Poor Mojo's Newswire

But don't expect any pup tents or even the faintest whiff of smoke from Camp McCroskey these days.

Rarely used for camping, the land instead has become a moneymaker for the Inland Northwest Council of Boy Scouts. Over the past 35 years, the council has repeatedly logged the property, collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some of the money helped pay the mortgage on council headquarters in far-off Spokane, a former council board member says.

Never mind that McCroskey specified how the scouts should use the land when he deeded it in 1947: "for camp and recreational purposes, the site to be known as Virgil Talmadge McCroskey Camp."

The arid weather is occurring as the state's water system is under pressure from a growing population, an aging infrastructure and court-ordered reductions in water pumped through the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta - problems that didn't exist or were less severe during similar dry spells in the late 1970s and late 1980s.

"We're definitely in really bad shape," said Elissa Lynn, chief meteorologist with the state Department of Water Resources. "People can expect to pay higher prices for produce ... and more agencies may be rationing ... some raising fees. We just don't have enough water."

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.

. . .

"He was trespassing and didn't want to get in trouble," the caller replied. As it happens, the caller's friend is an urban explorer who gets thrills rummaging through and photographing the ruins of Detroit. It turns out that this explorer last week was playing hockey with a group of other explorers on the frozen waters that had collected in the basement of the building. None of the men called the police, the explorer said. They, in fact, continued their hockey game.

Before calling the police, this reporter went to check on the tip, skeptical of a hoax. Sure enough, in the well of the cargo elevator, two feet jutted out above the ice. Closer inspection revealed that the rest of the body was encased in 2-3 feet of ice, the body prostrate, suspended into the ice like a porpoising walrus.

Officials say the 41-year old CIA officer, a convert to Islam, was ordered home by the U.S. Ambassador, David Pearce, in October after the women came forward with their rape allegations in September.

The discovery of more than a dozen videotapes showing the CIA officer engaged in sex acts with other women has led the Justice Department to broaden its investigation to include at least one other Arab country, Egypt, where the CIA officer had been posted earlier in his career, according to law enforcement officials.

At some, rooms have tubs and wall-to-wall mirrors, and the workers dress in lingerie. During one bust two years ago, Mayor Gavin Newsom walked in on a man and a woman engaged in a sex act in the business lobby. Despite Newsom's call for action back then, even that business still operates with a city permit.