Tux of Borg

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2537540,00.html Russians turn off Europe's oil supply Tony Halpin in Moscow, Christine Seib and Roger Boyes Europe’s oil supplies from Russia were being held to ransom last night as the Kremlin fell into bitter dispute with a former Soviet satellite state. Moscow abruptly halted millions of barrels of oil destined for the EU via Belarus in an increasingly hostile wrangle with its neighbour. The move raised further questions over whether Western Europe can trust Mr Putin for its energy supply. Experts said that Russia had a deeply entrenched habit of manipulating oil and gas supplies as a substitute for diplomatic policy. Russia’s strong-arm tactics have added resonance in Britain, amid persistent speculation that Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled gas group, will seek to buy Centrica, the British Gas group, which has 16 million gas and electricity customers in the UK. Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, told The Times last night that Germany will use its six-month EU presidency to improve energy security on the Continent. In her first interview with a British newspaper she signalled that she would take a harsher line towards Russia than her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, who is now on the board of a German-Russian consortium constructing a gas pipeline linking Russian gasfields with Western Europe. “For us, energy is what coal and steel used to be,” she said, referring to the driving forces behind the European project. Russia’s “gas war” with Ukraine last January caused supplies to Europe to drop briefly by a third during one of the coldest winters recorded. In this case, Mr Putin’s struggle with President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, branded “Europe’s last dictator” by the US, once again reduced the EU to watching nervously from the sidelines as its energy supplies were hit. Belarus considered itself Moscow’s closest ally until a week ago, but was on the verge of a trade war last night after the bitter flare-up over oil duties. More than 1.2 million barrels of oil a day flow from Russia through the Druzhba, or Friendship, pipeline, providing almost a quarter of Germany’s needs and 96 per cent of Poland’s imports, as well as supplies to Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Andrei Sharonov, Russia’s Deputy Trade and Economic Development Minister, accused Belarus of jeopardising contracts with European customers by imposing a tax on oil passing through the pipeline. Relations between the two countries have soured rapidly since New Year’s Eve, when Belarus and Russia’s state-run monopoly Gazprom came within minutes of failing to agree a gas contract for 2007. The Government in Minsk was forced to accept a doubling of gas prices to prevent supplies from being cut to its ten million citizens. The oil dispute centres on a tit-for-tat row over taxes. Minsk introduced a penalty on January 1 on Russian oil crossing Belarus to Europe, in retaliation against Moscow’s decision to slap a duty on oil it sold to Belarus. A government delegation from Belarus flew to Moscow last night to try to negotiate a settlement. But Mr Sharonov said that there would be no talks until Minsk cancelled its tax. Europe should expect to see the natural resources giant use the same ploy in the future to extract market prices for oil and gas out of former Soviet states, experts said. Andris Piebalgs, the EU Energy Commissioner, said that he was seeking an “urgent and detailed explanation” about the cut in oil deliveries.

http://www1.wsvn.com/news/articles/local/MI36909/ Triple shooting kills woman, critically injures son and his girlfriend MIAMI (WSVN) -- The family of a woman shot to death after being ambushed inside her vehicle is asking why their mother and grandmother had to lose her life. Police say 47-year-old Monique Jean was killed in Monday's triple shooting, which occurred just after 10 a.m. in the area of Northwest 2nd Avenue and 79th Street when a Lincoln Navigator and a Volvo surrounded the SUV occupied by Jean, her son and his girlfriend. Several suspects wearing hoods and armed with automatic weapons boxed in Jean's SUV before exiting their own vehicles and shooting at the woman's car. All three occupants were shot several times before the gunmen re-entered their cars and fled the area, heading south on Northwest 2nd Avenue. Authorities quickly arrived on the scene and set up a perimeter between Northwest 2nd Avenue and Interstate 95. Rescue crews arrived shortly after to transport the victims to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where Jean was later pronounced dead. The two other victims, whose names have not been released, remain hospitalized in extremely critical condition. Officials with the Miami-Dade Police Department say the shooting reflects the kind of violence that should not be seen on streets in the United States. "We hear everyday in the news about ambushes in Iraq, like this one," said Lt. Bill Schwarts. "We think about movies like The Godfather where this happens. We don't consider this happening on our own home turf in Miami. It has to stop." Authorities continue to search for the suspects as they try to determine what may have motivated the shooting. Anyone with information on a possible motive or the identity of the suspects is asked to contact Miami-Dade CrimeStoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opin...1p-408279c.html Our debt to Monica Lewinsky (you heard me) In the various books I've read about the Bill Clinton impeachment scandal - a scandal because of what was done and a scandal because the President was impeached for it - the same story is told over and over again. When the prosecutors or lawyers or whoever finally got to meet the storied Monica Lewinsky, they were floored by her. She was smart, personable and - as the record makes clear - dignified. This is more than can be said about some of the people who write about her. I will not name names. But in recent days, Lewinsky is back in the news. In December, she graduated with a master's degree in social psychology from the London School of Economics. Her thesis was titled "In Search of the Impartial Juror: An Exploration of the Third Person Effect and Pre-Trial Publicity." Her thesis might well have been called "In Search of the Impartial Journalist" because she was immediately the subject of more poke-in-the-ribs stories about you know what. The Washington Post, a better paper than it was that day, called her "dumb-but-smart." It was more than could be said for that piece. It does not take a Freudian to appreciate why Lewinsky chose the topic she did. She is a victim of publicity and her life has been a trial - enough to floor almost anyone. But in Lewinsky's case, she took a bad situation and made something good of it. That hardly makes her "dumb-but-smart," but rather once young - and now older and incomparably wiser. An approximation of this befalls us all, but before we got to become wise and prudent in all things, we were probably irresponsible, outrageous and wild - in other words, young. Fortunately for me - and probably this applies to you as well - my outrageous deeds are known to only a few and some of them, after a lifetime of bad marriages and poor investments, have probably forgotten them. In Lewinsky's case, her youthful indiscretion has been forgotten by no one. On the contrary, it's recorded for the ages, in House and Senate proceedings, in the files of the creepy special prosecutor, in the databases of newspapers, in presidential histories and the musty joke files of second-rate comics. She is a branded woman; not an adulterer, but something even worse - a girl toy, a trivial thing, a punch line. Yet she did what so many women that age would do. She seduced (or so she thought) an older man. She fantasized that he would leave his wife for her. Here was her crime: She was a girl besotted. It happens even to Republicans. But she is now a woman with a master's degree from a prestigious school and is going to be 34 come July. Her clock ticks, her life ebbs. Where is the man for her? Where is the guy brave enough, strong enough, admirable enough to take her as his wedded wife, to suffer the slings and arrows of her outrageous fortune - to say to the world (for it would be the entire world) that he loves this woman who will always be an asterisk in American history. I hope there is such a guy out there. It would be nice. It would be fair. It would be nice, too, and fair, also, if Lewinsky were treated by the media as it would treat a man. What's astounding is the level of sexism applied to her, as if the wave of the women's movement broke over a new generation of journalists and not a drop fell on any of them. Where, pray tell, is the man who is remembered just for sex? Where is the guy who is the constant joke for something he did in his sexually wanton youth? Maybe, here and there, some preacher, but in those cases the real subject matter is not sex, but hypocrisy. Other than those, no names come to mind. This is the year 2007, brand new and full of promise. It would be nice if my colleagues in the media would resolve to treat Monica Lewinsky as a lady, to think of her as they would themselves, to remember their own youth and the things they did, and to understand that from this day forward, anyone who takes a cheap shot at Lewinsky has a moral and professional obligation to look in the mirror. To proceed otherwise is to miss the joke entirely. No longer is it Monica Lewinsky. It is now the people who write about her.

A picture of a smurf would be nice.

Further proof that people in NYC will panic over anything.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dw...os.31047f5.html Dallas-based food chain to accept Mexican pesos 10:11 AM CST on Saturday, January 6, 2007 Starting Monday, patrons of the Dallas-based Pizza Patrón chain, which caters heavily to Latinos, will be able to purchase American pizzas with Mexican pesos. Restaurant experts and economists said they knew of no other food chain with locations so far from the Mexican border offering such a service. "We're trying to reach out to our core customer," Antonio Swad, president of Pizza Patrón Inc., said Friday. "We know they come back [from Mexico] and have pesos left over. We want to be a convenient place for them to spend their pesos." While U.S. restaurant chains have stepped up their marketing to Latino consumers and incorporated Latin flavors in the menu, it's unusual to see that outreach extend to the cash register. "I think it's a very interesting idea," said Ron Paul, president of Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant market research firm. "They are catering to that audience." But Mr. Paul said he did not see other chains rushing to emulate the program, in part because of bookkeeping headaches. Usefulness Others mentioned that the growing use of credit cards and the desire to hang on to the pesos for a return trip to Mexico would dilute the usefulness of the program. "If you're not in a border town, I don't see the functional benefit," said Juan Faura, president and chief executive of Cultura, a Dallas-based marketing and advertising firm. He and others saw the program more as a marketing effort than a badly needed service. "I would see it as a move by the chain to communicate unequivocally to the Hispanic market that they are for them," Mr. Faura said. "I don't see any other reason for it." But Andrew Gamm, Pizza Patrón's director of brand development, said the company tested the idea in a Mesquite store recently and had customers spend "a couple hundred pesos," without any adverti######t of the service. Bills only Under the program – which is set to end in late February but may be extended – the chain's 59 stores will take peso bills only, not coins. Using cards listing the conversion calculations, cashiers will enter the figure in U.S. dollars into the cash register and give the change in U.S. currency. Mr. Swad said some franchisees have made arrangements with their banks to handle the currency. All other franchisees can send the pesos to the corporate headquarters, which will go to a third party to handle the conversion. Mr. Gamm said the company set its exchange rate at 12 pesos per dollar for the duration of the program. As of Friday's trading, 10.94 pesos were worth $1, according to Bloomberg News. Mr. Gamm said the difference would cover the cost of getting the pesos converted to dollars. Mr. Swad said he's prepared to take heat from American consumers who might be offended by the bypassing of greenbacks. "We're not really interested in finding the safest spot on the board," Mr. Swad said. About 60 percent of Pizza Patrón customers and 45 percent of the franchisees are Latino. "We know the purity of our intention, and we're willing to take the heat when there is heat."

I can't wait for OSU to lose.

The war against Jihad Islam won't end when Bush leaves office. I also disagree that this administration is simply passing off the problem. (hence the title of this thread) Evan Kohlmann wrote a good article about the Ever-Mutating Iraq Insurgency. "In the last three months, as Americans debated military options in Iraq, the Sunni insurgency there seemed to grow more extreme. A network of some of the fiercest fighters, dominated by Al Qaeda in Iraq, forged formal new alliances with several rebel groups and may have begun to draw others into its orbit, according to Evan F. Kohlmann... Until 2006, Mr. Kohlmann said, the Qaeda group was 'essentially losing' in Iraq... All that changed in February, when Al Qaeda in Iraq blew up with Askariya Mosque in Samarra, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines. 'That event opened the door to bloodletting between Sunnis and Shiites,' Mr. Kohlmann said, which was the intent... The Samarra bombing was followed by months of violent reprisals by Shiites against Sunnis. Al Qaeda in Iraq, virulently anti-Shiite, became a refuge for aggrieved and beleaguered Sunnis..."

Molson_Golden2002's plan. 1) Withdrawal from Iraq 2) Let Iraq become a terrorist safe haven. 3) Dump the problem onto our kids. Good plan.

