- So famous people don’t only receive favorable treatment in the American legal system when their case is based in Southern California, good to know. Celebrities also get favorable treatment in New York - or at least star NFL wide receivers do. It’s being reported that former New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress’ gun case will receive another adjournment at a Monday hearing and according to his attorney, that will postpone the case until "sometime in September." Benjamin Brafman, Burress’ lawyer, seems to believe that his client has a legit shot to play football this season. “As far as I'm concerned, if he wants to play this year, he's able to play,” Brafman said. This is the second adjournment in the case. Back in March, Burress' attorneys had asked for and received an adjournment of his hearing until June 15. Now, they’ll ask again and word is that the prosecutor in the case is inclined to go along with the request. This would create a very interesting dilemma for the NFL and for any team interested in signing Burress. Commissioner Roger Goodell could very well impose a suspension on Burress even though his case is still pending, so any team signing him would obviously want to know if any league discipline was forthcoming. Also, that team would have to consider fan response to signing a guy who faces felony gun charges after shooting himself with an unregistered gun in a New York nightclub, lying to the police about it and giving a fake name to a doctor who then treated him illegally by not reporting his gunshot injury to the police. I doubt that there would be a huge backlash there, as long as Burress produced on the field. After all, people don’t have as strong of ties to Burress leg and harming it as they do to dogs, which will make signing convicted dogfighter Michael Vick much more dicey. Sources say that the three teams with the most interest in signing Burress are the New York Jets, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears. The Giants released him in April, so that’s obviously one locale he won't be heading to. As for the NFL suspending Burress, the league is playing it close to the vest at this point. “We reserve the right to act accordingly at the appropriate time,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said. The legal system also reserves the right to act against Burress….at some point. You know, whenever they get around to it. No biggie, dude is only facing two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a loaded and unlicensed weapon and a mandatory minimum jail sentence of 3½ years. I guess when you have 505 career receptions for 7,845 yards and 55 touchdowns, the judicial system treats you a little nicer than the average criminal…….
- All hail the bathrobe of death. It might sound like a fable, but then again, so would the “latrine of death” in Asia that claimed the lives of three men trying to fish out a lost cell phone - until that happened several years ago. As it happens, the bathrobe of death is an American phenomenon, specifically in Seattle. There, six people have died in fires involving a bathrobe that was recalled for fire safety reasons. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is one the case and ordered the recall in April after several cases of the women's full-length chenille robes made by Blair catching fire. So what do these victims have in common, other than wearing the bathrobe of death? Well, five of the six victims were female, all five were cooking at the time of the incidents and three of the victims were in their 80s. In other words, old ladies who probably should not be allowed to cook by themselves managed to get a bath robe that is apparently highly flammable too close to the stove. When the rash of bathrobe fires broke out, Blair claimed that the product passed federal flammability standards with ease. However, the reports of this mini-epidemic in the Pacific Northwest caught the attention of the CPSC and the agency warned consumers to stop wearing the robes immediately and return them to Blair for a full refund. Following the recall of the 162,000 bathrobes deemed a fire hazard, Blair released the following statement: “Even though we had passing flammability tests from accredited overseas labs for each lot of the chenille robes which we imported, concern for our customers prompted us to have robes from our current stock tested at domestic laboratories. When those tests showed that a number of the robes failed to meet federal flammability standards, we immediately contacted the Consumer Product Safety Commission, shared the test results, and entered into a voluntary recall. We owed that to our customers.” Fair enough, given the fact that six people died. Recalling the bathrobes and refunding everyone’s money seems to be the least you could do. Not selling highly flammable, deadly products would also help, but perhaps I’m just being greedy…..
