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An Australian TV performs a simple and hilarious experiment on bridge security. How long can an average looking white tourist take pictures of security cameras before being bothered? What about an arab tourist?

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A device meant to measure Tropical Storm Ernesto’s impact caused an evacuation at Myrtle Beach’s Pier 14 restaurant and drew a crowd of onlookers Friday after it was thought to be a pipe bomb.

Myrtle Beach police were called about 10:30 a.m. by someone walking on the beach who noticed a metal box strapped to a pylon under the pier at 14th Avenue North, Myrtle Beach police Capt. David Knipes said. He said police checked to see whether the device was registered by some agency, but it was not.

Myrtle Beach police called the Horry County Police Department’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal team. The team decided to blow the top off the box to reveal its contents, which turned out to be a device from the U.S. Geological Service that measures wave height and frequency and storm surge, police detective and team member Van Sissell said.

Fun fact of the day: they missed the 40 other survey boxes.

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Air passengers from Charlotte to Little Rock, Arkansas, had to hurry off their plane Friday after someone found a suspicious liquid on board.

The flight landed at Little Rock as scheduled Friday afternoon. But about seven miles before it landed, a crew member reported two passengers with two bottles of liquid. Police, firefighters and the bomb squad were called in, but the liquid turned out to be water.

It really starts to look the TSA has this website set as their home page.

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Being hauled out of school in handcuffs because of a $50 seat-belt ticket was bad enough for Lancaster High School music teacher Theresa Dobbs.

She had no idea what was yet to come.

That seat belt ticket – the only blemish on her driving record – would result in a harrowing three-day stay in a crowded holding tank at the Dallas County Jail last week without a chance to see a lawyer, bail bondsman or judge.

Ms. Dobbs, 51, was lost in the system during her first brush with the law because of a paperwork mix-up. A clerk didn’t retrieve her paperwork from a tray, and she wasn’t placed on the daily municipal court docket.

Just like any other third world country.

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Tot twee keer toe belde de 67-jarige Rob Kruize in paniek de Geldropse politie toen voor zijn huis een groep tieners zijn kleinzoon belaagde. Maar de politie kwam niet.
Toen de kleinzoon op straat nog eens bedreigd werd, ging de 65-jarige Catrien Kruize naar het politiekantoor. Maar ze kreeg te horen dat de politie niets voor haar kon doen.

[..]

Gevraagd om een reactie besloot de politie vorige week eerst met het echtpaar te gaan praten. Daarna liet afdelingschef Van Kuijk via een woordvoerder weten dat het een goed gesprek was. „Van Kuijk heeft het paar uitgelegd hoe de politie werkt“, aldus de woordvoerder. „Zonder aangifte kunnen we niks doen. Over fouten is het verder niet gegaan.“

Voor Van Kuijk is hiermee de kous af, hij wil verder niet op het gebeurde ingaan. Rob en Catrien Kruize zijn teleurgesteld.

„Hij heeft steeds verteld hoe goed zijn mensen zijn. En dat ze maar één wagen hebben en dat hun prioriteiten anders liggen dan wij misschien denken. Alleen dat ’toedeloe’, dat was volgens hem verkeerd. In onze ogen was het een vruchteloos gesprek.“

De familie Kruize zeurt. Ze weten toch dat de prioriteiten in Geldrop anders liggen?

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Why did the Ayatollah let the American hostages go, as Reagan raised his right hand to take the oath of office? Why did Syria not rush to the rescue of Hezbollah? What did Ahmadinejad not rocket Tel Aviv in solidarity with his embattled allies in Lebanon? Res ipse loquitor. The thing speaks for itself. They don’t want war with Israel, and they don’t want war with the United States.

“Islamo-fascism” should be jettisoned from Bush’s vocabulary. It yokes the faith of a billion people with an odious ideology. Imagine how Christians would have reacted, had FDR taken to declaring Franco’s Spain and Mussolini’s Italy “Christo-fascist.”

If Bush does not want a war of civilizations, he will drop these propaganda terms that are designed to inflame passions rather than inform the public of the nature of the war we are in, and the war we are not in.

What kind of world are we living in if the words of Pat Buchanan make more sense than those of the administraion?

And Frank Rich in the NYT:

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…what made Rumsfeld’s performance special was the preview it offered of the ambitious propaganda campaign planned between now and Election Day. An on-the-ropes White House plans to stop at nothing when rewriting its record of defeat (not to be confused with defeatism) in a war that has now lasted longer than America’s fight against the actual Nazis in World War II.

Here’s how brazen Rumsfeld was when he invoked Hitler’s appeasers to score his cheap points: Since Hitler was photographed warmly shaking Neville Chamberlain’s hand at Munich in 1938, the only image that comes close to matching it in epochal obsequiousness is the December 1983 photograph of Rumsfeld himself in Baghdad, warmly shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein in full fascist regalia. Is the defense secretary so self-deluded that he thought no one would remember a picture so easily Googled on the Web? Or worse, is he just too shameless to care?

…Well before Rumsfeld’s trip, Amnesty International had reported the dictator’s use of torture — “beating, burning, sexual abuse and the infliction of electric shocks” — on hundreds of political prisoners. Dozens more had been summarily executed or had “disappeared.” American intelligence agencies knew that Saddam had used chemical weapons to gas both Iraqi Kurds and Iranians.

According to declassified State Department memos detailing Rumsfeld’s Baghdad meetings, the American visitor never raised the subject of these crimes with his host…

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Air traffic controllers said Friday they will be forced to work even when they’re tired after the
Federal Aviation Administration imposes a new contract this weekend.

Controller fatigue may be an issue in the investigation of the recent airplane crash in Kentucky that killed 49.

The solo controller in the tower at Lexington Blue Grass Airport had his back turned on the airfield when the pilots took off on the wrong runway early Sunday morning.

He told investigators he’d had only two hours of sleep and worked 17 hours in the previous 24.

Sleep researchers say such sleep deprivation typically causes attention lapses and slowed reaction times.

The controllers’ new contract with the FAA follows nine months of bitter negotiations that broke down in April. Controllers sought binding arbitration, but the FAA said the law gives it the right to impose its last, best offer.

A section of the contract says, “Sick leave cannot be granted for rest or minor inconveniences,” according to a briefing guide for the FAA’s collective bargaining agreement with the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers.

Do you feel safer already?