Israel needs to fly over Iraqi airpace to get to Iran. There is no way the US is giving them the IFF codes to do that. In other news: American Passports Found on Bodies of Al Qaeda Fighters Terror nuke rocket attack plotted

I think it's Oprah. Her net worth is in the billions and it keeps growing.

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=2722825 USC kicker Danelo found dead at bottom of cliff ESPN.com news services Mario Danelo, a kicker for the USC football team, was found dead Saturday in San Pedro, Calif. Danelo's body was found at the bottom of White Point Cliff in San Pedro, according for a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department. Police did not release further details. Danelo, a redshirt junior, walked on with the Trojans in 2003 and earned a scholarship in 2005, according to the USC athletic department's Web site. He was 15-for-16 on field goals this season and made 44 of 48 PATs, leading the team in scoring with 89 points. Danelo is the son of former NFL kicker Joe Danelo.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7006050157 Ricky Williams Ready For Another Chance In NFL Marc Pruitt West Palm Beach, FL (AHN) - Ricky Williams is ready to come back to the NFL. The question is, is the league ready for his return? And, will any team be willing to take the risk? Williams has served his one-year suspension from the league for violating the substance abuse policy, but has passed each of his subsequent drug test and plans to apply for re-admission to the league when he is eligible in April, according to his agent, Leigh Steinberg. Williams spent a portion of last season playing in Canada before breaking his hand and missing the rest of the season. He carried the ball 57 times for 231 yards and one touchdown for the Toronto Argonauts. If he does return to the league, count former Dolphins coach Nick Saban among one of his supporters. "God knows about No. 34, but if he comes back, you win three or four more games if the guy is playing, I'm telling you, Saban told ESPN. "He's got presence." Perhaps Saban should look into whether or not Williams has any collegiate eligibility left since he has taken the Alabama job. Steinberg said that Williams is living in California, practicing Yoga, and recovering from the broken hand he suffered from playing in the CFL in Canada. In his NFL career, Williams has rushed for 7,097 yards and 47 touchdowns while splitting time with the Dolphins and New Orleans Saints. He has also caught four touchdown passes. He retired from football abruptly in 2004 before it was revealed that he had failed a drug test for marijuana, but returned one year later after it was ruled he would have to pay back over $8 million dollars in salary and signing bonuses. "Ricky's contract is with the Miami Dolphins and he fully intends to apply for reinstatement in April and return to play for the Dolphins," Steinberg added. Exhale, Dolphin fans.

Speaking of which... WVU fan drops a load in GT Band section

My Webpage Now sit, Ingvar, sit. Young women in Sweden, Germany, and Australia have a new cause: They want men to sit down while urinating. This demand comes partly from concerns about hygiene–avoiding the splash factor–but, as Jasper Gerard reports in the English Spectator, "more crucially because a man standing up to urinate is deemed to be triumphing in his masculinity, and by extension, degrading women." One argument is that if women can't do it, then men shouldn't either. Another is that standing upright while relieving oneself is "a nasty macho gesture," suggestive of male violence. A feminist group at Stockholm University is campaigning to ban all urinals from campus, and one Swedish elementary school has already removed them. In Australia, an Internet survey shows that 17 percent of those polled think men ought to sit, while 70 percent believe they should be allowed to stand. Some Swedish women are pressuring their men to take a stand, so to speak. Yola, a 25-year-old Swedish trainee psychiatrist, says she dumps boyfriends who insist on standing. "What else can I do?" said her new boyfriend, Ingvar, who sits.

