Earlier this month, a panel of British judges recommended a number of changes to the country’s judicial-dress requirements, which have been roughly the same for hundreds of years. Wigs will no longer be worn in civil and family courts, and…
On May 15, a judge ruled against a Miami woman who had sued her husband to get a share of a $600,000 lottery prize he won. Donna Campbell said that last summer she began to suspect that her husband, Arnim…
Before too long there will be enough material of this kind to create a separate category or gallery of Bad Disguises. Previous candidates would include the Duct Tape Bandit and the Tree That Robbed a Bank, and to those we…
William Singalargh, who as we learned in April had been accused of assaulting a 15-year-old boy with a hedgehog, was convicted this week on charges of "common assault" and "offensive behavior" and ordered to pay about $550 in fines. Singalargh…
On April 30, the 4th Circuit reinstated a seven-year-old lawsuit against the city of Marshall, North Carolina, by a woman who was banned from the town dance hall for allegedly dancing in a "sexually provocative manner." The court ruled that…
On Memorial Day, police arrested a 29-year-old man in the Herald Square Macy’s store in Manhattan after spotting him "brandishing" what was described as a curved, rusted, "pirate-style sword," presumably a cutlass. The report also used the word "carrying," although…
Yes.
As expected, Matthew Pan (or his handlers, depending on how you view this story), has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights. You may recall that Pan is a chimpanzee currently residing in Austria. An animal-rights group took his…
The U.S. Congress, which some of you may remember as a third branch of government, roused itself this week to override President Bush’s veto of a popular farm bill. That was the plan, at least, until somebody noticed that they…
I’m starting to think it is the purpose of a house of representatives (using lower-case there to mean, generically, that half of a bicameral legislature, not a specific house that happens to be full of representatives) to pass utterly stupid…