Mood:  d'oh

Paperwork Late

Posted by yaahoo_ at 10:16 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 22 May 2007 10:44 PM EDT

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Pelosi’s Syrian Visit Prompted "Crackdown Against Freedom"

Efforts Damaged

Syrian dissidents and pro-Democracy advocates say their efforts were critically damaged by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Damascus last month.

Activists tell The New York Observer that the Assad government has cracked down hard on dissent because it feels the pressure is off.

"Pelosi's visit made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria," said one women's rights activist.

Dissidents point to a five-year prison sentence for Syria's best-known human rights lawyer -- and other harsh punishments for pro-Democracy activists since Pelosi came.

And hundreds of people were arrested in one town for protesting rigged parliamentary elections.

Fox News ~ Brit Hume - Political Grapevine ** Efforts Damaged

Of course the lamestream media is completely silent on this story, yet if it was a Republican there would be grand standing demanding resignations, investigations, hearings etc. Since it's a Demented-crat -- there's complete silence.

Yeah, good job there, Nancy. Way to wave that ugly, wrinkly, plastic-injected, skanky, bitter, foul-faced piece of meat in front of the lions...

Pro-Reform Syrians Angry About Speaker Pelosi’s Visit Last Month

By Noel Sheppard

As America’s media largely gushed over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-California) visit to Syria last month, it would only be fair of them to gauge reaction of the citizens most-largely impacted – the Syrians themselves.

In a rather stunning article published May 15, The New York Observer has gone where few press outlets dare (h/t LGF, emphasis added throughout):

Many Syrian dissidents and pro-democracy activists have privately expressed dismay at Ms. Pelosi’s message of friendship to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. They say that Ms. Pelosi’s visit, no matter how well-intentioned, has effectively pulled the rug out from under them, critically damaging their efforts to create momentum for reform from within.

Think you’ll be hearing Charlie, Katie, or Brian utter such words any time soon? Regardless, that was only the beginning of this marvelous exposé:

“Pelosi’s visit made the regime feel that Americans were divided on how to deal with Syria,” said a Damascus-based women’s-rights activist who, like five other activists interviewed for this article, asked that his name be withheld because he feared punishment. “This sends a message to the regime that the pressure is off, that it can do what it likes.”

And, her visit had immediate negative consequences the media here certainly will not report:

It has certainly seemed that way in the weeks since Ms. Pelosi’s departure, during which time the government has imprisoned Kurdish opposition figures while maintaining travel and work bans on political activists.

In the eastern Syrian town of Raqqa, hundreds of people were arrested for protesting rigged parliamentary elections. And over the last month, the Syrian courts have embarked on a veritable spree of sentencing, handing down harsh prison sentences to some of Syria’s most prominent pro-democracy activists.

Last week, the physician and dissident Kamal Labwani was sentenced to 12 years in prison for having met with American officials during a 2005 trip to Washington. This past weekend, the activists Michel Kilo and Mahmoud Issa were sentenced to three years each for having signed the so-called Damascus Declaration, a document petitioning Syria’s government to normalize relations with neighboring Lebanon.

As a result, reform activity has come to a screeching halt:

The few Syrian activists who are not presently behind bars say they have all but ceased working.

“Most of us are just sitting and waiting,” said the women’s-rights activist. “It’s too dangerous to try any political activities right now. The regime is making a point, and there’s no telling when the current crackdown will end.”

[…]

“Pelosi’s visit was well-meant, but it’s been bad for everyone, and especially devastating for some of our closest friends in Syria,” an American researcher on Syria said.

How marvelous. Unfortunately, a media enthralled by the female speaker won’t dare point to her obvious lack of apparel.

Color me unsurprised.

Noel Sheppard's blog | login or register to post comments
Categories: 2006 Congressional | Foreign Policy | Middle East | Nancy Pelosi

News Busters ~ Noel Sheppard ** Pro-Reform Syrians Angry About Speaker Pelosi’s Visit Last Month

Posted by yaahoo_ at 9:58 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 22 May 2007 10:46 PM EDT

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AP Photo: Spc. Brian Baldwin, 32, from York, Pa. of Delta Company, 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division patrols nine days after a May 12 attack that left four U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi soldier dead and three comrades missing in Quarghuli village, near Youssifiyah, 12 miles (20 kilometers) south of Baghdad, Iraq Monday, May 21, 2007.

