Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says college students are being coddled, but his own educational record doesn’t exactly elicit images of a person who had to struggle to make ends meet while earning a degree. … But as the Post notes, Gingrich himself took a different path during college, according to a 1995 Vanity Fair article. According to the report, Gingrich leaned on family members for money and said he didn’t want to get a job while in school. Gingrich’s college experience also included a stint as a history professor at West Georgia College. The Wall Street Journal reports that while working at Georgia College, Gingrich was “often absent as he pursued political goals” and that he “spent little time teaching history.”

So he was a mooch, an unemployed git, and now he’s morphed into a hypocrite. He’s the ideal politician. He’s the model elected official.

Via Alastair Roberts on twitter.

A West Virginia sheriff pleaded guilty to voter fraud in the state’s 2010 primary election including illegally filling in some absentee ballots out of fear he might lose a close election, authorities said on Monday.  Lincoln County, West Virginia Sheriff Jerry Bowman admitted falsifying absentee ballots in a case stemming from an investigation by federal authorities, the U.S. Attorney’s office said.  Also pleading guilty to lying to investigators was Lincoln County Clerk Donald Whitten, the U.S. Attorney said.

Vote fraud… welcome to the third world, West Virginia.  Welcome home.

The owner of Bistro at the Bijou in downtown Knoxville booted state Sen. Stacey Campfield from her restaurant Sunday over his controversial comments on homosexuality and the origin of AIDS. The sign in front of the Bistro on Monday read, “Today’s Special: Fried Chicken. Crispy Chicken Livers. No Stacey.”

I’m sorry but if she had booted a black man just because he was black, or a gay woman just because she was gay, she would be rightly pilloried. I don’t agree with Campfield’s ignorance and I find him deplorable. But he’s entitled to his views and I’m disgusted with this Bistro owner. Were I previously inclined to eat there I would be disinclined to do so now.

Restaurant owner Martha Boggs didn’t take kindly to Campfield’s XM radio claims. “It was a spur of the moment decision to ask Mr. Campfield to leave, which he graciously did,” she said on Monday. “I just think his comments have gone from controversial to plain dangerous to give out the kind of misinformation that he has. And I thought it was important to show my support for the gay community and stand up to a bully, which he is,” Boggs said. “I just hope Mr. Campfield will re-think some of the comments he’s made.” “I am not sorry for what I did,” she added. “I just didn’t want to serve him.”

So, Miss Boggs, you’re a bigot. Good to know.  And it’s good to know that you only serve people who hold your views.  That’s bias in the extreme.  And that’s depraved.

Related articles

• Bistro at the Bijou owner boots, bans state Sen. Stacey Campfield for AIDS remarks (knoxnews.com)

And if you, by chance, have a pdf of it, I’d be grateful if I could see it. Grazie!

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Via the twitterings of Religion and Media.

Peyton Manning remains on the Colts’ roster, and the Titans have three quarterbacks already.  Still, Titans’ fans of the NFL’s only four-time MVP expecting the injured QB to be released and healthy enough to play are starting an ad campaign in Indianapolis hoping to convince Manning to return to Tennessee.  Todd Mayo said Monday the website www.comehomepeyton.com went live Monday and had generated $700 in donations by midday.  A 30-second commercial is planned for an Indianapolis radio station during the Super Bowl, and they want to buy billboards and more local ads.

Come on down Peyton.  You know the State and you’d pack the stands every week.

Related articles

• Titans fans start campaign for Peyton Manning (profootballtalk.nbcsports.com)

A Gallatin woman with a lengthy history of writing worthless checks was arrested again on Jan. 17 after paying almost $1,500 worth of cable bills using the account of Gallatin’s First United Methodist Church.

Christa Smith, 37, faces two identity theft charges and one theft of service charge, following an investigation by the Gallatin Police Department from incidents dating back to July of 2011. She was arrested on Jan. 17 and released that day from the Sumner County Jail on a $5,000 bond, according to the arrest affidavits.

On Jan. 13, police received a report of fraudulent charges on the church’s bank statements. The investigation shows that all charges were made to the Comcast cable company for addresses on Jean Avenue and Laura Street in Gallatin.

During an interview, police said Smith used her 9-year-old daughter’s name to get cable. Smith told police she got the church’s account information when church officials wrote her boyfriend a check to help with bills.

Smith further said she kept the account information for future reference and later gave it to Comcast via the phone to pay for cable bills.

The four charges totaled to $1,440.92, police said.

Smith has a criminal history dating back to 2002 that includes more than 35 charges of writing worthless checks, theft of property in excess of $1,000, false report, driving without a license, two probation violations and two failures to appear in court. She was indicted on seven of those charges. Smith is scheduled to appear in court on Feb. 1.

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120130/NEWS03/301300051/1969/NEWS.

She’s genuinely awful.

The volume consists of 27 surveys of research into the Dead Sea Scrolls in the past 60 years, written by 26 authors. An innovation of the volume is that it covers Qumran scholarship in separate countries: the USA, Canada, Israel, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy and the Eastern bloc. Each essay also carries a detailed bibliography for the respective country. Biographies of all the major scholars active in the field are briefly given as well.

Your excessively specialized research library which focuses only on Scrolls studies will definitely want to pick up a copy.

It has to be said, though, that the editor is top notch-

Devorah Dimant, Ph.D. (1974), Hebrew Univerity in Jerusalem, Professor (em.) for Ancient Jewish Literature at the University of Haifa, Israel. Has published extensively on the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha. She has produced first editions of several Qumran scrolls in Qumran Cave 4.XXI: Parabiblical Texts, Part 4: Pseudo-Prophetic Texts (Discoveries in the Judaean Desert XXX; Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 2001)