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Saturday, June 24, 2006 LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - The driver was sober. The bird that crashed through the windshield of his car might have been flying under the influence.
A California brown pelican probably was intoxicated by a naturally occurring toxin found in algae blooms when she hit the car on the Pacific Coast Highway in Orange County Thursday, wildlife officials said.
The driver was startled, but not hurt. The pelican needed surgery for a broken foot, and also had a gash on its pouch.
"She's hanging in there," said Lisa Birkle, assistant wildlife director at the Wetlands and Wildlife Care Center in Huntington Beach.
Though toxicology tests take several weeks, the odd bird behavior was likely the result of poisoning from domoic acid, which has been found in the ocean in the area, Birkle said.
Pelicans have excellent eyesight and are unlikely to fly into cars when sober, Birkle said.
The center has received 16 calls of strange bird behavior in the past week, and was holding three other birds found disoriented and wandering through yards and streets.
Domoic acid poisoning was the most likely cause of a 1961 invasion of thousands of frantic seabirds in Northern California that inspired Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds."
Those birds flew into buildings and pecked several humans.

This is so typical of the waste of taxpayer dollars to bust a guy who was entrapped...paid just so they wouldn't bust his 'ol lady and child...What a bunch of 'FUCKWADS' (sorry about the language) peace

Cheech and Chong were the first comedians to make fun of the stoner culture of the '60s and '70s -- the people who smoked marijuana

Kevin Griffin,
Vancouver Sun

On one level, A.K.A. Tommy Chong is a straightforward documentary about the prosecution, arrest and imprisonment of comedian Tommy Chong for selling pipes used to smoke marijuana. On another, it is an indictment of the U.S. federal justice system for abusing the law for its own political agenda by deliberately targeting Chong.

Tommy Chong became a household name in the 1960s and '70s as part of of the comedy duo Cheech & Chong. As a kind of Abbott and Costello for the counter culture, Cheech and Chong were the first comedians to make fun of stoner culture -- the people who smoked marijuana. They released six comedy albums and seven films, many of which involved the two comedians playing stoned characters on the run from inept police officers such as Sgt. Stedenko.

Although the duo eventually split and went their own ways, Chong kept doing comedy routines with his wife Shelby. Chong was also involved in his son's company Nice Dreams Enterprises which made bongs and water pipes -- many of which were used to smoke marijuana -- and sold them over the Internet.

Pennsylvania prohibits the sale of drug paraphernalia. As a recorded phone call in A.K.A. Tommy Chong shows, Nice Dreams wouldn't ship to Pennsylvania despite the repeated pleas of one insistent customer. In what Chong described as entrapment by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, a man from the Pennsylvania company travelled to the west coast, ordered $5,000 worth of bongs, and then left the goods in the warehouse in California. He then pleaded to have them shipped to Pennsylvania, which the company did eight months later.

According to Josh Gilbert's documentary, if the U.S. federal administration had been interested in protecting Americans from the evils of dope they would have warned drug paraphernalia retailers that a rarely enforced law was going to be enforced. That would have given everyone a chance to change their behaviour. But they didn't do that.

Instead, DEA officials -- and a Fox News crew -- showed up at Chong's home one morning. They also raided the company's warehouse, taking computers, cash and bongs.

U.S. federal law so favours the prosecution, according to the documentary, that plea bargains are the only way to save yourself from long prison terms. Even though he had only a tenuous relationship with Nice Dreams, Chong pleaded guilty to stop federal officials from seeking two-year prison terms for his wife and his son Paris. In court, prosecutors argued that Chong should do jail time for making movies that glorified drug use. They also cited a comment Chong made in an interview that referred to the U.S. administration's bogus justification for the invasion of Iraq: "The only weapons of mass destruction they found so far were my bongs."

He was fined $20,000 and had to forfeit $103,000. In addition, Chong was sentenced to nine months in a minimum-security federal prison, one of the few in Operation Pipe Dream who went to prison. The entire operation cost the U.S. federal government $12 million.

With the U.S. government about to invade Iraq and start the second Gulf War when charges against him were announced, Chong says that what the federal government did amounted to "a pre-emptive strike against the hippies and the anti-war movement.