Dems set war bill without Iraq timeline

WASHINGTON -- In grudging concessions to President Bush, Democrats intend to draft an Iraq war-funding bill without a timeline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and shorn of at least some of the billions they want for domestic programs, officials said Monday.

The legislation would include the first federal minimum wage increase in more than a decade, a top priority for the Democrats who took control of Congress in January, the officials added.

While details remain subject to change, the measure is designed to close the books by Friday on a bruising struggle between Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress over the war. It would provide funds for military operations in Iraq through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

Democrats in both houses are expected to seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush's handling of the unpopular conflict.

Bush vetoed one Iraq measure this spring, citing a troop withdrawal timeline and additional spending that Democrats included. The rejected legislation included $21 billion more than the president requested, and while some of it was targeted for the military, most of it was for domestic programs.

Democratic officials stressed that key issues surrounding the funding measure remained unsettled, and an evening meeting of rank and file House members was postponed.

One major uncertainty involved the spending that Democrats in both houses hope to include for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, farmers hit by natural disaster, low-income children's health and other programs. While determined to avoid a second veto, they are also hoping that an appetite for spending among GOP lawmakers will prod the administration to accept more than it would like.

Another matter yet to be decided by House leaders was whether to split the legislation into two bills, one containing the war funding and the minimum wage, and the other reserved for the domestic spending.

The officials who spoke did so on condition of anonymity, saying they were not authorized to discuss developments before they were presented to the rank and file.

Democrats in Congress have insisted for months they would not give Bush a blank check for his war policies, and officials said the legislation is expected to include political and military goals for the Iraqi government to meet toward establishment of a more democratic society.

Failure to make progress toward the goals could cost the Iraqis some of the reconstruction aid the United States has promised, although it was not clear whether Democrats intended to give Bush power to order the aid to be spent regardless of progress.

Either way, Democratic leaders have said they hope to clear a war spending bill through both houses of Congress and send it to Bush's desk by week's end. They added the intention was to avoid a veto.

Bush vetoed one bill this spring after Democrats included a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq, and Republicans in the House upheld his rejection of the measure.

The House then passed legislation to provide war funds in two 60-day installments. Bush threatened a veto, and the measure was sidetracked in the Senate in favor of a non-controversial bill that merely pledged to give the troops the resources they need.

That set the stage for the current House-Senate negotiations on a measure to send to Bush.

The Democrats' attempt to draft war funding legislation occurred after an inconclusive meeting on Friday involving White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the Republican and Democratic leaders of Congress.

Democrats criticized the administration for rejecting calls for a troop withdrawal timetable even if Bush has the power to waive it.

For his part, Bolten criticized Democrats for persisting with an approach that had already sparked one veto. He noted the president had already said he was willing to consider legislation that included so-called benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

Both the House and Senate have approved legislation raising the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour in three separate 70-cent increases over 26 months. The measures both included modest tax breaks, mainly aimed at helping businesses that hire low-skilled or handicapped workers.

White House officials have said Bush is amenable to accepting an increase in the minimum wage, although they and key GOP lawmakers favor larger tax cuts to accompany the measure.

Yahoo News ~ Associated Press - David Espo ** Dems set war bill without Iraq timeline

So the Dems are going to surrender to the President. Hopefully they'll keep their word, since they have no idea what integrity is. The fesitivities surrounding the extreme anti-war crowd should be quite amusing after the spending bill is approved.

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:39 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 22 May 2007 2:50 AM EDT

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Hubble Reveals Ghostly Ring of Dark Matter

Hubble Reveals Ghostly Ring of Dark Matter

Astronomers have discovered an enormous, ghostly ring of dark matter 5 billion light-years away--the most blatant evidence to date for the existence of a mysterious substance hidden throughout the universe.

Dark matter makes up a vast majority of gravity-exerting mass in the universe, while only about 10 percent is matter we can see and touch. If dark matter didn't exist, scientists say, galaxies like the Milky Way would have already flown apart from a severe lack of gravitational "glue."

Researchers pointed the aging but powerful Hubble Space Telescope toward a cluster of galaxies known as cluster ZwCl0024+1652. At first glance, the then-unknown ring looked like a ripple in a pond over the twinkling galactic cluster.

