Hard Lesson

Well, maybe Michael Francis Wiley will finally learn his lesson this time. A Florida judge has sentenced the triple amputee to five years in prison for driving and drug charges. He will be on probation for 15 more years when he is released.

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - A man with no arms and one leg who wouldn't stop driving despite a long list of traffic violations was sentenced to five years in prison Friday on felony driving and drug charges.

Michael Francis Wiley, 40, also was sentenced to 15 years of drug offender probation. He pleaded no contest in June to the charges.

"I'd just like to say I know what I did was wrong," Wiley said in court Friday. "I am truly sorry your honor. I am."

Earlier post about Wiley here.

Turtle Soup

Ok, an update on the turtle they caught in New York Harbor. The submarine was a replica of David Bushnell's Turtle submarine. The three men arrested include a "performance artist". One of the men claims to be descended from David Bushnell.

August 3, 2007 — In a bizarre case of "marine mischief," a Brooklyn artist manning a replica Revolutionary War submarine caused a scare Friday morning after police found the strange-looking vessel foundering in a security zone near the docked Queen Mary 2, authorities said.

The handmade wood and fiberglass vessel, at the end of a tow rope tied to an inflatable boat, was spotted by police near the luxury ocean liner docked at the cruise ship terminal in the Buttermilk Channel off Red Hook in Brooklyn.

"It was a strange sight," said Coast Guard Petty Officer Angelia Rorison.

Police held the artist, Philip "Duke" Riley, and two other men, both from Rhode Island, for questioning. But there was no indication the trio meant any harm with the replica of the 1776 " Turtle submarine."

One of the Rhode Island men claimed he was descendant of David Bushnell, the inventor of the original one-man vessel that inspired the replica, police said.

The makeshift sub "is the creative craft of three adventuresome individuals," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement. "It does not pose any terrorist threat. … We can best summarize today's incident as marine mischief."

The brown, egg-shaped wooden vessel was a replica of a submarine used during the American Revolution, Rorison said. The inflatable boat was towing the submarine, authorities said.

They were apparently within 200 feet of the Queen Mary II at one point. The entire incident is bizarre, but not terror related. The three rocket surgeons have been charged with a whole raft of safety violations for playing around. They are in a bit of turtle soup, it would seem.

Turtle Captured In New York Harbor

And this is not an "Animal Uprising™" story. The second I saw the picture of this thing they caught in New York Harbor, I thought of the Turtle, a submarine built and used (unsuccessfully) in the American Revolutionary War. (The report notes the same thing, I found as I read it). Three men have been taken into custody along with the submarine they were operating near the Queen Mary II.

(CBS) NEW YORK A strange-looking submarine was spotted Friday near the docked Queen Mary II, and NYPD Harbor and SCUBA units arrested three people for questioning.

The vessel, with one person inside, and an inflatable boat carrying two people, were spotted near a security zone around the luxury ocean liner docked at the cruise ship terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

It was not clear what the people were doing in the vessels, but police said there was no indication that the incident was related to terrorism.

The sub, piloted by a Greenpoint man, came within 100 feet of the luxury cruise liner.

A detective from the New York Police Department Intelligence Division noticed the vessels at around 10:30 a.m. and summoned the Harbor Unit.

The mysterious vessel was partly submerged and “appeared to be designed for underwater navigation,” the NYPD said in a statement.

The vessel bears a striking resemblance to the "Bushnell Turtle," the first American submarine, invented around 1775 in Connecticut by David Bushnell. That sub was designed as a naval weapon, and it was meant to drill into a ship's hull and plant a keg of powder, which would be detonated by a time fuse.

The authorities are downplaying any talk of this being terrorism related at this point. There are very few details and I had to search pretty hard to find even this much information. More as information becomes available.

Meet George Jetson

Moller International has announced that the M200G Volantor is entering production according to Sky News. Soon, you will be able to buy your very own flying saucer - or reasonable facsimile thereof. The flying disk will only go to about 9 feet, altitude-wise, but it will be a truly all-terrain vehicle. "Ruh-roh, Reorge!"

The M200G is the size of a small car and is designed to take off and land vertically.

Company founder Dr Paul Moller calls the craft "the ultimate off-road vehicle" as it is able to travel over any surface.

"It's not a hovercraft, although its operation is just as easy," said the aeronautical engineering boffin.

"You can speed over rocks, swampland, fences, or log-infested waterways with ease because you're not limited by the surface."

The flying saucer is designed to fly at an altitude of up to three metres, where it benefits from extra lift created by a cushion of air - known as ground effect.

This allows the M200G to glide over terrain at 50mph, powered by eight of the company's Rotapower rotary engines.

No arrangements have been made for training or licensing at this point. If this thing falls under FAA jurisdiction in the US, it is not likely to be a huge seller. The license requirements would likely limit the number of people willing to buy one if the price - about $90,000 - isn't off-putting enough.

Bonus: The Jetsons theme song.

British Police Spring Into Action!

We are very pleased to report that the British police are now taking the Animal Uprising™ with complete seriousness. They are pulling out all the stops to capture animals running amok in the streets. And they are committing vast resources to the effort, too. Why, just the other day they chased down a sheep. It took a few people though:

A sheep has been nicknamed Ewe-dini after escaping from a pen and evading capture by six police officers, four supermarket staff, two factory workers and a security guard.

In scenes reminiscent of Keystone Cop movie chases, the sheep led the chase for two hours as it ran four miles through the streets of Brighton with its posse following behind.

Motorists had to pull over to avoid hitting the animal before it ran into a garden and was cornered and taken back to its farm.

PC Katie Fairweather, 24, said: "We were all a bit breathless at the end, including the sheep.

"I couldn't believe how fast it was. We kept running after it, losing it, getting into our patrol car, spotting it again, getting out and chasing it again and so on."

The sheep escaped from a farm north of Brighton on Wednesday and ran past a nearby police station as it headed into the city.

Officers took up the chase and as the sheep fled past a supermarket and a factory, staff joined in the hunt.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have managed to obtain exclusive video of the police chase of Ewe-dini. We thought our readers would be interested in seeing the British police in full animal chase mode.

Minnesota Had Money Available For Bridge Repairs

Ed Morrisey has been all over the story of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, which is hardly surprising since it is a local story for him. Today he points out that despite the bloviating about infrastructure and spending that is going on, Minnesota had the money to effect repairs - but the engineers from the Minnesota Department of Transportation did not believe the repairs were needed right away.

In the rush to point fingers, we have heard from experts on local and national television about the neglect of our infrastructure. Our local crank at the Strib decided to write a column blaming everyone from Tim Pawlenty to David Strom for killing the victims of the collapse. Instead, it looks like the engineers at MnDOT simply decided that the bridge did not appear to have sufficient problems for immediate intervention.

That was not a question of money. MnDOT officials, according to the Strib, acknowledged that they had the money in the budget to pay for the suggested repairs. In fact, MnDOT was the agency that made the determination that the I-35W bridge would not need an overhaul or replacement until 2020. Those recommendations were forwarded to the state government, which didn't have any reason to reject the evaluations supplied by the MnDOT engineers.

Once again, it is the state that is responsible for the upkeep of the bridges. While there are real infrastructure issues in the US, those issues have been well publicized for decades now. In this case, the judgment of the engineers was either flawed or they missed something completely. Money was not a factor.  

Finish The Job

The father of a Marine killed in Iraq has a simple request for Congress, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Stop the political wrangling and finish the job in Iraq. John and Shawn Wroblewski lost their oldest son, Marine 2d Lt. John Thomas Wroblewski, in 2004. Mr. Wroblewski understands the cost of war in a way that virtually all of the most strident war critics do not. Yet he says finish the job.

John Wroblewski suggests Congress stop all the talk about leaving Iraq in 60 days, or 90 days, or 120 days.

Instead, what the country needs, he says, is "more discussion about victory and how we're going to win."

