THIS JUST IN!

News You Need to Know or Not!

N.Y. woman grows 6-foot zucchini in her backyard

A woman says she grew a 6-foot zucchini behind her Queens, N.Y., home.

"I've had my vegetable garden for 26 years, but I never saw anything so spectacular," Apollonia Castitlione tells the N.Y. Daily News. "I didn't put Miracle Grow on it, nothing, just a little bit of 5-10-5 fertilizer, water and my time."Oh come on now. We know you mixed some ground up Viagra with that fertilizer.

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Democrats have suddenly developed a keen sense of morality.

John Edwards has been banned from making a speech at the Democratic Convention for having an affair and lying about it.

In his place Bill Clinton will be speaking. Makes sense to me.

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MIAMI -- The Drug Enforcement Administration discovered something unexpected in the Mall of the Americas.

DEA agents found a hydroponics lab with more than 200 marijuana plants, standing 3 to 6 feet tall in the air and worth millions of dollars, in a storage area on the second floor of the mall.

Authorities said the electricity that powered the lab was diverted from the mall's main power supply.

No arrests have been made. Authorities said officials with the Mall of the Americas (not Mall of America in Minnesota) are cooperating with the investigation. Funny! Mall officials thought it was a plant store. Since they get a piece of the action for rent, it was a very profitable use of mall space.

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Priest organizes beauty contest for nuns--'Miss Sister 2008'

ROME - An Italian priest and theologian said Sunday he is organizing an online beauty pageant for nuns to give them more visibility within the Catholic Church and to fight the stereotype that they are all old and dour.

The "Miss Sister 2008" contest will start in September on a blog run by the Rev. Antonio Rungi and will give nuns from around the world a chance to showcase their work and their image.

"Nuns are a bit excluded, they are a bit marginalized in ecclesiastical life," Rungi told The Associated Press after Italian media carried reports of the idea. "This will be an occasion to make their contribution more visible."Really??? Too Whom???

Rungi, a theologian and schoolteacher from the Naples area, said that visitors to his site will have a month to "vote for the nun they consider a model."

Nuns will fill out a profile including information about their life and vocation as well as a photograph. It will be up to them to choose whether to pose with the traditional veil or with their heads uncovered. Doesn't matter. They will always look like nuns.

"We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits," Thank You God! "But being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun. External beauty is gift from God, and we mustn't hide it."You dirty old man.

Rungi said the idea was first suggested to him by nuns with whom he regularly prays and works. He hopes there will be dozens of submissions????? once the Web site is started. Daily prayers and work???? Mmmm!

The contest drew criticism from the association of Catholic teachers. Really???

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When organizers for a party to be held during the Republican National Convention decided they wanted to serve quesadillas, they did what many convention-party menu planners are doing these days: They called their lawyer.

The legal advice: Quesadillas would be permissible -- if they were filled only with cheese. So says Ryan Kelly, who works for Take08Events, which is helping to set up the party for what he describes as an "advocacy organization."

So why is cheese OK but chicken or beef problematic? If there was meat on the quesadillas, they might constitute a meal, said Kelly, and under Senate and House ethics rules, members of Congress are forbidden from accepting free meals at many events.

As the Twin Cities gears up for four days of nonstop partying during the Sept. 1-4 convention, lawyers are working overtime to make sure that politicians will be able to sidle up to a multitude of bars without being put behind them.

While the legal complexities of finger food for federal lawmakers have been around for years, new ethics rules for party conventions were passed by the House and Senate in 2007 as part of a much larger ethics reforms package. The convention rules have created a kerfuffle HUH ????? for lobbyists.

Special memos on the conventions have been issued recently by the House and Senate ethics committees.

This is about all the Congressional Ethics Committee did. War, energy, healthcare, social security, immigration were left on the backburner by our wonderful lawmakers, but god help us if we want a quesadilla with meat. GEEZ! What a bunch of crap.

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On Friday, DFL-endorsed U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken demonstrated how true that saying can be, when a roundtable on veterans issues at Brigitte’s Cafe his campaign scheduled drew only one participant. His campaign is gaining momentum.

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FORT PIERCE — Two teenage girls told police they were attacked by a group of 30 girls outside a nightclub early today and that three suspects - whom they identified as "The Rock Star Girls" - beat them with high-heel shoes, including a pair of 8-inch stilettos.

They said the three initial attackers took off their high-heeled shoes to hit them in the face, the report states.

One victim said she was struck three times in the head with a brown, 8-inch stiletto. OUCH! The other victim said she was struck two times in the head with a silver, 6-inch heel.OUCH! OUCH! She reported that her attacker said: "I fight to kill," while hitting her with the shoe.

Nothing good happens after midnight. There is a reason they called a thin pointed knife a stiletto, I just didn't know it was named after a woman's shoe.

Have a nice day!

Samuel C. Arnold