- With a rampaging district attorney baring down on him, Plaxico Burress took a step to fight back yesterday and we’ll have to wait and see if that was a smart play. Burress, a.k.a. Harris Smith (the fake name he gave to an ER doctor when seeking treatment for the bullet wound he put in his own leg), testified testify before a Manhattan grand jury at 10 a.m. yesterday at the urging of his attorney, Benjamin Brafman. Brafman believes that it’s important for the jury to hear Burress’ side of carrying a gun for which he had no license into a public place and being so reckless with it that he shot himself in the thigh. Good call, counselor. "There are many mitigating circumstances in this case," Brafman said. "First, the gun was not used in the commission of a crime. The only victim here was Plaxico Burress. And the gun was registered in the state of Florida, which has reciprocating registration agreements in 32 states. My client was under the impression that the same was the case in the city of New York." A few problems with those assertions, counselor. First, carrying the gun without a permit was the crime and discharging it in a public place was also illegal. Second, it doesn’t matter one damn bit how ill-informed your client was about reciprocating registration agreements and whether he was legally allowed to carry his gun in New York. If you’re going to go to a club strapped, it’s completely on you to know what the law is ans whether your permit to carry is valid in that state. Not knowing what the law is does not excuse you from breaking it, a-hole. I’m not one to side with The Man and the law, but Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau simply has a much better case than Burress. Brafman isn't helping with his act, uttering a nonstop flow of nonsense that is making his client look worse, not better. For example (as if you needed another one), Brafman characterized Burress’ actions as "a lapse in judgment.” Let’s all go ahead and agree that any action which results in a bullet hole being put in a human being is not a lapse in judgment. A lapse in judgment is thinking it’s a good idea to jump off the roof of the garage into the swimming pool and breaking your arm in the fall. A person knowingly carrying a loaded gun into a crowded club and not exercising caution in handling that gun is much more than a lapse in judgment. Speaking of judgment, Burress is showing very poor judgment in the way he and his attorney are handling this case. According to previous reports, Burress was willing to agree to spend a year in jail for shooting himself with an unlicensed gun early on the morning of Nov. 29, but when prosecutors insisted on two, Burress balked. "We've always taken the position that he's going to have to go to jail, whether by trial or by plea," Morgenthau said. For the record, Burress is charged with criminal possession of a weapon and faces up to 3½ years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty and is free on bail, but that doesn’t mean he has a shot of playing in the NFL this season. Should the grand jury indict him, there’s a chance that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell could suspend Burress before he even has his trial. No team wants to bring in a headache like that, especially if Burress could be heading to jail soon. As always, the lesson to be learned is that if you feel like you need a gun to go somewhere, then it’s a place you probably shouldn’t be going to begin with……
- Things are turning nasty in South America and that should shock exactly no one. That Venezuela and Colombia are sniping at one another is a given; it’s merely a question of what the current showdown is over. I’d say that shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons purchased by Venezuela allegedly ending up in the hands of guerrillas is a good reason to go and Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos seems to concur. In a radio interview Monday, Santos talked about weapons seized from members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, being traced to Venezuela. “This is not the first time that this happens," Santos said. "In several operations in which we have recovered weapons from the FARC, we have found powerful munitions and powerful equipment, including anti-tank weapons, from a country that sold them to Venezuela and that turned up in the hands of the FARC.” A pretty powerful accusation, basically implying that one of your neighboring countries is supplying weapons to guerrilla fighters. So what are these weapons, you ask? Apparently the weapons are AT4 shoulder-fired rockets manufactured by Saab Bofors Dynamics. I’m no weapons expert, but shoulder-fired rockets sound like a pretty dangerous weapon. Anything with the work rocket in it sounds like a dangerous weapon, actually. The rockets were seized in 2008 from a guerrilla base, but Venezuela is doing its best to distance itself from any allegations that the weapons came from within its border. "To me it seems that this is a new attack against our government based on lies," Venezuelan Minister of the Interior and Justice Tareck El Aissami said. "We absolutely deny that our government or our institutions are providing assistance to criminal and terrorist organizations. It's laughable, it sounds like a cheap film made by the American government." I’m sorry, but what the heck was that? The United States isn't involved in this little skirmish of yours, so quit sucker-punching us while we stand on the sidelines. I know you hate the U.S., but that doesn’t mean we’re involved in every bad thing that happens to Venezuela. If you want to (almost certainly) lie and say that you didn’t give these weapons to this guerrilla group, that’s fine. Just know that a) it’s not the first time these accusations have been levied against you and b) no one actually believes you. Other than that, keep up the good work……..