Dick in a box is like so last week. This week it's

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Publ...13/127nftww.asp Al Qaeda TV A new 24-hour insurgent station reveals al Qaeda's increasing sophistication, and our continuing confusion. AL QAEDA AND its allies now have their own 24-hour television station. Based at a secret studio in Syria, its signal is broadcast to the entire Arab world from a satellite owned by the Egyptian government. This development highlights al Qaeda's increasingly sophisticated propaganda efforts. Al Qaeda placed great emphasis on communicating its message effectively throughout 2006. Osama bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri issued more tapes in 2006 than in any year since the 9/11 attacks. In the past, al Qaeda tapes were generally released to Al Jazeera, but 2006 saw more Internet releases: the terrorist group's message was thus more quickly disseminated. Al-Zawraa TV, the 24-hour insurgent station, is an extension of this trend. Al-Zawraa hit the airwaves on November 14. According to Middle East-based media monitor Marwan Soliman and military analyst Bill Roggio, it was set up by the Islamic Army of Iraq, an insurgent group comprised of former Baathists who were loyal to Saddam Hussein and now profess their conversion to a bin Laden-like ideology. The Islamic Army of Iraq is subordinate to the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni insurgent groups, including al Qaeda in Iraq. The Al-Zawraa channel is not only viewed as credible by users of established jihadist Internet forums, but as a strategically important information outlet as well. Moreover, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, is delighted by the station. A U.S. military intelligence officer told us that al-Masri "has long-term and big plans for this thing." Al Qaeda's previous attempts at setting up propaganda outlets have been limited to satellite radio and the Internet. Al-Zawraa, however, appears to be well financed and may find a much broader audience. The channel is broadcast on Nilesat, a powerful satellite administered by the Egyptian government. Through Nilesat, Al-Zawraa's signal blankets the Middle East and North Africa, thus ensuring that the insurgents' message reaches every corner of the Arab world. Al-Zawraa's content is heavy with insurgent propaganda, including audio messages from Islamic Army of Iraq spokesman Dr. Ali al-Na'ami and footage of the group's operations. The station calls for violence against both Shia Iraqis and the Iraqi government. According to Marwan Soliman, the station's anchors appear in military fatigues to rail against the Iraqi government while news crawls urge viewers to support the Islamic Army of Iraq and "help liberate Iraq from the occupying U.S. and Iranian forces." In Fallujah's Government Center, military analyst Bill Roggio, who was embedded with the Military Transition Team, watched Al-Zawraa with a team of Army translators. Roggio reported on his blog that the station broadcast songs mourning Iraqi victims of the "U.S. occupiers," and that images featured on Al-Zawraa included "destroyed mosques, dead women and children, women weeping of the death of their family, bloodstained floors, the destruction of U.S. humvees and armored vehicles, and insurgents firing mortars, RPGs, rockets and AK-47s." Roggio told us that the station's strategic role for insurgent and al Qaeda information operations is clear: "Al-Zawraa is designed to recruit for and prolong the insurgency in Iraq. It openly espouses violence, particularly against the Shia, but also against the Iraqi government and security forces and Coalition troops." Al-Zawraa's value to the enemy is clear. The visual medium is extremely powerful, particularly in a part of the world with high illiteracy rates. This is not simply a station with an anti-American message: it is enemy propaganda, designed to further destabilize Iraq, empower the insurgency, and win support for the insurgency throughout the greater region. The U.S. government, however, has thus far been unable to remove Al-Zawraa from the airwaves. A State Department official, asked to comment on efforts to combat the channel, told us, "We are strongly supporting the Iraqi efforts to work with the Egyptians to get this off the air." Yet this statement doesn't accurately encapsulate the situation. Radio Netherlands' media analyst Andy Sennitt said of Al-Zawraa's broadcasts on Nilesat, "Nilesat is mostly Egyptian owned, so it means they will turn down any customer who is thought to produce material against Egypt's national interest. So apparently the Egyptian authorities are happy with al-Zawraa." The United States provides Egypt with $2 billion a year in aid, more than it sends to any other country save Israel. This should provide the United States with a great deal of influence over Hosni Mubarak's government; however, it remains to be seen if the Bush administration is willing to exploit this leverage. Removing Al-Zawraa from the airwaves through alternative means, including jamming its signal, may prove difficult since the physical location of the signal's feed would need to be located and, according to Sennitt, it could be anywhere. "All that's needed is a dish pointing at the satellite, and a transmitter on the correct uplink frequency," he said. "The satellite will carry whatever signal it receives." The easiest route to shutting down Al-Zawraa then is to persuade Egypt to remove the station from Nilesat. In the five years since 9/11, the United States has failed to develop a message capable of winning over Middle Easterners, or turning them against bin Laden's radical worldview. The lack of a message is one thing, but the inability to combat inflammatory enemy propaganda is another. If the administration cannot act decisively to prevent Al-Zawraa from spreading its poisonous message, America will only be seen as the "weak horse" that bin Laden spoke of shortly after he succeeded in toppling the Twin Towers.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlin...330&SecID=2 Bush signing statement may allow warrantless mail opening 1/4/2007 4:15 PM By: Associated Press WASHINGTON -- President Bush may have opened the way for the government to open mail without a warrant. The White House said U.S. policy hasn't changed. But last month, Bush attached a signing statement to a postal reform act. It said his administration will interpret the law to permit searches under certain circumstances “to the maximum extent permissible.'' The American Civil Liberties Union said the add-on raises “serious questions'' about whether the president intends to violate the Constitution by authorizing warrantless searches of U.S. mail. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer calls it an “unauthorized reinterpretation'' of the law. The ACLU said it will make a formal request to learn how the provision will be used, or whether it's already been used to open letters and packages in the mail.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/01032007/gossi...cindy_adams.htm TROUBLED TUNES January 3, 2007 -- YOU'VE maybe heard about Britney Spears' sort of fall-down meltdown in Las Vegas just after the stroke of the new year. What I have heard that you haven't heard is that her seeming out-of-control spiral personally might be the downbeat of major inharmony professionally. And whether the one affected the other or which one caused the other, who knows? While in New York she was in the studio recording for Jive Records. She worked some nights until 4 a.m. laying down tracks for a new CD. She thinks it's the makings of a really great album. They don't. Talk inside the company is that either it's redone, or they need to drop it - and her. When this recording session began, she'd just dumped Federline the Insect. It was not a good time in her life. To recharge her career, she reconnected with her long-ago first-time manager, the one who originally brought her to the heights, Larry Rudolph. But constant headlined misbehavior is stoking the problem. Jive fears she's alienating her fan base. Their fan base. Jive caters to a young music-buyer, and the continued atmosphere - drinking, bingeing, partying, whatevering, photos with no panties for a mother of two infants - is hitting sour notes. Besides, Jive is not in sync with the five tracks Brit delivered. Conversation in their offices is: If we bear the expense of a redo, is it possible that, down the road, because of the way she's going, we could end up with a really bad product? Or one that won't sell? The recording has stopped midway. Nothing more's been done because the company doesn't yet know what it wants to do. But that recent front page ain't helping. I called manager Larry Rudolph, who now has the job of gluing these broken pieces back together. I got him on a beach in Mexico. He very politely said: "I don't know where your information came from, but I can only tell you we're in the middle of recording an album. And you can quote me on that." And in the parlance of others meeting up with a load of bull: Olé.

