Top Chef: Death Row?

On September 21, a condemned man on Texas death row requested the equivalent of an all-you-can-eat buffet for his last meal, but didn't even take one bite prior to his execution. This gave state prison authorities and lawmakers heartburn, and they abolished the traditional practice. A former prison chef has since volunteered to cook the last meals on his own--rather than the taxpayer's--dime, but apparently authorities have declined the offer.

Season 9 of Bravo TV's hit show Top Chef premieres on November 2, with Texas coincidentally enough as the culinary location.

Most likely the filming is already completed, but how about this idea of an elimination challenges?

The cheftestants cook a last meal for an inmate who serves as the guest judge along with Padma and Tom. The chef preparing the worst meal is ushered off the show as usual, along with the inmate himself, who has other fish to fry so to speak.

In other words, anyone up for a "double elimination" challenge?

Disclaimer: We're only kidding!

Boston Red Sox Like Beer

Who is more lazy--those Boston Red Sox players responsible for the team's historic implosion or the sports "reporters" who only got around to writing about clubhouse dysfunction (including in-game boozing) after the season ended?

Given what transpired in the month of September in general and on the last day of the season in particular, this idiotic country & western music video which includes cameos by Red Sox pitchers Josh Beckett, John Lackey, Jon Lester, and Clay Buchholz seems extremely dumb.



Update: Red Sox executives say the filming took place without the club's permission.

Drone Attack on al Qaeda leader

Those who accused President Bush of assaulting civil liberties and shredding the Constitution have been pretty quiet about the drone attack on U.S.-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki.

In other words, crickets.

CNN provided some good coverage, including the legal aspects:

Steyn on Hope and Change: "Soft Choices Have Hard Consequences"

As we have written several times, private-sector employers economy can often be unfair, unethical, arbitrary, corrupt, and even illegal. Nonetheless, socialism, crony capitalism, centralized government planning, an entrenched regulatory-litigation bureaucratic system, whatever you want to call it, has never worked in any nation it has been tried. It's even worse when the architects of such failed polices never themselves ever held a real job. You may have noticed that this general state of affairs has recently caused some of President Obama's most devoted media groupies to have second thoughts about all that hope and change stuff.

The president recently commented in a television interview that the country has gotten "a little soft." In a superb column, Mark Steyn agreed, observing that "This is a great, great country that got so soft that 53% of electors voted for a ludicrously unqualified chief executive who would be regarded as a joke candidate in any serious nation."

Steyn notes that remorseful buyers in the elite or mainstream media helped hand over "a multitrillion-dollar economy to a community organizer and you're surprised that it led to more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?"

Steyn adds: "To a fool such as your average talk-radio host, His Majesty appears to be a man of minimal accomplishments other than self-promotion marinated in a radical faculty-lounge view of the world and the role of government. But, to a wise man such as your average presidential historian or New York Times columnist, he is the smartest guy ever to become president."

Read the entire column here.

Vaccination Police Just a Phone Call Away

The federal government, specifically the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is about to launch a National Immunization Survey that could compromise your family's privacy and health freedom.

Yours may have been one of the households that received a letter from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an HHS agency, stating that your phone number was randomly chosen by computer for this vaccination survey.

According to the letter, interviewers from the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center will be calling in the next few weeks to "ask about your vaccinations and about children's health." The letter also says that in the case of toddlers, it would be "helpful" to "have your child's immunization records handy when answering our questions." While the CDC claims that privacy protections are in place, apparently the interviewers will also request permission to access your child's immunization records from your family doctor.

Holistic health advocates such as Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com argue that this initiative is just a way to bully parents into compliance with a "vaccine-pushing police state" for the benefit of drug company profits:

"Public health" has been so perverted and distorted under the government / pharmaceutical collusion regime that instead of teaching people how to prevent disease with nutritious foods, vitamin D and low-cost natural cures, the government is all about injecting infants with vaccines, irradiating women's breasts with mammograms, and outlawing dietary supplements while claiming to be working under the label of "public health."

...The government is now admittedly using weapons technology companies, phone surveillance techniques, immunization tracking and statistical analysis to find out who is not being vaccinated. These are police state tactics now being used by the vaccine industry -- in collusion with dangerous government mandates and rogue CPS agents -- to attack your freedom of choice and your right to make parental decisions about the health of your child.

The CDC letter suggests that the survey is voluntary, so thank goodness for caller ID.

Casey Anthony Surveillance Video

Prosecutors failed to get this jailhouse footage into evidence during the Casey Anthony murder trial. The judge unsealed the video yesterday, and it is now in the public domain.

Judge: Alabama Immigration Statute Not Preempted By Federal Law

When a federal judge issues a temporary injunction that prevents a law from going into effect, it is usually a precursor or figleaf for subsequently throwing out the entire law. Surprise: U.S. District Judge Sharon Lovelace Blackburn Wednesday gave the green light to most of Alabama's immigration enforcement law, House Bill 56, that she had put on hold in August. Unlike Obamacare, for example, the Alabama law contained a severability clause that allows a judge to pick and choose among acceptable or unacceptable provisions.

U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled that federal law does not prohibit state officials from checking the immigration status of students or suspects pulled over by police. Blackburn also refused to stop provisions that make it a misdemeanor for illegal immigrants not to carry immigration papers, allow police to hold suspected illegal immigrants without bond and bar state courts from enforcing contracts entered into by illegal immigrants.

Another example of misplaced priorities: Instead of running around the country suing states for taking action against illegal immigration, the Justice Department and the Obama administration should be using federal resources to securing our borders and enforcing existing law.

In her decision, Judge Blackburn wrote, in part, that

Nothing in the text of the [federal Immigration and Naturalization Act] expressly preempts states from legislating on the issue of verification of an individual’s citizenship and immigration status. There is also nothing in the INA which reflects Congressional intent that the United States occupy the field as it pertains to the identification of persons unlawfully present in the United States.

Read the full 115-page opinion here.

Alabama Governor Robert Bentley comments on the ruling: