Poor Mojo's Newswire

BERWYN HEIGHTS, Md. — A SWAT team raided the home of a Washington, D.C.-area mayor, killing his two black Labrador retrievers and seizing an unopened package of marijuana delivered there. Prince George's County Police said Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo brought a 32-pound package of marijuana into his home that had been delivered by officers posing as delivery men. The Tuesday evening raid was conducted by county police narcotics officers and a sheriff's office SWAT Team.... "We never opened the box. We have nothing to do with this box," Calvo said.... Calvo said officers entered about 7:30 p.m., first shooting 7-year-old Payton. They then pursued 4-year-old Chase, who ran away and was shot by police from behind, he said. "These were two beautiful black Labradors who were well-known in the community. We walked them twice a day; little kids knew their names and would come up to them and pet them," he said.

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected — which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted — one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of — that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

As his family’s oldest male, [Irving Gonzales, 18,] feels he has to do whatever it takes to help out his single mom. That’s why the Aldine High School senior started thinking about the Army – and the tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses that can come with enlistment. “They were offering me school, they were offering me bonuses,” he said. So Gonzales signed up – but only to “pre-enlist” in the Delayed Entry Program. DEP allows kids to try out the military without a binding commitment. But the 11 News Defenders have found there is a problem: Army recruiters aren’t sticking to the program and are bullying and even lying to potential recruits and their families to keep them from dropping out. After he had a change of heart, Gonzalez became one such victim. “I’d rather just stay here, go to college,” he said he told his recruiter. The reaction: Gonzalez said a recruiter told him if he did drop out, they would send him to jail. Scared, Gonzales called Sgt. Glenn Marquette, a supervisor at the Greenspoint Recruiting Station. Marquette told Gonzales there was no way out. “You signed a binding contract,” he said. But that wasn’t true.... In 2005, 836 complaints were filed against recruiters. That rose to 874 last year, and the Army is on pace to surpass that figure in 2008. The number of Army recruiters given formal admonishments has nearly doubled since our first report, with 373 citations in 2005 growing to 635 in 2007.

Jim Adkisson, the 58 year old man being held in a Knoxville, Tennessee jail on murder charges stemming from a shooting during a children's musical at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church on Sunday, is said to have had a array of right-wing political books in his home... "Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, 'because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country... "Adkisson told Still that 'he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office.'... "Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."... "Adkisson was a loner who hates 'blacks, gays and anyone different from him,' longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.