Thursday Open Thread

Filed in International, National by on October 29, 2009

Remember, tonight is Drinking Liberally: Death Panel Edition at the Homegrown Cafe in Newark, Delaware starting at 7 pm. Come in costume if you want to be judged by our very own death panel!

Here’s a story that has been rocketing around the web – a young Canadian folk singer was killed by coyotes while hiking in Nova Scotia:

Taylor Mitchell, 19, was attacked while she was hiking alone in Cape Breton Highlands Park, Nova Scotia, when she was attacked by two of the animals on Wednesday.

Nearby walkers heard her screams and alerted park rangers, who arrived on the scene and shot one of the animals. The other has yet to be found.

A police spokesperson said the two coyotes were “extremely aggressive” when rangers arrived on the scene.

“Coyotes are normally afraid of humans. This is a very irregular occurrence,” Bridgit Leger, a spokeswoman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told Reuters news agency.

Were the coyotes rabid?

In other less tragic news, another South Carolina Republican has been caught with his pants down. This one contains some interesting details:

Back on Monday, former Republican state representative and now assistant Attorney General Roland Corning was on his lunch break when a police officer found him parked his Ford Explorer at Elmwood Cemetery with an 18 year old stripper from the Platinum Plus Gentlemen’s Club, a bag of sex toys and at least one dose of Viagra.

[…]

In happier days, Corning was an ardent pro-life politician best known for introducing a law in the South Carolina legislature that would have made the subdermal contraceptive device Norplant mandatory for women on welfare. Even then though he was no stranger to controversy. In 1994, during a floor debate with pro-choice state Rep. June Shissias, Corning asked Shissias whether she herself had ever had an abortion. Later he admitted the remark was “probably insensitive” but said he was “sick and tired of the women representatives in this body acting like, just because we’re men and male, we don’t know anything about women.”

Go read the whole thing to find out how Corning lost his employment over the incident.

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Opinionated chemist, troublemaker, blogger on national and Delaware politics.

Comments (29)

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  1. lizard says:

    Very Tight in NY-23

    DailyKos poll has Owens at 33%, Hoffman 32%, Scozzafava 21%

  2. Delaware Dem says:

    From Gawker:

    Horrible racist Sgt. James Crowley and angry racialist professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. were spotted having beers at a Cambridge bar called River Gods last night. It’s not the White House, but at least Biden wasn’t there.

    Now that is surprising and pleasing.

  3. Apparently the teabaggers failed to bring a crowd to heckle Nancy Pelosi this morning:

    “If this is organized, we suck,” lamented one tea partier.

    Tea Party organizers sent out an alert for a “flash mob” or tea partiers to crash this morning’s House health care bill unveiling. Alas, only about ten people showed up.

  4. nemski says:

    Bad news: I-295 closed north of 141.
    Good news: Traffic heading north on Jersey Turnpike very very light.

  5. What happened to I-295?

  6. nemski says:

    According to TNJ a mobile home fell off its trailer.

  7. Delaware Dem says:

    Bad News: Sun goes supernova. All life on Earth ends.
    Good News: No work today.

  8. cassandra_m says:

    So Corning tried to pull a Chris Christie — except this one lost his job over it! LOL! Another family values crusader unmasked as a hypocrite.

  9. nemski says:

    My puppy Utley wearing his Utley jersey.

  10. RSmitty says:

    Bad News (for some of you): I will be at Drinking Liberally tonight.
    Most awesomest news: You’re buying.

  11. RSmitty says:

    nemski: your puppy’s hair (fur) looks much better than that mud pack Utley has under his cap.

  12. nemski says:

    Free Beer for Smitty was last Thursday. Sorry you missed it.

  13. RSmitty says:

    Poor nemski, betrayed by the date-time stamp once again! BWAAA-HA-HA-HA-HAaaa! 😈

    Comment by cassandra_m on 26 October 2009 at 4:13 pm:

    Especially since Thursday is Free Beer for Smitty Day!