- Hopefully this will end Hulk Hogan’s inclinations to channel his inner O.J. Simpson. The Hulkster made those comments about “totally getting” how O.J. must have felt seeing his ex-wife tooling around town with a newer, younger guy and subsequently turning both of them into human Pez dispensers a few months ago as divorce proceedings with his ex-wife Linda Bollea dragged on. While watching her live in the home he built and paid for with her new 19-year-old boyfriend, Hogan was understandably upset. Now, the couple has reached a divorce settlement and all of this can hopefully go away. The announcement was made by the couple's attorneys at a court hearing in Clearwater Tuesday morning. The judge in the case was notified of the agreement Monday night and everything was outlined in court the next day. “We've reached a marital settlement agreement," Ray Rafool, Linda's attorney, told the judge. Amazingly, both the Hulkster and Linda Bollea were seen smiling before the proceedings began and at one point, she even kissed his cheek. Now maybe that was just for show and was a hollow gesture, but at least they weren’t at each other’s throats. After the scene that unfolded at a hearing last month, when Hulk Hogan challenged the way Linda spends the $40,000 in alimony she receives every month, things turned very ugly. The Hulkster’s attorney called in Tracy Morgan, the couple's hair stylist, as a witness and she tore into Linda Bollea. "The client does a lot of drugs and is an alcoholic. She doesn't have a good relationship with her daughter, with her son, and she's wasting a fortune," Morgan said of Linda Bollea. In turn, Bollea’s attorneys attacked Morgan’s testimony and insisted that “Linda never did trust her.” Now this entire soap opera is over and although terms of the agreement weren’t immediately known, one thing is for sure and Linda Bollea said it best following Tuesday’s hearing: “The war is over.” It is over and not a moment too soon……..
- With 2009 being such a Debbie Downer year economically for the United States, who couldn’t use a boost in 2010? We could all use that boost…..it’s just not coming. As bad as 2009 has been, many analysts and observers predict that 2010 will be even worse. “The numbers that states are looking at in terms of their shortfalls is truly staggering. And all of this is happening in an environment where raising taxes is still pretty toxic, and it's pretty explosive," said Sujit CanagaRetna, a senior fiscal analyst for the Council of State Governments. Since they aren’t hiking income and property taxes, states are instead targeting specific items and services with taxes and fees in the hopes of lessening the deficiencies in their budgets. You may recall that a few days ago I detailed the push to legalize marijuana in the state of California in the hopes that the tax revenues from the hippie lettuce would help dig the state out of the red. by Democratic State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano is leading that charge on the legislative side with a bill proposing taxing pot by $50 per ounce. If the state legislators in California have the good sense to get behind this proposal, it could bring in an estimated $1 billion a year in state taxes. Of course, taxing the chronic is not an acceptable option everywhere in the country and each state has to stick with what it knows best. In Georgia, that means strip clubs. Republican state Sen. Jack Murphy proposed a "pole tax" would have charged patrons of strip clubs a $5 entrance fee. It’s a bill I could get behind because I am of the firm belief that anyone who patronizes a strip club is a bonafide loser and deserves whatever sort of taxation that can be put on them. However, Murphy’s bill was not approved and now Georgia must look elsewhere for financial answers. For 19 other states, gambling-related proposals have been the option of choice as they look for ways balance their 2010 budgets. In Alabama, that means lawmakers considering bringing more bingo games to their state and legalizing. But like the strip club measure in Georgia, it too was defeated. The most publicized measure by far has been in Delaware, with Gov. Jack Markell signing legislation creating a sports lottery that legalizes single-game betting. That has resulted in no less than four professional sports leagues and the NCAA filing a lawsuit over plans for the lottery. Other interesting financial measures across the country include: Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle's 2010 budget tripling the price of an elk hunting license, even though his state has no elk hunting season, New York Gov. David Paterson proposing a "fat tax" that would to add an 18-percent tax on sugary beverages, New Jersey residents being subjected to a sales tax on health club memberships and state legislators in Virginia voting to increase inmates' daily rent by 500 percent, from $1 to $5, a measure that Gov. Tim Kaine vetoed. So what is your state doing to make ends meet? Odds are it’s wacky, it’s whimsical…..and it won’t work………
- Vanity has a price and for the vain, self-absorbed idiots who willingly jam themselves into tanning beds on a regular basis lest they look like anything other than a person who has just spent two months living at the Equator, that price is a drastically increased chance for skin cancer. Not only an increased chance of skin cancer, but a risk on par with those posed by horrific products like cigarettes and asbestos. That’s according to a study done by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which had previously classified sunbeds as being a "probable" cause of cancer. When it dug a little deeper and did more research, the agency became convinced that tanning machines should be moved to "the highest cancer risk category" and be labeled as "carcinogenic to humans.” I’m not a doctor and I don’t even like playing one here, but that sounds bad – really bad. When something is considered carcinogenic, I’m going the other direction. But it makes sense, right? Spending too much time in the sun over the years is bad for your skin, so how much worse is it to drop into a compact box that basically puts you in direct contact with simulated sun and stay there for prolonged periods of time? Good move! It’s absolutely worth it to get that nice, orange glow for the prom or that wedding you’re the maid of honor for! Never mind the research the IARC based its findings on which declares that the risk of melanoma -- the most deadly form of skin cancer -- was increased by 75 per cent in people who started using sunbeds regularly before the age of 30. No way that happens to you, right? Besides, is that all the IARC has? Actually, it’s not. The agency also says there is evidence of a link between eye cancer and the use of sunbeds. Add all of this up and it’s just not that surprising that melanoma is the second most common cancer in women aged 20 - 29.5, according to the America Melanoma Foundation. So the next time you just have to get tan for an event or to impress someone, take a moment to think back over what we just talked about and ask yourself if you’d like to head to an early grave following a painful, agonizing battle with skin cancer just so you can look a little better for your dance, wedding, etc…………
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