Saturday Morning News Roundup

All, the headlines, the morning after they happen. It's like the morning paper without the funnies.

Swiss troops accidentally invaded Liechtenstein. They did so with weapons that were not loaded and were met with no resistance. I bet a group of twenty men with loaded airsoft guns could overtake that micronation.

The first Wendy's restaurant was closed. It had no drive-thru, limited parking, and served an area that largely shutdown by 5pm and stayed closed on weekends (that's the area, not the restautrant). Certainly makes sense from a business perspective. Dave Thomas's children, despite the nostalgia, seem to agree with the decision. However, the story cites a woman who presumes to know the man better than his own children, and claims that he'd be spinning in his grave if he found out. Being a broker's assistant, you'd think she was more familiar with business operations. Just because something is affordable does not make it a good business decision. The place brought in less than half the business of an average location.

The Democrats are all kinds of mad at Ann Coulter. This time, it's for remarks she made at CPAC: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards." Sure, Coulter's words were not the most appropriate, and a tad odd, but I'll take the complaints from the dems a lot more seriously when they start denouncing those on their side for calling people Nazis, racists, bigots, et cetera. You reap what you sow.

The cavemen from the GEICO commercials have gotten their own sitcom pilot. They always struck me as more the "that's somewhat amusing, but not enough to make me laugh" kind of funny. Gee, cavemen trying to make it in today's world -- sure, it flopped forty years ago (though with a decent theme song), but let's try it again!

Savannah State University kicked a Christian Club off campus. The college accuses Commissioned II Love of harassment because its members shared their faith and hazing because its leaders washed the feet of new members. Got that? Apparently, having their feet washed is “an activity which endangers or is likely to endanger the physical health of a student, regardless of the student’s willingness to participate in such activity.” Perhaps SSU doesn't install showers in their dormitories, either. Anyways, with those two charges, the group was suspended. Several members of the group went to an off-campus worship concert, so the college then decided to escalate from suspension to expulsion. Somehow, I get the suspicion that if the student group had been the Al Qaeda Student Association strapping bomb belts onto new members, the administration would be more accepting.

Doug Hoyt compiled a scorecard comparing real-life results with global warming models. Let's just say the models did not do well. In other global warming news, here is a nice piece on how the European Union's Greenhouse Gas Emissions are rising (at a rate twice as fast as the U.S. since signing Kyoto, and three times as fast since Bush took office), including a nifty graph with an "inconvenient truth" for Europe. Two scientists are trying to claim Richard Branson's $25 million prize for an idea to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide levels with their tongue-in-cheek idea to have everyone "stop breathing so much." Okay, that last one is sort of a joke, but the first two links are certainly worth a read.