Salt Lake Tribune describes Enoch's solution:

"No sterile lethal injections here. No pressurized bottles of toxic gas. Enoch attaches a hose to the back of a city-owned Dodge pickup and funnels lethal carbon monoxide into a shedlike death chamber. The unwanted, unadoptable critters then are placed inside...'We have no trouble sleeping at night,' says...the city's part-time animal-control officer... 'We can't see a darn thing wrong with what we are doing."
posted on Jul 14, 2002 - View this thread

His name is Hussein al-Attas. He is 24 years old. Ten months ago, federal agents arrested him at the mosque where he worshipped and took him away. He has been locked in solitary confinement ever since, his only companion a Spanish-speaking prisoner on the other side of the wall, to whom he speaks through the air-conditioning vent."

Deborah Hastings of the Associated Press tells us the story of The man who gave a ride to Zacarias Moussaoui, and his descent into indefinite federal detention.
posted on Jul 13, 2002 - View this thread

Nat Hentoff tells the story of the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee, a grassroots group of citizens dedicated to defending the Bill of Rights "--not only against the USA Patriot Act but also against subsequent Presidential executive orders, and actions by John Ashcroft, that 'threaten key rights guaranteed to U.S. citizens and noncitizens by the Bill of Rights and the Massachusetts Constitution.'". Visit their Web site to find out what you can do to help, including signing the Petition to Repeal the Patriot Act.
posted on Jul 4, 2002 - View this thread

How Microsoft sells Windows upgrades for Macs. Also, how Microsoft wants to sell software licenses for people who don't even have computers. via LGF
posted on May 16, 2002 - View this thread

Utahns expected to walk on water.
OK, not exactly. The slippery issue of whether or not a public easement for a river includes the right to walk on the bottom of the river has once again been sidestepped. Me, I'm playing it safe with this or maybe a pair of these.
posted on May 4, 2002 - View this thread

Providence firefighters forced to march in gay parade. Is firefighters' participation in a gay rights parade "...an important demonstration of community solidarity" as claimed by one side, or should participation by public servants be limited to volunteers?
posted on Mar 1, 2002 - View this thread

Convicted murderer wants taxpayer-financed sex change. "Hill & Barlow, the law firm appointed by the court to represent Kosilek, said in a statement: 'The case raises important constitutional issues about medical treatment for prisoners.'" When fourteen percent of the population doesn't have health insurance at all, is there any legitimate reason to expect the government to pay for this?
posted on Feb 3, 2002 - View this thread

The Middlesex District Attorney prevented Michael Costin's family from donating his heart for a transplant in case Thomas Junta's lawyer had argued Costin died of a pre-existing heart condition.

"With heart transplants, it's literally a life or death situation," said Dr. Lachlan Forrow, an internist and director of the ethics program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "It's very, very likely that, because of this decision, someone with heart disease died. I think it's tragic."
posted on Jan 28, 2002 - View this thread