This Sen. John Ford political soap opera just gets better and better all the time...

He's already facing a possible ethics investigation. Now, what our NewsChannel 5 investigation has uncovered about state Sen. John Ford may just take the cake -- in this case, a wedding cake. It involves thousands of dollars in questionable spending.
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Yet, campaign financial disclosure reports filed by Ford shows the two non-working women in the senator's life pulled in thousands of dollars from his campaign account -- money contributed by special interests and other political supporters.

"It's very clear about the personal use of campaign funds -- the law specifically says you cannot use campaign funds for personal benefit," says Drew Rawlins, executive director of the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance. The agency regulates campaign spending.

But, in the last two years -- years when the Memphis Democrat wasn't up for re-election -- his girlfriend Connie Matthews pulled in payments totaling $18,400 for "professional services."

"Any idea what professional services would mean?" NewsChannel 5's chief investigative reporter Phil Williams asks Rawlins.

"It could be anything," he replies. "It could be work done on his campaign. It could be that she worked in his district."

There's also a payment to ex-wife Tamara Mitchell Ford of $2,450 in 2004. In addition, his reports show:

* $400 to "D Smith" of Raleigh, North Carolina in 2003. Ford pays child support to a Dana Smith in Raleigh.
* just under $11,000 to Karen Michelle Snell in 2002-2004. (Of that, $9,440 was in 2003-2004.) Snell is a former Ford assistant who was once involved in a brawl with his ex-wife.
* $3,000 to Kemba and Autumn Ford in 2003-2004. They are adult daughters from yet another relationship.

All for "professional services."

"It's hard to know if something was personal or not personal when somebody's doing an expenditure," Rawlins says. "It could go either way."

But that's not all.

Two years ago, one of the senator's daughters, Autumn, got married. And the father of the bride opened up his campaign's wallet.

The reception was held at Memphis's elegant Peabody Hotel, inside the beautiful Continental Ballroom.

Ford's campaign paid the Peabody $9,000 dollars in 2003 for "reception, professional services" and "entertainment."

The hotel declined to comment on any of the arrangements or method of payment.

Entertaining at the reception: Larry Dodson from the legendary Memphis group, the Barkays.

Ford's campaign paid Dodson $1,500. The "entertainment expense," Dodson confirms, was for the wedding reception.

And, to capture the memories, the daughter hired Awesome Wedding Videos

But on Ford's campaign report, the word "wedding" disappears from the company's name -- as does $875 dollars from Ford's campaign account for "professional services."

Ford also spent $2,000 in campaign funds with Grand Events -- the company that confirms it provided linens and other decorations for the wedding -- plus $2,000 for a florist, Holliday Flowers.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates:Ford Campaign Pays Women, Wedding Expenses

Ouch!

LONDON (Reuters) - A British woman was sentenced to two and a half years in jail Thursday for ripping off her ex-lover's testicle with her bare hands during a drunken brawl after he refused her sex.

Amanda Monti, 24, flew into a rage in May last year after Geoffrey Jones, 37, who had ended their long-term relationship, rejected her advances.
She grabbed him by the genitals, tearing off his left testicle, then hid it in her mouth before a friend of Jones handed it back to him saying "that's yours."

Monti, of Birkenhead, near Liverpool, pleaded guilty to unlawful wounding at an earlier hearing.

unlawful wounding ?

This just in from the WTF dept in the ongoing TN State Senator John Ford saga.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. State Senator John Ford has told a group of state N-Double-A-C-P leaders he's being attacked by the "white media" and asked them to speak up for him.
The comments came yesterday as leaders of the civil rights group visited the Legislature to support an agenda that includes increasing the number of minority students getting lottery scholarships and fighting predatory lending.

State N-Double-A-C-P President Gloria Sweet-Love says the group has no plans to issue a statement in support of Ford.

The Memphis senator has been dealing with several issues in recent months, including attempts to increase his child-support payments, questions of whether he legally resides in the Senate district he represents and if he properly reported consulting income on state financial disclosure forms.

Ford says he is target of 'white media,' asks for NAACP support

flynn23 wrote:
] ] Now the owners are pushing for massive pay cuts and a
] ] salary cap. It's like dropping 10 grand in a casino and
] ] then calling for the abolition of blackjack. Still, it's
] ] the right idea. I believe NHL players should make $10 an
] ] hour, maybe $12. And we should be able to buy two
] ] tickets, park, throw down some beers and dogs and brawl
] ] in the bathroom for no more than $70 per person. Everyone
] ] would live happily ever after.
]
] AMEN!!!

