Judge Sentences ‘Balloon Boy’ Parents To Jail Time

ABC NEWS: Today, Larimer County, Colo., Court Judge Stephen Schapanski sentenced the couple behind one of the year’s biggest media stunts to a total of 110 days jail and eight years probation. He also prohibited the couple from making any money off the balloon boy fiasco during that time. Schapanski stated that Richard Heene must spend 30 days in jail beginning Jan. 11, 2010. The remaining 60 days of his 90-day sentence may be carried out under “work release,” meaning he can work during the day and spend nights in prison.”This will be supervised probation,” Schapanski said about that part […]

ZACHARY QUINTO: Wild Kirk On Spock Action

Spork! An Erotic Love Story (Edited Together From The Star Trek Audio Book) from cirrocumulus on Vimeo. EL GANADOR: The audiobook of the novelization of STXI is a many-splendored thing, especially when you edit it to sound like a K/S slashfic. The credits song is “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell” by Das Racist. MORE

Police Uncharacteristically Mum About Predator Cop

DAILY NEWS: He met the girl whom he is accused of later victimizing in 1995 at the Olney Recreation Center, where he was teaching karate to youngsters. She was 10. He spent the next two years befriending her and her family, gaining their trust and, quietly, laying a trap, court documents allege. After the first two alleged assaults in the van in 1997, Wiggins began routinely taking his young victim out for car rides, court documents indicate. Some ended back in Fairmount Park, others at his house on Chew Avenue near Front Street in Olney. But all of the trips […]

SPORTO: Did It Just Get Drunk In Here?

BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY Things change quickly in sports. A week ago the Eagles took the lead in the NFC East, but they still looked like a 3 or 4 seed at best and were clearly a notch below the top two, New Orleans and Minnesota. Fast forward seven days and the Saints just lost, the Vikings just lost, and the Eagles have won five in a row. Suddenly a #2 seed and a bye week are within reach. The Birds will hold the tiebreaker against Minnesota, but the Vikings will have to slip up in one of their […]

O DEATH: Kill The Bill

Sign our petition to Congress and President Obama: The Senate health care bill must be killed. Click here to sign our petition. Hi Jonathan –   The Senate’s health care bill must be killed. It is an ungodly mess of errors, loopholes, and massive giveaways. When the American people find out what’s actually in this bill, they will revolt. Congress and President Obama have no choice but to do better for health care than this bill. Sign the petition: the Senate health care bill must be killed.   How bad is the bill?  Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to […]

RUSS FEINGOLD: Obama Killed The Public Option

RUSS FEINGOLD: I’ve been fighting all year for a strong public option to compete with the insurance industry and bring health care spending down. I continued that fight during recent negotiations, and I refused to sign onto a deal to drop the public option from the Senate bill. Unfortunately, the lack of support from the administration made keeping the public option in the bill an uphill struggle. Removing the public option from the Senate bill is the wrong move, and eliminates $25 billion in savings. I will be urging members of the House and Senate who draft the final bill […]

STUDY: Earth Headed For ‘Epic Die-Off’

SFGATE: The analysis by Barnosky, research associate Marc Carrasco and Penn State’s Russell Graham was published this week in the scientific journal PLoS ONE. It compares the extinctions of mammals in North America after humans arrived 13,000 years ago to the five mass extinctions on Earth over the past 450 million years. The least severe of those extinctions wiped out the dinosaurs 68 million years ago and killed off 75 percent of the species on the planet. Although humans clearly did not have anything to do with the previous extinctions, many scientists are afraid that global warming and other environmental […]

Eagles Fans + Snow = Fire + Gasoline

GONZO: Before the game, I was talking to one of the Eagles’ front office employees. She was saying what a good job the Lincoln Financial Field workers did removing the huge mounds of snow from the stands. She was right. It took 45 minutes to help shovel my friend’s car out yesterday. Imagine how hard it was to clear a 67,000-seat stadium. But despite the valiant effort, they couldn’t get it all. There was still plenty left over when the gates opened and the fans trickled in. The first snowball was launched from the upper deck at 2:46 p.m. It […]

RIP: Actress Brittany Murphy Dead At 32

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Los Angeles police have opened an investigation into circumstances surrounding the death of actress Brittany Murphy. Police have been dispatched to Cedars-Sinai and to the Los Angeles home where Murphy, 32, went into cardiac arrest earlier today. Police sources emphasized that their inquiry was preliminary, adding they could not say whether it would point to any criminal conduct. [Note: An earlier version of this post incorrectly said the house was located in West Hollywood.] L.A. city firefighters responded to a call from the home in the 1800 block of Rising Glen Road. Murphy was transported to Cedars-Sinai […]

RATM Busts Up Simon Cowell’s X-Mas Monopoly

THE INDEPENDENT: Rock band Rage Against the Machine ended Simon Cowell’s four year domination of the Christmas charts tonight after a hugely popular Facebook campaign helped the Los Angeles nu-metallers snatch the Christmas number one slot from X-factor’s Joe McEdlerry. More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music. It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the […]

AVALANCHE: ‘Storm Of The Century’ Shows No Mercy

INQUIRER: On the eve of the winter solstice, the most potent December snowstorm in 100 years — complete with thunder and lightning — has left the region under as much as 20 inches of snow. And for the rest of the week, the faintest sunlight of the year will glance off a bright and dense cover, which may affect weather for several days. And for the rest of the week, the faintest sunlight of the year will glance off a bright and dense cover, which may affect weather for several days. Temperatures may not get out of the 30s until […]