"I do have a voice and my voice is against the Vietnam War -- every war," Chong, 68, said in a phone interview. "I just automatically took my stance. I said my view on the radio a few times and they just said: 'Take him down.' "

Chong said that he believes officials in the George W. Bush administration were surprised that he had never been arrested until Operation Pipe Dream, which was sanctioned by then-U.S. attorney-general John Ashcroft.

"They had no idea that I'm as articulate as I am and that I'm an actor. I was playing a role. I discovered a character and was entertaining people with my character," he said from Los Angeles. "Unfortunately, it did not fit in in with Bush's view of the world so they had to take me down. I became an enemy."

They say the best revenge is living well and Chong is doing just that. He's got a book coming out in August with a title that recalls the I Ching, the ancient Chinese Book of Changes. Called I Chong: Meditations from the Joint, it's an autobiography about the time he spent in jail.

Since his conviction, his career has taken off. He's now more popular than ever.

A.K.A. Tommy Chong has its Canadian theatrical debut at the VanCity Theatre in the Vancouver International Film Centre at Davie and Seymour. It runs from Friday, July 7 to Thursday, July 13.

Bikers really didn't defy officials...This headline is
mis-leading. Actually the town welcomed the Biker rally, but could not afford to sanction the event due to the high costs of funding security. read on

Bikers Defy Officials, Rally in Calif.
Saturday, July 1, 2006

HOLLISTER, Calif. - Thousands of bikers roared into the town made famous by Marlon Brando's 1953 film "The Wild One" on Saturday, defying a city council decision to cancel one of the country's most celebrated motorcycle rallies.

The bikers cruised Hollister's streets on personalized choppers, racing bikes and tricked-out Harley-Davidsons. One man rode with goggle-sporting dog in a sidecar.
"We're the taxpayers. We're not hoodlums," said Jack Stout, 51, of Gilroy, who has logged more than 40,000 miles on his 2003 Harley-Davidson Superglide.

The Hollister Independence Rally has been a summer destination for bikers for decades, much like the Sturgis rally in South Dakota. But earlier this year, the City Council voted to cancel the July Fourth weekend event,
saying it was too expensive and too dangerous.

Bikers showed up anyway, though in smaller numbers.
Police Capt. Bob Brooks estimated 5,000 people attended Saturday normally the most popular day of the rally - compared to 15,000 to 20,000 in previous years.
"They'll never stop it. It's been going since the '40s," said Tony Morris, 53, who rode in on his Harley-Davidson Road King from the San Francisco area.

Hollister, about 50 miles south of San Jose, is normally a quiet city home to boutiques and mom-and-pop restaurants. But this weekend it was full of bikers riding custom cycles, many worth tens of thousands of dollars.

City council member Monica Johnson said officials knew when they the event in February that bikers would come anyway, so they devised a contingency plan. The city spent $150,000 on extra police patrols this year, compared to the $700,000 it would've spent if it sanctioned the event, she said. "It wasn't about, we don't want them to be here at all. It was about,
city couldn't afford to have a rally," Johnson said.

Bikers said they were disappointed the city didn't sanction the event, but it wouldn't deter crowds. Hollister has attracted motorcyclists since published an article on a brawl that is credited with inspiring the Brando movie about a renegade biker gang that invades a small town.
The city's decision angered business owners. Many hung signs in windows welcoming bikers and offering specials on bottled water, pizza and beer.
Bikers were organizing a petition drive to make the rally a city-sanctioned event. Johnson said the council would consider the idea for next year.
"We want the public to see exactly what the biker community thinks of this town and how nonviolent (the rally) is," said Marlon Moss, executive director of the Hollister Rally Commission. Moss said the rally should be legitimate because independent-minded bikers would continue to attend out of tradition.
"Even though there's not an event," he said, "the biker community knows the history and they show up."

How about that. they left out Daytona and Myrtle Beach...2 big longstanding Traditonal Biker Rallys.
peace latewood

So, read on beyond comments below the article...There are several more Stories below. Enjoy:) Latewood

Don't forget; If you run across a legitimate news Story of interest, Post it, for All to enjoy. peace:thumbsup: