- As some communities across the United States take steps to prevent citizens from carrying firearms into public places, the occasional municipality is swinging back and doing what it can to promote the right to bear arms. Las Cruces, N.M. is in the latter category and Mayor Ken Mitagishima is out in front leading the charge. Not only does the mayor allow anyone with a valid concealed handgun license to center city hall strapped without being questioned, but the mayor himself is packing heat wherever he goes. "I don't want any of our employees, or myself, or any of my colleagues to really be in a situation where they're helpless," Miyagishima said. He now totes his concealed weapon permit in his pocket and cites a May city council meeting during which a citizen made a direct threat against him as the reason. "If this would have been an occasion that should arise to that level that I somehow intervene, well, I would be prepared to do so," he recalled of the meeting. "Recognizing that I was a target of his caused me some concern, a great deal of concern, thus the reason I took those classes." As a Las Cruces native, Miyagishima insists he is trusting of the community he presides over, but still feels the need to carry his sidearm. Not only does the Second Amendment guarantee that right, but New Mexico's State Constitution reads, "No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms." The mayor has backing from Las Cruces police chief Richard Williams, who pointed out that at any public gathering - a council meeting for example - the room could potentially be filled with armed citizens. With no metal detectors at city hall, enforcing any restrictions on guns would be next to impossible. Metal detectors or not, Miyagishima believes he is standing firmly upon the principles the founding fathers laid out. "That's what our country was founded on," Miyagishima said. "We can't trample over that." And if anyone does attempt to trample over it, Las Cruces’ mayor will be there to stop them, locked and loaded…………
- Most fans use commercials breaks as a chance to make a snack or bathroom run during a game so they don’t miss any of the action. Texas Rangers fans may want to abandon this practice because commercials have become extremely profitable for some of them. Rangers fans who purchased flooring or countertops from local carpet retailer CC Carpet in September will be winning big thanks to an offer pitched by owner Steve Fitzgerald in a commercial and Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton, whose grand slam Wednesday is going to save a lot of people a lot of money. In the commercial, Fitzgerald, declares that if Hamilton hit a grand slam, anyone who purchased flooring in September would get a refund. No sooner than Hamilton’s bases-loaded bomb in the fourth inning of Wednesday night’s home game against Cleveland landed in the stands, CC Carpet’s website was overwhelmed with traffic and went down and the store’s phone number was jammed up with scores of calls from customers who wanted their money back. Like any business owner or contest operator with any smarts, Fitzgerald was prepared for the small chance that he had to pay up. He purchased insurance for the Grand Slam Payout before launching the contest and as a result, he could enjoy the thrill along with his jubilant customers. "My IT guy is working on it," Fitzgerald said. "We're so excited. We only wish he had done it right at the end of the promotion so we could have saved folks even more money. But it's great.” The grand slam was just the third of Hamilton’s career and his first since 2008, so Fitzgerald was definitely taking a calculated risk when he decided anyone who purchased flooring or countertops starting Aug. 29 would get a refund if Hamilton hit a bases-loaded home run during the promotion period, which was to run until Sept. 28 or as soon as Hamilton hit a grand slam. We wanted to do something that would be fun, but still possible," Fitzgerald said. "There were people trying to get me to do something else, but I thought it had to be Hamilton and a grand slam. My daughter, Morgan, pushed for Hamilton too. It took some phone calls, but we were thrilled to make it work." Thus, the commercial in which a hyped-up Fitzgerald lays out the promotion and Morgan asks, "Dad, are you crazy?" Crazy or not, Fitzgerald parlayed his contest into several TV appearances (the kind you don’t have to pay for) Thursday. When asked about winning free flooring for the masses, Hamilton kept a sense of humor about it. "The situation doesn't come up often, so when it does you can't help but think about it," Hamilton said. "I'm in the business of giving back. I like to help people as much as I can by giving back. So that's cool." Cool indeed…………
- Might Belgium actually get itself a government for the first time in more than a year? Whether you realize it or not, the small country that is home to the legislative branch of the European Union has itself been operating without an official captain of its ship for the past 459 days. That number is a world record the Belgians could probably do without and it may soon cease to exist. Belgians various feuding factions and their leaders on Thursday hailed a first breakthrough in negotiations, celebrating the elimination of a major hurdle in the process of re-establishing a government. Leading the current round of negotiations is French-speaking Socialist leader Elio Di Rupo, a mediator who just might become the country’s prime minister in the near future. Di Rupo announced that the eight Flemish and Francophone parties took a "first decisive step" out of the crisis. "The eight parties have together succeeded in overcoming the obstacles which have created difficulties these last few days," the politicians said in a joint statement. Overcoming obstacles is a definite positive for a country that has been in the hands of a caretaker cabinet since June 10, 2010, when elections failed to produce a workable governing coalition. Among the key