"I was annoyed when I saw the ring because I thought it was an artifact," said Myungkook James Jee of Johns Hopkins University.

But it wasn't a glitch, astronomers announced at a NASA press conference today.

The more Jee and others tried to remove the ring by tweaking the data, the more the ring-like anomaly stuck out like a sore thumb. "It took more than a year to convince myself that the ring was real," Jee said. "I've looked at a number of clusters and I haven't seen anything like this."

Because so much dark matter resides in the ring, astronomers said, it bends the light around it to create the ripple effect--dark matter's calling card. The complete findings will be detailed in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

The ring, 2.6-million light-years wide, formed when two huge clusters of galaxies slammed together in a head-on collision 6 to 7 billion years ago, puffing the mysterious matter outward, the astronomers figure. If the galactic hit-and-run had occurred outside of Earth's line-of-sight, the result might look more like the "Bullet cluster"--another cosmic impact site that astronomers view as strong evidence for dark matter.

Richard Massey, a Caltech astronomer not connected to the study, said that the finding is extremely important, especially combined with the Bullet cluster evidence. But he warned that the discovery still faces skepticism from other astronomers. "A lot of things can go wrong in producing an image," he said, explaining the shape could be produced within Hubble's camera itself.

Also, he said, the failure of Hubble's most powerful camera four months ago doesn't help. "Just as we were getting to the point to learn how to find dark matter, it breaks," Massey said.

Richard White, an astronomer with Space Telescope Science Institute in Maryland, said he also was initially skeptical about the ring of dark matter. "But it shows up in another Hubble camera's data as well," he said. "It's not as clear, but it's still there. We argue the ring has been seen twice now."

Unlike other dark matter discoveries, the ring is the first collection of dark matter that differs greatly from the distribution of ordinary matter.

In addition to using gravity to visualize the dark matter itself, the team also created computer simulations showing what happens when galaxy clusters collide. When the two clusters smashed together, they think, dark matter fell to the center and then sloshed outward. As it did so, gravity eventually slowed it down and condensed it into a large ring detected by astronomers.

"By studying this collision, we are seeing how dark matter responds to gravity," said Holland Ford, another Johns Hopkins astronomer on the team. "Nature is doing an experiment for us that we can't do in a lab, and it agrees with our theoretical models."

Finding dark matter is not easy because it doesn't shine or reflect light. So astronomers rely on gravity, which can bend the light of distant stars when enough mass is present, much like a lens distorts an image behind it. Thanks to the laws of physics, knowing how much light is bent tells astronomers how much mass is there. By mapping the gravity's "footprint," astronomers were able to create a picture of how the dark matter ring is distributed in the cluster.

In the image of the cluster, Jee said, "the background galaxies behind the ring show coherent changes in their shapes due to the presence of the dense ring. It's like looking at the pebbles on the bottom of a pond with ripples on the surface."

• See the Video: Dark Matter Ring
• Tiny Galaxies Hide Dark Secret
• The Top 10 Strangest Things in Space

• Original Story: Hubble Reveals Ghostly Ring of Dark Matter

Visit SPACE.com and explore our huge collection of Space Pictures, Space Videos, Space Image of the Day, Hot Topics, Top 10s, Multimedia, Trivia, Voting and Amazing Images. Follow the latest developments in the search for life in our universe in our SETI: Search for Life section. Join the community, sign up for our free daily email newsletter, listen to our Podcasts, check out our RSS feeds and other Reader Favorites today!

Yahoo News ~ Space.com - Dave Mosher ** Hubble Reveals Ghostly Ring of Dark Matter

Posted by yaahoo_ at 4:38 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 21 May 2007 4:47 PM EDT

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AP Photo: Ray 'Bubba' Sorensen talks about the murals he paints of the sacrifices of America's servicemen and women on a 56-ton boulder each year, Thursday, May 3, 2007, near Menlo, Iowa. For nine years, he has painted on the boulder, dubbed 'Freedom Rock.' It has made him a celebrity in this swath of central Iowa farm country and has become a Memorial Day tradition that draws thousands of people. ↓

Rock mural draws Memorial Day visitors

MENLO, Iowa -- Ray "Bubba" Sorensen wanted to quit years ago, but there he was turning up again and again at a 56-ton boulder to paint murals of the sacrifices of America's servicemen and women.

For nine years, he has painted on the boulder, dubbed "Freedom Rock." It has made him a celebrity in this swath of central Iowa farm country and has become a Memorial Day tradition that draws thousands of people.

"I'm thanking these guys who signed up to do a job no one else wants to do," said the 27-year-old graphic artist from Ames, Iowa, whose idea began with a spurt of patriotism after watching the movie "Saving Private Ryan."

Before Sorensen began painting murals each May, the boulder about 40 miles west of Des Moines on an empty stretch of Highway 25 was covered with graffiti.

But only once has the rock been defaced since he began painting scenes of soldiers, whether they're crossing the Delaware with Gen. George Washington or flying in a helicopter over Vietnam.

A 58-year-old Vietnam veteran became so angry at the one bit of graffiti that he beat up the young vandal, earning himself a citation and a $90 fine that other vets helped him pay.

"I got very upset," John Porter said. "The rock is a pretty sacred thing to our community."

It takes Sorensen about three weeks to sketch out and paint scenes on the rock. Using floodlights, he sometimes works past midnight.

On a recent May morning, Sorensen knelt on gravel, his sweatshirt hood pulled over his head against a gusting wind. He methodically painted an image on the rock of Marines carrying a stretcher.

Sorensen tipped his brush to passing motorists, but he rarely took his eyes off the painting.

Every year, 54-year-old Marilee Kajewski of northeast Iowa stops to see the rock.

"I think it is an amazing tribute to the armed forces," said Kajewski, whose father fought in World War II. "It kind of brings home the commitment, the sacrifice that they've made to keep the United States free."

Local business people encourage visits to the rock, arranging tour bus trips and erecting a welcome kiosk with a plastic mailbin that reads: "Leave a Note for Bubba."

"I've got notebooks full of people leaving messages from all over the world," he said. "We got like Sweden, we got the Virgin Islands and China."

The site is especially popular with Vietnam veterans.

Last year, a group of California veterans riding motorcycles to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., stopped at the mural before its completion. They planned to sprinkle the ashes of deceased friends around the rock, but Sorensen offered to mix the ashes into the paint.

"Eight different Vietnam vets ended up in the paint," he said. "It kind of made it a living memorial."

Sorensen sells T-shirts and prints emblazoned with images from the mural, but the money covers little more than the cost of his supplies. He planned to stop painting the boulder in 2003 but reconsidered after taking a call from an American Legion post in Colorado.

"I had to talk to every legion member. I was probably on the phone for three hours," he said. "They were all giving reasons why I shouldn't quit."

Sorensen emphasizes that his murals are in support of veterans, not blind backing of war.

"I'm not pro-war or pro-anybody's policy. It's just one big thank you card," he said.

Yahoo News ~ Associated Press - Nafeesa Syeed ** Rock mural draws Memorial Day visitors

Posted by yaahoo_ at 3:41 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 21 May 2007 3:49 PM EDT

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Higher education sees rise in dishonesty

There were historic breakthroughs, such as the selection of Harvard's first woman president, and there was tragedy -- the horrific shooting spree at Virginia Tech.

But if the academic year now winding down had a theme, it was a more subtle one: dishonesty.

Consider:

• Nine MBA students at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business faced expulsion, and 25 others lesser punishments, for their roles in an exam-cheating scandal -- the most high-profile of several this year.

Nine students were dismissed and another 37 given lesser punishments for cheating on an exam at Indiana University's dental school. At the U.S. Air Force Academy, 18 were expelled and 13 placed on probation. And Ohio University continued to deal with the fallout of a report that found "rampant and flagrant" plagiarism by graduate students in its mechanical engineering department.

• Marilee Jones, a popular and admired dean of admissions at MIT, resigned after admitting she had fabricated her resume when she first applied to work at MIT in the 1970s and never corrected the record. Jones was a prominent campaigner to help students reduce their anxiety about impressing and applying to top colleges, and the revelations stunned the admissions community.

• An investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo called into question whether students really get honest advice from college officials who are supposed to help them navigate the maze of financial aid. Cuomo's investigation and The New America Foundation, a think-tank, have exposed conflicts of interest among a handful of financial aid officers and loan companies.

Several officials at prominent schools have been suspended while their stock ownership in loan companies is investigated. On Monday, the University of Texas fired its financial aid director, Lawrence Burt.

