Takeru Kobayashi, of Japan, and Joey Chestnut battle to eat the most hot dogs in under ten minutes in the annual hot dog eating contest in New York.
Word has it the faceless peeps showing up around London are actually Mr and Mrs Gekko. No word yet on how Gordon scarfs down giant soft pretzels with no mouth available. 
A jazz singer shocked some Denver residents after replacing the words to the national anthem with those of the "Black National Anthem" during the annual State of the City address this week.
A Bellevue man will spend six months behind bars after police say he was caught on tape having sex with a picnic table.
Why did the Founders bother toiling in the summer heat of Philadelphia in 1787 writing a Constitution when they could have relied on the consciences of Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy instead?Kennedy is the Supreme Court's most important swing vote and its worst justice. Whatever else you think of them, a Justice Scalia or Ginsburg has a consistent judicial philosophy, while Kennedy expects the nation to bend to his moral whimsy. With apologies to Louis XIV, Kennedy might as well declare "la constitution, c'est moi!"
In a 2005 interview, Kennedy said of the Court, "You know, in any given year, we may make more important decisions than the legislative branch does -- precluding foreign affairs, perhaps." (He was wise to include the "perhaps," in light of the recent Guantanamo Bay decision.) He went on to note how judges need "an understanding that you have an opportunity to shape the destiny of the country."
So much for the country's destiny being shaped by a free people acting through their representative institutions, within certain constraints it enshrines in the Constitution. That wouldn't allow nearly enough room for what Jeffrey Rosen, in a devastating profile of the justice in The New Republic, calls Kennedy's "self-dramatizing moralism."
On any politically charged case, we are supposed to wait with bated breath while the famously agonizing Kennedy decides which side he is going to bless with his coveted fifth vote. In so doing, Kennedy believes he is, in Rosen's description, creating "a national consensus about American values that will usher in what he calls 'the golden age of peace.'" Observers less besotted with Justice Kennedy than Justice Kennedy might put it differently: making it up as he goes along.
The US Supremes..... "We make it up as we go along".
Sales taxes in Chicago are now the highest in the nation, and business leaders are furious.
As CBS 2's Joanie Lum reports, a 1 percent sales tax increase is in effect Tuesday, hiking the sales tax in the city of Chicago to 10.25 percent. By comparison, the sales tax in Lake and Will counties is 7 percent, and in DuPage County, it's 7.25 percent.
A sales tax of 10.25 percent is also significantly higher than the sales tax in other major cities. The next highest rate in the country is in Memphis at 9.25 percent. New York, Los Angeles and Dallas all have a sales tax of under 8.3 percent, Phoenix has a tax of 6.3 percent, and Denver's sales tax is only 3.6 percent.
The Cook County Board voted to raise the sales tax at the end of February, after a five-month stalemate on the 2008 budget. Board President Todd Stroger and his supporters ultimately prevailed, saying the tax hike was necessary to provide health care and other services.
The tax hike applies to everything but groceries, medicine, cars and boats. For larger purchases like furniture or appliances, the taxes can add up.
It will definitely be cheaper to shop in the suburbs. Buy a $500 TV in DuPage County where the taxes are 6.75 percent and you'll pay $534, in Chicago where the taxes are 9 percent, you'll pay $545 for that same television, and when taxes increase to 10.25 percent, you'll pay $551.
For that reason, businesses are concerned that consumers will leave Cook County to make purchases.
From an older concert tour as you can tell from the clothes dryers instead of the chicken ovens.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says it's a "waste of time" to try to get an anti-gay marriage measure on the November ballot.Schwarzenegger has told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he personally feels marriage should be between a man and a woman, but he doesn't want to force his belief on anyone.
While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.
That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain's Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.
Obama spoke in Albuquerque, N.M. last week about his commitment to the issue and his support of a Senate bill to make it easier to sue an employer for pay discrimination.
"Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer," Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. "It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family's income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You'd think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay."
snip
On average, women working in Obama's Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That's according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama's Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one -- Obama's administrative manager -- was a woman.
The average pay for the 33 men on Obama's staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama's staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama's staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)
It's not Friday but I thought this was hilarious none the less.
Read the captions on the video.
Conservatives put on a spectacular display of scientific ignorance this month in the U.S. Senate. During the debate on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would regulate carbon dioxide by setting a cap on emissions and allowing emitters to trade carbon allowances, most Republican senators questioned the reality of human-caused climate change or ignored the climate threat entirely and repeated the talking point that the bill would raise gasoline and electricity prices. It was as if they had been locked in an isolation booth for the past decade. Let's go to the highlights.Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.: "The vast majority of scientists do not believe that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are a major contributor to climate change." Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz.: This bill means "people must turn off air-conditioning in the summer." Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga.: "This bill will attack citizens at the pump" and "increase job losses." Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: This bill will "leave us less competitive in the world marketplace." Sen. John Thune, R-S.D.: This bill "could bankrupt U.S. air carriers." Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo.: "Nobody in their right mind" believes we can get half our power from wind and solar or drive a "fleet of golf carts." Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo.: "It's unclear as to what the long-range trend is as far as the temperature of the Earth is concerned." Conservatives sure are good at staying on message, even one that has no basis in fact. None of their scientific or technological claims is true and most of the economic claims are a wild exaggeration based on studies funded by fossil fuel companies. This may be a defining moment for humanity according to the world's increasingly desperate climate scientists, but to many conservatives it's apparently just another moment to score political points at the expense of future generations.