issues the negotiators resolved Wednesday was the sensitive issue of Brussels and its suburbs, the only bilingual electoral district in the country. It is also the site of major confrontations between Flemish and French-speaking politicians. That the breakthrough in negotiations came at all was surprising after the process nearly collapsed just a few hours earlier, when Di Rupo warned that they were heading towards another breakdown. Agreeing on the Brussels electoral district appears to have led to other agreements, although the statement did not expound on what the agreement would consist of. Previously, Flemish parties have sought to end special voting rights of Francophones in suburbs located within Flanders. Even without knowledge of the details, Belgian media outlets hailed the agreement as "historic.” Major issues still exist before a new government can be created, including more power to the regions to placate the demands of Dutch-speaking Flanders, which is wealthier and more populated than French-speaking Wallonia to the south. “The work is far from being finished and numerous debates have to be have to be worked out, the steps taken today ... constitute an important step," the eight negotiators said in their statement. Resolving the crisis is crucial for Belgium, which could face the same credit downgrade panic that swept over the United States several weeks ago if it does not put a new government in place. The situation became even more dire late Tuesday when caretaker premier Yves Leterme announced he would step down to run for a senior job at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. That prompted King Albert II, who has played a lead role in 15 months negotiations, to cut short a vacation southern France so he could return home and attempt to push the process forward…………….
- Twitter: It’s more than a place to hear about what your celebrity crush had for lunch or what food name being switched out with words from band names to create new, truly ridiculous band names is trending. The popular micro-blogging site has also become a tool for quickly disseminating key information (in 140-character bursts) to the masses. Louisiana State University knows the power of Twitter and that’s why the school is now using Twitter to help solve the always-problematic dilemma of finding parking spots on a crowded college campus. With more than 23,0000 parking spaces around its campus (supposedly), LSU should never have a parking problem. Yet it does and university officials believe Twitter may be the key to the problem. Instead of becoming a lot lurker, circling around and around a lot in search of a space and following people who appear to be leaving to grab their spot once they vacate it, students and faculty can now follow an official Twitter account operated by the campus parking services department to know where spots are available. Director Gary Graham, in between rejecting appeals from parking violators to have their tickets rescinded, explained that updating the campus community about parking matters is nothing new, even if the medium has changed. "This is something we've done for years. We used to give traffic reports on KLSU, but obviously the new media is affording us the ability to be a little bit more timely and reach a larger audience," Graham said. The Twitter account, @LSUParking, currently boasts a mere 500 followers, although Graham is hopeful more will join the party. "We've put things in the Reveille, we've put it on our homepage," Graham said. "Just like everything else we just keep trying to get the message out." Those efforts include a smartphone app, which is free and shows real-time where Tiger Transit buses are on their routes. There is the option of getting up earlier and arriving on campus much earlier than normal for classes, but obviously no student is going to attempt anything so absurd…………
- A few months ago, the idea of Broadway-bound actor Hugh Jackman pining for a guest spot on Fox’s prime-time glee club drama Glee would have been depressing and beneath an actor of Jackman’s stature. After all, this is the same Hugh Jackman who played Wolverine in the first installment of the "X-Men" franchise, reprised the role in "X2,” "X-Men: The Last Stand" and "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." He hosted the 81st Annual Academy Awards and has numerous successful stints on the Great White Way. Hearing him say, "I would quite like to appear in Glee. I've seen one episode so yeah, maybe," would have been a letdown. Of course, all of that was before he accepted the lead role in a movie called “Real Steel,” which has rightly been coined “the Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em Robots movie” by some critics. In essence, the film is about Jackman teaching oversized Rock ‘Em, Sock ‘Em robots to box like humans and making money off of them. How DreamWorks a) green-lit this dud of a film and b) landed Jackman in the lead role both remain a mystery. The film is so bad that its debut has been pushed back and the studio has launched a promotional campaign that includes a series of one-hour specials on ESPN in which it finances major makeovers for the facilities of run-down high school athletic programs around the country just to buy some goodwill. Perhaps being the leading man of a debacle like this makes it less pathetic that Jackman wants to play a bit part in a Glee episode alongside Sue Sylvester……..or not. The man has still taken the stage everywhere from London to New York to Australia and won many rave reviews. He’s played a wide range of characters on stage and on the big screen and won scores of awards along the way. Daydreaming about a guest spot on a flash in the pan, 15-minutes-of-fame phenomenon like Glee should still be beneath Jackman, who has to be able to do better than campaigning for roles in teen dramas and fronting movies based on simplistic children’s robot boxing games from decades gone by………….
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