Why do these cases matter in a higher education universe where America has more than 17 million college students at 4,000 schools? Aren't some people bound to dishonesty for the sake of wealth or prestige?

Perhaps, but scholars say there is still reason to be concerned.

"Yes, we ought to hold people to those kinds of standards, and higher education ought to be scrutinized around that agenda," said Marvin Kaiser, dean of liberal arts and sciences at Portland State University in Oregon and executive director of the Society for Values in Higher Education.

Because colleges are the training ground for future leaders, "we have to be role models ourselves," said Kaiser. "We have to create expectations about what it means to be ethical and honest. It's about our behavior and how we run our own institutions, but also what kind of a populace we're creating for the future."

Even cases of simple human failings -- like the Rutgers senior class president who was recently charged in a string of dorm burglaries -- are an embarrassment.

Kaiser said many colleges are talking seriously about the teaching of values. But he acknowledges there is a big difference between talking about values in a curriculum and instilling them in students.

Cheating is a case in point. While a number of colleges have instilled honor codes in recent years, overall there is little instruction about cheating or systematic attempt to combat it. It is very difficult to measure, but clearly widespread, with one study reporting as many as 70 percent of undergraduates admit at least one instance of cheating.

"I think the ... more frightening figure is the fact that 20 (percent) to 25 percent admit to five or more (instances of cheating)," said Tim Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity, which is based at Duke. "The fact that we have a quarter of more of our students admitting they've engaged in serial cheating does not inspire a lot of confidence about the credibility of their degrees."

After the Enron scandals, business schools in particular rushed into the curriculum and heavily publicized a wave of courses designed to prepare students for the ethical dilemmas of the business world. But students don't seem to be getting the message about ethics while they're still in the classroom.

A study published last fall by Donald McCabe, a Rutgers professor who has studied cheating for decades, and two co-authors found 56 percent of MBA students admitted cheating, along with 54 percent of graduate students in engineering, 48 percent in education, and 45 percent in law.

McCabe emphasizes the difficulties of measuring trends in cheating, but the undergraduate numbers at the same 32 universities he studied appear even worse: 74 percent of business students, and 68 percent in nonbusiness fields admitted to some form of cheating.

"I'm past the 'epidemic' language," McCabe said in a telephone interview. "I've been looking at this so long I'm used to it."

The concern is that some schools are used to it, too. Aggressive action against cheating stirs up lawsuits, bad publicity, and -- if a student is expelled -- costs money in lost revenue. Tuition for the nine students facing expulsion at Duke amounts to about $370,000 per year.

That's why McCabe and Dodd both commended Duke for its response. MIT and Texas also took tough stands, insisting that two veteran administrators lose their jobs.

But Dodd wants a much wider range of college leaders to stop tiptoeing around issues of honor and honesty on campus.

"It has to happen at the presidential level," he said. "You don't see presidents gathering at their conference and their symposia, saying, 'We need to take a hard look at this.' The way they embraced multiculturalism years ago, the way they embraced internationalism, they need to come together and embrace integrity."

Yahoo News ~ Associated Press - Justin Pope ** Higher education sees rise in dishonesty

Anybody wanna ask what kind of roll model for honesty Bill Clintax is?

Posted by yaahoo_ at 3:58 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 20 May 2007 4:03 AM EDT

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15 Year-old Student Challenges Al Gore’s Enviro-mental Alarmism...

Portland High School Honors Student Takes on Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’

By Noel Sheppard

Posted by yaahoo_ at 8:25 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 19 May 2007 8:47 AM EDT

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Breck Girl Edwards' 'Convenient' Nonprofit Poverty Center

Center of Convenience?

A news magazine suggests that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' nonprofit poverty center at the University of North Carolina may have done more to help his campaign than it did for the poor.

Business Week reports that Edwards' Center for Promise and Opportunity "became a perch for several once and future Edwards staff members," calling that arrangement "convenient."

While top non-profits try to keep administrative costs to about 14 percent, the Edwards center spent 70 percent of the money it raised on administrative costs -- including $259,000 dollars out of $1.3 million raised in 2005 just for consultants.

The Edwards campaign defends the center, saying, "John Edwards and everyone involved is proud of the organization's work."

Fox News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.
Fox News ~ Jim Angle / Brit Hume - Political Grapevine **
John Edwards' 'Convenient' Nonprofit Poverty Center

As usual, libtards don't look at the piss-poor results of their miserable failures, so I'll be expecting a subsequent press release touting "the best of intentions". The hypocrisy from "Two Americas" Edwards is par for the demented-crat course.

Posted by yaahoo_ at 3:05 AM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 19 May 2007 3:23 AM EDT

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'Surrender Monkeys' Protest Pelosi's Stance On War

SAN FRANCISCO -- The "surrender monkeys" that waved white flags with protesters today outside the district office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco turned out not to be monkeys at all, a city official said.

The two were actually chimpanzees, and they were in the city illegally, said Kat Brown, deputy director of San Francisco's Department of Animal Care and Control.

The chimpanzees -- "April" and "Jake" -- were part of a protest organized by the conservative group Move America Forward, which opposes Pelosi's support for measures that protest organizers say undercut the mission of the troops in Iraq.

"Surrender monkeys" also appeared outside Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's district offices in Las Vegas and Carson City.

In San Francisco, Jake the chimpanzee waved a white flag bearing the phrase, "Surrender is not an option." April wore what appeared to be a beret and held aloft a white flag.

The problem was that both animals -- on hire from a Kern County company that provides animals for movies, television programs and commercials -- were not permitted to be in the city, Brown said.

San Francisco's health code prohibits anyone from possessing or having under their control without a permit a "wild and potentially dangerous animal," including "the chimpanzee, the baboon, the orangutan, the gibbon, and the gorilla, excepting the Family Hominidae (man)."

An animal control officer responded to the protest after being called about the animals' involvement, Brown said.

The handlers for the chimps said the animals belonged to Steve Martin's Working Wildlife, a Frazier Park-based company, Brown said.

The handlers said they did not have the required city permit to have the chimps in San Francisco and would leave, Brown said.

"We told them that if they were sticking around, there was a problem," Brown said. The chimps were loaded up and driven away and no citations were issued, Brown said.

The animal control officer noted the chimps appeared to be in good health and well-cared for, including appropriate caging for transporting them, Brown said.

Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States, decried the use of live primates in a protest.

"It's a shame that Move America Forward is exploiting animals to score political points," Pacelle said. "Bringing chimpanzees into a crowded situation is potentially dangerous for the animals as well as the public. It also shows this group's disregard for the law, since it's generally illegal to have chimpanzees in San Francisco."

Move America Forward did not return a call and an e-mail to their Sacramento office.

E-mail John Cote at jcote@sfchronicle.com. -- Multimedia Image Slideshow

San Francisco Chronicle ~ John Cote ** 'Surrender monkeys' protest Pelosi's stance on war

Posted by yaahoo_ at 2:47 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 18 May 2007 3:17 PM EDT

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Hitchhiker steals car, then dies in crash

OTTAWA -- A Canadian hitchhiker, who stole an elderly man's car after he offered her a ride, died a few minutes later when she lost control of the vehicle and crashed into trees, police said.

The crash happened near the town of Hawkesbury -- about 100 km (60 miles) northeast of Ottawa -- after the man stopped to pick up 20-year-old Mandy Deschambeault.

"The male driver proceeded to step out of his vehicle momentarily at which point the female jumped in the driver seat, stealing the male person's car," local police said in a statement Monday.

"She proceeded to lose control of the ... car, crossing the other lane hitting trees. The female was ejected from the vehicle and found to be without vital signs."

Deschambeault was pronounced dead in hospital.

Yahoo News ~ Reuters **
Hitchhiker steals car, then dies in crash

Karma.
Sounds like a prime candidate for the Darwin Awards.

Media note: It didn't say in the article ... but I'd be willing to bet ... it was an SUV ... that KILLED her! Now all that needs to happen is for the hitchhiker's family to sue the victim for his defective vehicle.

Too bad John 'Breck Girl' Edwards is running for president. There are a lot of people he could sue on this one. Whoever owns the property where she crashed, the car owner for enticing her to take the vehicle... The manufacturer for failing to install seat belts that automatically get put in place once a person is in the driver's seat. Did I miss anyone? Oh yeah, big oil and Bush... Just because.

Posted by yaahoo_ at 6:07 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 17 May 2007 6:20 PM EDT

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