When a son, angry that his father had ordered him to clean up his room, screamed at Dad and threw a plate of food across the dinner table, Dad called 911. The son is 28-year-old Andrew Mizsak, who lives rent-free with his parents in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford, Ohio, and is a member of the Bedford School Board (and whose mom is a city councilwoman). After police arrived, the habitually untidy son apologized and, according to their report, "was sent to his room to clean it. He was crying uncontrollably." Subsequently, the school board punished Andrew by removing two of his duties.
When courts in Nashville, Tenn., get too backed up, a local tradition allows judges to appoint well-known local attorneys to act as "special judges" to help clear dockets. According to a months-long investigation by WTVF-TV, broadcast in April, it appears that at least some of the "special judges" used their power largely to dismiss speeding tickets, including at least one instance of a lawyer's dismissing his own client's ticket. The station found that of almost 1,800 speeding tickets dismissed by courts during the time investigated, 1,300 were by the "special judges."
The U.S. Air Force has spent an estimated $25 million training combat pilot Lt. Col. Victor Fehrenbach but is about to discharge him involuntarily because he is gay. Born of military-officer parents, Fehrenbach has earned 30 awards and decorations, with tours flying F-15Es in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and was one of the elite fighters called on to patrol the air space over Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001.
Also about to be discharged solely for being gay is Army infantry officer Daniel Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic speaker, who would be (based on a 2005 Government Accounting Office report) at least the 56th gay Arabic linguist to be dismissed from the U.S. military since the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. [ABC News, 5-13-09; New York Times, 3-29-09]
In September 2003, Lisa Strong was hospitalized for a kidney stone, which was not treated properly, and by the time the resultant, massive, life-threatening infections had been dealt with, both her arms and both her legs had been amputated. She filed a lawsuit against the doctors in 2005, but in May 2009, a jury in Broward County, Fla., somehow could not find any fault at all by doctors. (An incredulous Judge Charles Greene reversed the verdict, dismissed the jury and ordered a new trial.) [WFOR-TV (Miami), 5-29-09]
