THE DAILY BLADE: Census Worker’s Lynching Not A Case Of Right-Wing Extremism After All
When census worker Bill Sparkman’s naked body was found hanging from a tree in KY back in September there was a lot of dark muttering (or was that daft nattering?) about anti-government right wing crazies who opposed illegal aliens being included in the decennial head count. In contrast to their strenuous efforts to deny the possibility that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a jihadi (or as he put it, a “Soldier of Allah”) - even as new evidence undermining the doomed effort was being discovered on an almost hourly basis - liberals and the MSM (yes, yes, a redundancy) didn’t scruple to give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, and immediately pointed accusatory fingers.
It turns out that investigators now think that Sparkman “manipulated the scene in order to conceal a suicide and make a life insurance claim possible for his son,” reports The Associated Press:
The dead man's son, Josh Sparkman, said in an interview with the AP that he found paperwork for the private life insurance policy among the personal files of his father, Bill Sparkman, but wasn't sure of the amount or when it was taken out. He said authorities have told him nothing about the case or produced a death certificate, which is usually needed to make an insurance claim.
Two law enforcement officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said investigators were trying to determine whether Bill Sparkman committed suicide but altered the scene to make it look like a homicide, allowing his son to collect. …
There were no defensive wounds on Bill Sparkman's body, and while his hands were bound with duct tape, they still were somewhat mobile, suggesting he could have manipulated the rope, the officials said. He was found hanging from the tree yet was in contact with the ground. Homicide, suicide and an accident were all being considered as a manner of death, authorities said.
For his part, Sparkman’s 20-year-old unemployed son tells AP: "There's no such thing as suicide insurance. The money is not the concern. I just want to know what happened to my dad."
Sexism On The Slopes
Since the first winter Games in 1924 Olympic ski jumping has been a men's-only event. The trouble is, the record-breaking world champion ski jumper is a woman and therefore not allowed to compete, reports The Christian Science Monitor:
With women now included in such formerly all-male Olympic events as boxing, wrestling, bobsleigh, and luge, the last Olympic door closed to women is ski jumping.
But American ski jumper Lindsey Van - who set the record on the 90-meter jump when the Olympic venue opened in Vancouver, British Columbia, last year and is the reigning world champion - hasn't given up on prying that door open. It's a logical step for the 24-year-old, who, since age 7, has been soaring over Earth's mundane limits on what is possible.
She and more than a dozen other women jumpers from Slovenia to Norway hope to legally force the addition of women's jumping before the Games open Feb. 12. Their lawsuit against the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) contends that not allowing women to jump for gold is a form of discrimination under Canadian laws that prohibit gender discrimination in government activities.
The women ski jumpers won a Pyrrhic victory when a Canadian judge ruled that excluding women is sexist, but that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is not subject to Canadian antidiscrimination laws. In their appeal, the women are taking another tack, and are asking that the VNOC hold both men’s and women’s ski jumping events or cancel the men’s event:
The British Columbia Court of Appeal must now decide whether VANOC should refuse to hold men's ski jumping unless women are allowed to compete.
VANOC attorney George McIntosh argued before Judge Lauri Ann Fenlon that as host, VANOC implements, but can't control, the Olympic program. And while she ultimately found in VANOC's favor, she put his argument into stark relief when she asked Mr. McIntosh if VANOC would plead the same point if blacks weren't allowed to compete in the Vancouver Olympics. His answer, after an awkward silence, was yes.
No one is quite sure what will happen if the appeals court orders that women be allowed to compete without the IOC deciding to add the event to the program, which begins February 12, 2010.
Putting The Cart Before The Horse: Part VI
Although the NY Board of Elections will not certify a winner in the November 3rd special congressional election until next month, when more than 10,000 absentee ballots will have been counted, Bill Owens (D) “was sworn into office last Friday and, a day later, cast a critical vote that helped the health-care bill pass the House,” reports The Washington Post:
In seating Hoffman [sic], congressional Democrats noted that, while no official certificate of election had been sent by New York officials, the race had not been contested. …
Officials in New York cited tabulation errors for the inaccurate initial margin. A routine vote recanvass showed more votes for Hoffman among the more than 136,000 that were cast.
Even if Owens’ vote is later deemed to have been cast improperly, it will not change the outcome – but the unseemly rush to seat him is in keeping with Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s propensity to hold votes on mammoth bills that no legislator or taxpayer has read.
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