Daily Briefs: The Democratic National Convention, Funkhouser, some stuff about prison.
From the Comments:
gus says: i feel dirty because i laughed so hard at “Rape Camp Intelligencer-Tribune” that people asked me what’s so funny. i treid to explain how the Rape Camp Intelligencer had to have merged with the ribune at some point and that they still kept the name Rape Camp, and oh never mind.
Barack Obama watched his wife’s speech at the Democratic National Convention from Kansas City last night — 
just like me! Today, Obama has some errands to run in Kansas City — JUST! LIKE! ME! Although, whereas the Democratic candidate for president has to go give a speech to some people at the American Airlines overhaul base at 11:15 a.m., I have to get my ass down to the payday loan place and write a check that I’m praying to God won’t be presented until Thursday. Evening.
Still, we have quite a bit in common, once you set aside various law degrees, public offices held, relative personal charisma, prison sentences and outstanding bench warrants. You can probably sort out whose character stats are whose in the preceding list, but maybe if my life had taken a different path, I’d be a big-shot, too. As it is, new network nodes at the Daily Briefs Facebook page have stalled out lately, and rather than blaming it on my lack of burning charisma, popularity, intelligence or handsomeness, I’m going to deploy the all-purpose rhetorical sealing caulk John McCain produces whenever anybody asks a tough question and just say that when I was a POW*, my social network consisted of guards and a little mouse named Marvin. We didn’t have Scrabulous or photo pages. Although I do seem to recall a “wall” we could write on. And also some unfortunate “poking.”
*Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, 1999-2003
After the jump, why are so many kindergarten dropouts becoming prison inmates? Click here, or click on flute student Riki-Oh brandishing the warden’s head after putting his body through a meat grinder in the cautionary documentary Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, the Scared Straight of Hong Kong:
