You may remember Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) as the guy who thought he’d stumped the Nobel Prize winning Energy Secretary about the origins of oil. Now he’s picked up the story about the EPA economist who’s picked up climate science as a hobby but couldn’t get his ‘report’ included in the Agency’s official findings and thinks it’s a scandal on par with Watergate.
We have an update on this incident over the weekend in SD which was in equal parts bizarre, horrific and comic. A Sheriff’s deputy got called to the home of two Democratic activists who were holding a fundraiser for congressional candidate Francine Busby. The complaint he was responding to was
what appears to have been a bogus noise complaint called in by a neighbor who simultaneously yelling anti-gay slurs from outside the event (a lesbian couple hosted the event).
So Deputy Marshall G. Abbott shows up at house and within a few moments he’s literally going berserk, twisting the hosts’ arms behind their back and throwing them to the floor and then pepper spraying multiple guests. (Reading the various accounts the whole thing sounds like some Saturday Night Live episode, though probably less so to the attendees who had pepper spray squirted into their eyes.) Apparently convinced he was in some sort of imminent danger from the group middle-aged, mainly female Democratic activists, Abbott proceeded to call in back up, which lead to eight more deputies, a helicopter and a canine unit being dispatched to the scene.
Now the Sheriff’s Department is in lockdown, refusing to answer any questions while allegedly conducting their own internal investigation of the incident. But what jumps out to me is that the DA’s Office in San Diego is still deciding whether or not to file charges against the two women Abbott arrested during his rampage.
Melinda Henneberger has a nice blow by blow run-down of the various, overlapping, often contradictory and mainly just painful explanations from WaPo executives about their abortive pay-for-play/pay-for-schmooze operation discussed this morning by Politico.
His wife may be willing to forgive him, but not his book publisher. Sentinel has dropped Mark Sanford’s contract to write a book about fiscal conservatism.
Jon Stewart to Mark Sanford: “God killed Michael Jackson to save your ass — and you gave another interview?!?”
We interrupt the wall-to-wall Michael Jackson coverage for this breaking news: “Thriller” is not the best-selling album of all time (via former Crawdaddy editor Greg Mitchell).
Late Update: This is like kicking an ant hill of music record-keeping aficionados. TPM Reader RW:
The Eagles Greatest 1971-1975 is the best selling album of all time. But it is a compilation album of tracks from the first four Eagles albums (the ones sans Joe Walsh.)
Thriller is the best selling album containing original songs of all time.
As such, having Thriller sell as many albums as it did is arguably the more impressive feat.
PS: I owned the Eagles Greatest on 8 track, on record, and later on cd (though I have since upgraded to an Eagles box set), so you can count me down for three of those sales.
Only own the latest remaster of Thriller.
Later Update: Enough readers have taken issue with the RIAA sales figures (domestic sales only, double counting of double albums, etc) that we’ve set up an open thread at TPMCafe for the Eagles and MJ fans to hash it out — and kill time on this holiday.