What he seeks is leadership. Courage, to stand up to a relentless, smart and brutal enemy. Patience, to see the nation through the inevitable dark days. Strength, to set priorities and see them through.

Wroblewski sees these characteristics in those fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, young men and women he considers heroes. Is it too much to ask the same of those who sent those troops into combat?

The high school athletic director from Jefferson Township, N.J., is unapologetic in his support for the war and those fighting it - "You can't separate the troops and the mission," he says.

Often, he says, the news out of Washington makes you "grit your teeth." Worse are declarations that the war is lost.

"When [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid said that, it just turned my stomach," Wroblewski says.

As I have said many times, this is the war we have, regardless of how we got here. And the damage to the United States an early withdrawal will cause will apply to all of America, not to any political party. America will be blamed for the genocide that would follow.

Some Actually Learn From The Past

Kimberley Strassel devotes her weekly column in the Opinion Journal to taxes, class warfare and the unusual position some Democrats find themselves in. It makes for some interesting reading.

Back in the hot summer of 1990, Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell proudly engineered the infamous "luxury tax," a nasty little tithe on everything from furs to jewelry to yachts. Democrats were proud: Not only were they throwing new dollars at the Treasury, they'd done it by socking it to the rich. The wealthy, in the words of then-House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, would finally pay "their fair share."

Within a year, Mr. Mitchell was back in the Senate passionately demanding an end to the same dreaded luxury tax. The levy had devastated his home state of Maine's boat-building business, throwing yard workers, managers and salesmen out of jobs. The luxury tax was repealed by 1993, though by the look of today's tax debate, its lessons haven't been forgotten. Top Democrats are working to implement a new class-warfare tax strategy, only this time they're getting pushback from those in their party who fear the economic consequences.

There are any number of tax increase schemes being bandied about to tax the rich - or the unloved industries. But some of the Democrats in Congress remember the example that Mitchell set. Taxes on the "rich" have a nasty way of coming back on everyone. Strassel notes several proposals that are being balked by Democrats worried about the fallout of those targeted taxes.

Witness the pushback. Class warrior Sander Levin from Michigan introduced House legislation levying higher taxes on hedge fund and private equity managers' earnings back in June. It took until the end of July for Senate Democrats to start publicly trouncing the idea. Washington's Maria Cantwell worried the tax would hurt returns for her state's public pension fund, which makes a pretty penny off the back of private equity funds. Others fretted it would drive their private equity companies offshore. As for the almighty Chuck Schumer, patron senator of Wall Street, he declared his opposition to any tax that wasn't also levied on non-finance industries. And since Mr. Schumer is the one doling out money for next year's Senate re-election races, that may well be the end of that tax idea.

Over in the House, tobacco-state Democrats have already taken a scalpel to the Senate's proposed 61-cent federal tax on cigarettes, whittling it down to 45 cents. Even then, 10 Democrats–several hailing from the tobacco havens of North Carolina and Tennessee–voted against the child health-insurance legislation that included the tax. Their defection makes it that much harder for Ms. Pelosi to consider an override of a presidential veto.

Madame Speaker, meanwhile, spent what was by all accounts an unfriendly hour last week trying to coax Democrats from oil-patch states to sign on to her oil-company tax hike. As of yesterday, she hadn't had much luck; Texas's Gene Green and about two dozen other oil-state dissidents were holding firm against the $16 billion tax package leveled directly at their home-state economies. It was unclear whether Ms. Pelosi could even risk bringing her vaunted energy legislation for a vote before August recess. Chief tax writer Charlie Rangel has faced so much in-party blowback to his idea of heavily taxing "the rich" in order to finance an alternative minimum tax fix, he has yet to introduce legislation.

Right now some 2/3 of the enormous Federal budget is already spent on entitlement programs. The class warfare advocates keep up strident rhetoric demanding more taxes on the rich and on "evil" corporations. Some Democrats realize that the consumer always ends up paying those corporate taxes and that class warfare can - no, does is the right word - end up in causing a loss of jobs and a raft of other unintended, negative, consequences.