U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, convicted bribe taker and grafter, probably will be re-elected to a seat in the Senate.
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Rep. William Jefferson of New Orleans, who hid $90,000 of the $100,000 bribe he took in an FBI sting operation in his freezer, will likely win another term in the House of Representatives in the Louisiana runoff in December.
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In India, nearly one quarter of the 540 members of parliament have criminal charges pending against them.
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In Atlanta, a jury is in the second day of deliberations on Brian Williams' insanity defense alleging that he was gripped by a delusional compulsion that he was a slave rebelling against authority when he overwhelmed a small, elderly, armed female bailiff, took her weapon and murdered a judge, a court reporter and a deputy sheriff in the Fulton County Courthouse before fleeing and later murdering a man working on his home in North Atlanta.
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First term Dallas City Council member Carolyn Davis, who chairs no committees and serves on no development committees, has spent $13,368.75 of the taxpayers money to make seven trips out of town on city business. The well-traveled Ms. Davis was away from Dallas for 50 days. One of her stops was the Central American country of Belize.
In a Dallas Morning News story, Davis explained the importance of this trip. "Belize has a lot of resources," Ms. Davis said. "They have flowers to sell, they have seafood ..."
Ms. Davis's excursion expenditures were topped by member Ron Natnsky, who traveled on the taxpayers' dimes to the tune of $14,927.25.
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In Britain, a local council ordered a resident to remove the barbed wire fence he had erected to protect his garden from thieves and vandals lest the thieves and vandals be injured when trying to climb over the fence to steal the plants. Another council directed residents to remove locks on outside sheds on the grounds that thieves were causing too much damage to the sheds while stealing from them.
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When Clark County Nevada officials examined ACORN voter registration records in Las Vegas, during a voter fraud investigation, they found that all of the Dallas Cowboys football team were signed up to vote in Nevada.
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In Placer County California, a clerk refused to accept a marriage license form from a couple who had identified themselves as "Bride" and "Groom." In the Golden State, only "Party A" and "Party B" are allowed to wed.
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In 2004, Congress authorized paying $560,000 to trim weeds at the Montana Sheep Institute.
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In Canada, a federal court judge awarded Murray Garttonas, who was serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of young girl, $2,500 to compensate for his feeling "utterly humiliated" in 2000 when guards laughed after he mangled his thumb in the prison workshop.
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And the beat goes on.
EDWARD SOUTHERLAND is a staff writer for the Herald Democrat.