- I’m becoming increasingly curious whether there is anyone who can sink low enough on the totem pole of humanity for the American Civil Liberties Union to not be willing to defend them. If you’re willing to take up for a convicted sex offender, you clearly have either exceptionally low standards or simply no standards at all. The ACLU has taken up the case of Chris Hagan, a Barre, Vermont resident who was ordered to vacate his Barre apartment because of its close proximity to a park. A city ordinance bans sex offenders from living in close proximity to a park, a move designed to protect children that, based on their records, sex offenders would seem to have a tendency to harm. Where most people would see an effort to protect children from a dangerous sexual predator, however, the ACLU sees discrimination and the abuse of a man’s rights. The controversy began in April, when Hagan claims he was told by city officials he was in violation of the city's Child Safety Ordinance. It took just over a month for Hagan to pursue the case against the city, contact the ACLU and have the organization rush to his defense. The American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont has brought a lawsuit against Barre, on behalf of Hagan, based on a claim that the city has no authority to restrict people from living in certain areas. ACLU Executive Director Alan Gilbert hopes a verdict in Hagan’s favor will set a precedent for sick, twisted, pervy sexual predators around the country who want to put children in danger by living wherever they want. “It means that the ordinances in the other municipalities that have been adopted would no longer be enforceable,” Gilbert said. I don’t know which way the judge in the case will rule, but the city is hanging its case on the fact that Hagan knew about the rule before moving into his new apartment and that his landlord told him it might be a problem. Whether prior knowledge of the law by the citizen in question makes it legal, I don’t know. Either way, the presiding judge in the case intends to make a ruling before July 7. Win or lose, the ACLU can hang its hat on having shown once again that no matter how reprehensible, how vile and how heinous a person is, they always have a friend in the American Civil Liberties Union…….
- Did you miss them? By them, of course, I mean the nonstop commercials warning you of the impending apocalypse that is the transition to digital TV in the United States of America. For what seems like decades but may have actually been a year or so, we’ve been pounded relentlessly with warnings that the switch from analog to digital was on the way and that we had better prepare - well, those of us still rocking televisions with rabbit-ear antennas. Those commercials are finally over, relegated to the ever-expanding junkyard of out-of-date ads never to be seen again. The transition to digital TV has been made, with 1,787 U.S. television stations sending DTV signals over the airwaves beginning Friday and shutting down the analog transmitters they have used since television became a mass medium in the 1940s and '50s. According to the Federal Communications Commission, the digital TV transition was off to a smooth start, although many broadcasters expect a deluge of calls over the weekend from people who are having problems getting a signal. A survey done last week showed that 88 percent of the 12.6 million households that use broadcast signals were ready for the transition, either with new TV sets, antennae or set-top DTV converter boxes. Any calls coming in to complain about problems with DTV will come from the ass hats in the 1.75 million households that had taken no action to ready for the transition. I hope you all will join me in toasting the long-overdue end of the DTV transition commercials, which should have ended in February but were extended as the deadline for stations to make the switch was pushed back. It took a long time, but we survived…….
- Somebody isn’t happy about getting clocked by the backdrop at the Tony Awards and having everyone clown him for it, eh Bret Michaels? Just days after getting hammered to the floor by the falling backdrop as he made a delayed exit from the stage following a performance of "Nothin' But a Good Time" with the Rock of Ages cast, Michaels lashed out at the show’s producers for their role in and subsequent handling of the incident. "I need to make clear at no point since the incident occurred do I feel like the accident was malicious in any way and I feel this will all work itself out. However I must state I found it a little strange that the only statement released by the Tony organization was that I missed my mark and that I was completely fine," he wrote in a prepared statement. "First, I thought, 'what mark?' as there was no official mark, just a retracting drum riser and an overhead prop being rapidly lowered, which was out of my view.” Sorry bro, but it appeared that you did miss your mark. The rest of the band was off the stage and you were out in front, soaking in the applause and trying to extract every last bit of attention you could from the performance. Had you just done a quick wave to the crowd and exited in a timely fashion, you would have made it off stage safe and sound. Instead, Michaels suffered a broken nose and a cut lip and as he put it on his Web site, was “bummed that I did not get to attend the after parties, cuz rumor has it Anne Hathaway was going to be there and she is hot.” And I am sure that Anne was bitterly disappointed to not have some past-his-prime hair rocker around to hit on her, Bret. As for the Tony Awards producers commenting on your condition and claiming that it was a case of you missing your mark....deal with it. Maybe they should have left it up to you to disclose your medical condition, but they didn’t give any specifics, only saying that you were fine. Be happy that anyone still has any interest in having you perform and quit complaining. Go back to auditioning a mansion full of Botox-ed skanks with fake racks on VH1 to find your “true love” and quit pretending that you still matter……….
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