Columns
Charles Oliver: It couldn't happen here?
The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, N.C., plans to celebrate Halloween by burning Bibles. Pastor Marc Grizzard says the King James Bible is the only one that is infallible, so they’ll be burning other English-language versions. Church members also plan to burn books by authors such as Billy Graham, James Dobson, Rick Warren, Chuck Colson, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, Tim Lahaye, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa and the Pope, as well as “Satan’s music,” including “country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, Southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.” Chicken, both barbecue and fried, will be served, along with all the traditional sides.
A report by the British government has found that almost half the nation’s hospitals fail to meet core standards of care despite more than a decade of added investment in the National Health Service. Cynthia Bower, chief executive of the government’s Care Quality Commission, says the most worrying trend is the number of regional health care trusts that continue to “bump along the bottom” despite numerous warnings.
If most students learn only one thing in high school, and they will, it is that if you get drunk and pass out, your friends will play cruel tricks on you. One teacher in the Haslett, Mich., school system didn’t learn that lesson. The Lansing State Journal reports that two years ago, several teachers decided to end the year with a night of excessive drinking and marijuana smoking. At one point, a female teacher passed out, and two other teachers used markers to write and draw sexually explicit pictures on her body. School officials called the event deplorable but took no action. One girls basketball coach has resigned as a result of the media attention around the event.
Joseph Chapman, president of North Dakota State University, resigned after state education officials called for an audit of a home being built for him. Originally budgeted at $900,000, the cost of the residence has ballooned to $2 million. Questions have also been raised about the $50,000 being paid to his wife to serve as an “ambassador” for the school as well as money the school’s foundation has paid for his travel. Chapman says being university president is “not as much fun as it once was.”
In Moscow, Russia, firefighter Kiril Marichev was fired after officials found he had been growing marijuana in the basement of a fire station.
Antonio Love, 37, had a badly upset stomach and rushed into the nearest restroom he could find at a Mobile, Ala., Dollar General store. When he didn’t come out after a few minutes, staff called police. When officers arrived, they knocked on the door and got no answer. So they tried to bust down the door, but Love pushed back. That led them to spray pepper spray into the room. They rushed in and Tased him. After they got him out, they found a card in his wallet that said he was deaf. He was also mentally disabled, with the mental age of a 10-year-old. They decided to arrest him anyway but were forced to release him when a magistrate judge refused to charge him.
Jeremiah Ramirez, 8, got a toy “Pirates of the Caribbean” sword and gun during a trip to Disney World. They were seized by Transportation Security Administration officers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport when he tried to fly home. His mother says her anger at having the toys taken grew when she later saw TSA officers playing with them. When Disney executives found out what happened, they mailed replacement toys to Jeremiah.
Charles Oliver is a staff writer for The Daily Citizen. Got a suggestion for It Couldn’t Happen Here? E-mail it to him at charlesoliver@daltoncitizen.com.
