Scuttlebutt Pipeline

Welcome to Scuttlebutt Pipeline! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or sign up to receive email notifications of new entries.
Also, don't forget to check out Fifty for the Fall, your chance to win $50 cash - no strings attached!

It started out as a test in Phoenix, Arizona, but after 90% of the travelers showed a preference for a whole body image scan versus a full body pat down, the whole body imaging machines are being rolled out at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Los Angeles International Airport in California soon after. The Transportation Security Administration will be purchasing, at least, another thirty machines to be placed at various U.S. airports this year.¹

The TSA claims that the images are non-invasive, the faces are blurred to protect one’s privacy, and the person (screener) viewing the travelers is situated in an enclosed booth and cannot see the passengers faces as they enter the machine or leave it. They also assure travelers that images are not stored at all.²

It truly seems like TSA is watching out for traveler’s privacy rights while, at th same time, using the best methods available to keep security tight. At least until you read this segment in the CNN article:

Travelers will continuously and randomly be selected to go through the machine. While signs will inform them of the pat-down option, screeners will not announce that choice. But passengers electing not to go through the millimeter wave machine will be given the option of the pat-down.

We know people are notorious for not reading or paying attention to signs. So if you don’t believe you have a choice in the matter and are told you have to go through the body scan machine or kiss your flight goodbye, what are you going to do? The machine of course! Now if that isn’t underhanded and sneaky I don’t know what is.

1. Taken from this CNN article. For more details, please read this article. [↩]
2. Read this article to get a better understanding on how it works. [↩]

The US Supreme Court has upheld the use of lethal injection as a means of execution for prisoners. Two Kentucky inmates challenged the use of lethal injection, citing it as cruel and unusual punishment, which has resulted in executions, nationwide, being put on hold while the court reviewed the case. The court rejected the case by a vote of 7 to 2 however.

Now, if only they would do something about inmates sitting on death row for years (sometimes even decades) before finally getting executed.

States began using the three-drug method in 1978 as an alternative to historic methods of execution such as electrocution.

However, in recent years there have been botched lethal injection executions in Florida and California, in which inmates took up to 30 minutes to die.

A 2005 study also sparked controversy by suggesting the amount of sedation given might not be enough to stop the inmate feeling the painful effects of the other drugs - but would prevent him crying out.

I can understand the concern over their deaths not being quick which essentially results in the prisoner being “tortured” to death. (I confess that a part of me thinks they probably deserve it, but that’s for another time.) However, when it comes to execution, it seems that lethal injection is actually the most “humane” method to date. Death by electrocution, is messy, painful, and takes a long time to be sure the prisoner is dead. Firing squad, also does not ensure that death will come quickly. Unless one of the shooters hits a vital spot, say the heart, there is no guarantee that the prisoner will die quickly and not in severe pain. Hanging/strangulation, again, not necessarily quick either. Unless the neck snaps immediately, they’re going to hanging there for a bit.

Frankly, I can’t help but to wonder if this was really just another attempt to have execution eliminated entirely.

I’m sure one woman is quite pleased to hear that her husband, a pastor, was not found in the company of minors when police located him. Apparently he told his wife that he was going to Best Buy to get his computer fixed.

Uh huh, yeah he went to get something fixed alright, but it wasn’t his computer.

Police say a pastor who was reported missing from his home in western New York has been found at an Ohio strip club.

A police officer patrolling the K.C. Lounge parking lot Friday morning in the Dayton suburb of Riverside spotted out-of-state license plates on 46-year-old Craig Rhodenizer’s car.

The FBI and New York authorities had been searching for Rhodenizer, who disappeared Wednesday after telling his wife he was getting his computer fixed at Best Buy. He is the pastor of a church in Lyndonville, N.Y.

Detective Matt Sturgeon said Rhodenizer was disoriented when confronted by police and said he felt “emotionally guilty.” (source)

Am I the only one who is curious to know why the FBI were involved in this missing person case? Hundreds, thousands even, go missing every day but the FBI isn’t actively involved in their search, so I really have to wonder what got them involved in this.

But really, he was missing for three days and was found at a strip club in another state? Emotionally distraught? No doubt over the impending divorce proceedings.

He announced that he wanted to become the boyfriend of one particular woman but would remain chaste. His love for her has never been questioned, and he has supported her and her child financially, but the ruling has come down and the Rev. Sante Sguotti has been removed from his office.

The Rev. Sante Sguotti can no longer work as pastor in his Monterosso parish and cannot hear confessions from the faithful, the diocese of Padua said in a statement. Sguotti remains a priest and can celebrate Mass, however.

Sguotti made headlines in August when he went on national television to say he was in love with a woman and wanted to be her boyfriend publicly while remaining chaste.

(full article)

Now, from a historical point of view, it wasn’t until relatively [in the history of Christianity] that the clergy were forbidden from being married and had to remain chaste. Read the bible ladies and gentlemen, no where does it say that a priest has to be celibate and unmarried in order to lead a congregation. It wasn’t until one pope came forward and changed this that this went into effect. The fact that they do allow some of priests to marry but not all based on region is rather absurd.

If an animal does something to injure your fragile ego you are in right to retaliate in any way you see fit. At least that’s what some young men in San Francisco thought:

A man was sentenced to five months in jail after he and a friend, acting on wounded pride, gunned down an ostrich that had kicked them as their female companions laughed […]

(full story)

So an animal kicked them and their female friends laughed. Big whoop. How can that possibly justify killing the animal? These guys have serious anger management issues and a low value of self worth if they felt that the murder of an innocent animal that had no malicious thoughts or intentions were justified.

To give them only five months for this is ridiculous. An ostrich kicked them and some women laugh, so they whipped out their guns and opened fire. What’s going to happen when someone cuts these guys off in traffic or a girl turns them down?