All for the love of the game which seems to have been lost somewhere. IMO, Bring us back the minor league teams. It's delightfully unrefined yet maintains a core purity you seemingly don't get from the produced megabuck NHL show we have gotten accustomed to.

RE: The forgotten lockout

I think I need a WTF / Stupid People category.. What a dumbass!

What do you get when you try to pass a 15-foot, 9-inch tractor-trailer under a bridge with a posted 14-foot clearance?

A least $100,000 in damage and one of Nashville's main interstate arteries closed from 9:45 a.m. until about 2:30 p.m.

Yesterday morning marked the eighth time since 1991 that the Demonbreun Street overpass above Interstate 40 had been hit by a tractor-trailer carrying an oversized load, said Kim Keelor, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation.

Saturday, 09/11/04 | Middle Tennessee News & Information Another too-tall truck hits bridge over I-40

The store, located on 23rd Street between Fifth and Six Avenues in Manhattan, announces itself with orange banners on its facade and features a more classic, homey interior, with white columns and an atrium.

WTF?!? I think it was Hank Williams Jr. that said "Send me to hell or NYC. It would be about the same to me."

A concierge at Home Depot

A kinder, gentler way to deal with those nasty head lice... LOL.

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- A new method of killing head lice by suffocating them with a lotion that dries on the scalp like shrink-wrap appears to work as well as many conventional medicines, its inventor said Tuesday.

In a paper published by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Dale Pearlman, a dermatologist in Menlo Park, California, said that with his method nits -- lice eggs -- did not need to be combed out of the hair first, and resistance to some drug treatments was not an issue.

In two tests involving 133 children, the treatment eradicated lice in from 95 percent to 97 percent of cases, he said.

The lotion was placed wet on the scalp then dried with a hair dryer to "shrink wrap" the lice and cut off their source of oxygen, he said.

The treatment "effectively treats head lice without neurotoxins, nit removal or extensive house cleaning," he said in the report published in "Pediatrics," the academy's monthly journal.

Doctor details new head lice treatment

WOO HOO!! Way to Go Beaker & Dr. Honeydew!

EXETER, England (Reuters) -- Muppets Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and his assistant Beaker defeated Dr. Strangelove, Dana Scully of "X Files" fame and Star Trek's Mr. Spock to be voted Britain's favorite screen scientists on Monday.

They beat their closest rival by a margin of 2 to 1 and won 33 percent of the 43,000 votes cast in an Internet poll.

Spock came in a distance second with 15 percent followed by The Doctor, from Dr Who, who garnered 13 percent. Scully, the only woman in the poll, came in sixth.

"They are accessible, humorous and occasionally blow each other up," said Roland Jackson, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA).

The balding, white-coated Honeydew and flame-haired, bulging-eyed Beaker created an array of crazy gadgets on the popular television show.

Two muppets named top scientists

The thrill of victory.. The agony of defeat..

RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- Two brothers were arrested in the shooting deaths of two young men at a tailgate party before a college football game, authorities said.

Witnesses said a fistfight preceded the shootings Saturday evening.

The victims, identified as Kevin M. McCann, 23, of Chicago, and Marine 2nd Lt. Brett Johnson Harman, 23, of Park Ridge, Illinois, were tailgating before North Carolina State University's season-opening football game against Richmond. Neither was a student at the university.

Two men fatally shot before college football game

This Week's Onion must-read.

WASHINGTON, DC—Historians and scholars nationwide heralded the discovery of a children's menu on the back of one of the four original charters of the U.S. Constitution, Archivist of the United States John Carlin said Monday.
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Until now, scholars had focused on the elegant calligraphy on the Constitution's front, entirely overlooking the reverse side, which features two columns of fancifully named menu items, such as Yankee Doodle Macaroni, Jumpin' Johnnycakes, and Eagle Fingers.
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"The wording of the Constitution is general, necessitating interpretation, and the same can be said for its children's menu," Carlin said. "We do not know exactly what the framers of the Constitution meant by 'Eagle Fingers.' Strict constructionists are likely to assume that they were strips of eagle flesh fried in batter, but loose constructionists might argue that the term was an amusing way to encourage children to eat their chicken or grouse."
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So far, no adult menu has been found.

Historians discover childrens menu on back of US Constitution