    Bad News: date-time stamp.
    Good News: Hey, you can blame Cassandra! 😀

  14. I believe we’ll have to add John “junketeer” Kowalko to our death panel.

  15. cassandra_m says:

    We’ll have to convene our Death Panel to create stories of John’s wild behavior on those junkets.

    And I think that since I made the Free Beer for Smitty rule, I think that means I’m buying.

    Just hope I show up!

  16. Cassandra,

    Smitty really, really hopes you show up. The rest of us want you to come too (not only because we don’t want to have to buy beer for Smitty).

  17. RSmitty says:

    Just hope I show up!

    Oh, you will, you most certainly will, whether you think you are or not.

    you.
    will.
    show.
    up.

  18. anon says:

    I’m collecting misspellings of Fisker:

    Charlie Copeland: Fiskers
    David A: Frisker, Fiske

  19. LOL! via Balloon Juice, Sarah Palin is already dividing the Republican party:

    A conservative Iowa group’s effort to lure Sarah Palin to its banquet next month has had an unintended effect: Rather than exciting conservatives about the prospect of a visit from the former Alaska governor, the group’s plan to raise a six-figure sum to bring her to the state has GOP activists recoiling at the thought of paying to land a politician’s speaking appearance.

    The Iowa Family Policy Center’s effort to cobble together $100,000 for Palin would represent a striking departure from customary practice in the first-in-the-nation state, these Republicans say, noting that a generation of White House hopefuls has paid their own way to boost their party and presidential ambitions.

    As John Cole said – she is a grifter. She’s like Newt Gingrich this way. She wants to maintain the reputation of a rising politician to raise money for herself. I don’t think she has any intention to run for president.

  20. RSmitty says:

    anon –

    I have noticed that, too. Charlie’s almost seems more like a simple mistake, but David A’s just seems like something else (although, thinking it, too was a mistake). I mean, to go from Fisker to FRISKer, sounds, well, perverted.

  21. anon says:

    Palin won’t speak before Republicans in Iowa unless they PAY her?

    Sorry teabaggers, she’s not running. I guess Levi has something really good on her.

  22. cassandra_m says:

    As John Cole said – she is a grifter. She’s like Newt Gingrich this way. She wants to maintain the reputation of a rising politician to raise money for herself. I don’t think she has any intention to run for president.

    Exactly. Except I think she will give it a try as a profile building/fundraising opportunity. I think that she’ll join people like Gingrich, Alan Keyes, Gary Bauer, Ron Paul and so on who run as a way of building their own private pyramid schemes. These people have run into one crucial insight into the conservative money flow — there is enough of it to sluice off to personal bank accounts that no one will need accountability for. I’d include Christine O’Donnell in this crowd too — she seems in this for the 15 minutes more than anything else.

  23. UI reports the story of coyotes killing a folk singer and asks the question: “Were the coyotes rabid?”

    More likely, they were less-than-rabid fans of freak folk. I mean, have you ever tried to listen to Devandra Barnhart?

  24. Cassandra wrote: “These people have run into one crucial insight into the conservative money flow — there is enough of it to sluice off to personal bank accounts that no one will need accountability for. I’d include Christine O’Donnell in this crowd too — she seems in this for the 15 minutes more than anything else.”

    I think O’Donnell is in it until she can afford a new pair of hiphuggers. The current ones aren’t serving her well:

    http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/134959.html

  25. liberalgeek says:

    I was in Cape Breton Highlands last year. I had no idea that there were coyotes there, although I did see a bear and a ton of elk. They also love their celtic and folk music up there. I guess the coyotes are celtic music fans…

  26. Natalie MacMaster, the great fiddler, hails from Cape Breton.

  27. nemski says:

    liberbalgeek wrote I guess the coyotes are celtic music fans…

    Actually, they probably aren’t too big on celtic music.

  28. Dave M. says:

    They have problems pronouncing the hard ‘c’ in celtic. And don’t even try getting one of them to pronounce ‘Sean’ correctly.