http://cbs3.com/topstories/local_story_004113538.html Young Girl Facing Charges After Wetting Pants Thursday, January 4, 2007 DANVILLE, Pa. A 12-year-old special education student in Montour County was charged with disorderly conduct after authorities said she deliberately wet her pants at school. Her mother told the Press Enterprise it happened because her daughter was frightened by the principal. The girl had been preparing a holiday lunch with her classmates and teachers at Danville Middle School on December 20th. Her mother said when her daughter refused to go to the kitchen to wash some pots and pans, teachers summoned principal Kevin Duckwork, who confronted the girl. She then wet her pants. Her mother said the girl is terrified of Duckwork and has wet herself during previous confrontations with him. But Danville Police Chief Eric Gill said school officials are at their “wit’s end” with the girl, and they believe her actions were deliberate.

If Brady Quinn is drafted by the Raiders, he will be out of this league in 5 years.

What, no Temptation Island or The Real World with Puck and Pedro?

Darin is the master of the rhetorical question. We need to stomp the insurgency. If that means beefing up the borders to stop outside influence, as well as putting troops on every street corner, then so be it.

My Webpage Scandal: Cheerleaders Run Amok in Texas Boozing, bikinis and bullying: how the scandalous behavior of five high-school cheerleaders rocked a bedroom community near Dallas. Jan. 2, 2007 - The pictures posted on MySpace.com looked like the latest installment of "Girls Gone Wild." In them, cheerleaders from McKinney North High School in Texas exhibited all variety of bawdy behavior. One shot showed a bikini-clad girl sharing a bottle of booze with a friend. Another featured a cheerleader and several other girls in risqué poses offering glimpses of their panties. But the most infamous photo of all was taken in a Condoms To Go store. Five smiling cheerleaders dressed in uniform posed with large candles shaped like penises. At least one of them appeared to be simulating fellatio. "It would be an overstatement to describe any of the photographs as pornographic, but it would be an understatement to describe them as harmless high jinks," wrote Harold Jones, a lawyer hired by the school district to investigate the incident. "Quite frankly, I personally found it 'creepy'." The photos are at the heart of a scandal that has rocked McKinney, an affluent bedroom community north of Dallas. By many accounts, the group of cheerleaders, known as the "Fab Five," were out of control—an elite social clique that flagrantly flouted school rules but faced few sanctions. In many ways, they seemed like the stereotypical "mean girls" that periodically trigger bouts of consternation among parents. But there's an added wrinkle to their tale: the Fab Five's alleged ringleader was the daughter of McKinney North's principal, Linda Theret. Amid charges that Theret gave the girls preferential treatment, the school district launched a $40,000 investigation conducted by Jones in the fall. His 70-page report, which harshly criticized Theret and assistant principal Richard Brunner, helped prompt Theret's resignation on Dec. 21 (Brunner remains on paid leave as he fights to retain his job). But Jones's report takes plenty of others to task as well, from parents to police. "Kids will be kids, but adults have to be adults," he wrote. "Sadly, in this saga, I was struck by the reticence of many adults to accept the role of 'being the grown-up'." The cheerleaders had reportedly been a menace long before the condom-store episode, according to the report. When one teacher told a squad member to quit chatting on her cell phone in class, the girl replied, "Shut up, I'm talking to my Mom." On a separate occasion, she offered this response to the teacher's reprimand: "Pull your panties out of a wad." "Gang members were nothing compared to these girls," the teacher told Jones. "They believe they cannot be touched." The girls were apparently just as ornery in their cheerleading activities, leading five coaches to quit in the last three years. The principal's daughter flipped off one former coach. But instead of kicking the daughter off the squad, school administrators allowed her to quit so she could try out the following year. After the incident, the coach told Jones, Theret "tried to ruin my life over this. I was called a liar, crazy, on meds." (Theret's attorney denies this.) The problems culminated this fall under the most recent cheerleading coach, Michaela Ward. Though her relationship with the girls started off amicably, things quickly soured. Among the pranks they allegedly pulled on Ward: giving her what the report described as a "chocolate tampon" and sending racy text messages from her cell phone to her husband and another coach. When the condom-store photos hit the Internet, they triggered a firestorm. Now taking a hard line, Theret, according to her attorney, recommended kicking the five girls off the squad. But a committee of administrators from the school and the district recommended 15-day suspensions for the girls in the drinking photo and 30-day suspensions for those in the condom-store snapshot. After parents protested that the latter picture shouldn't be treated more harshly than the former, the superintendent of schools agreed and reduced the penalty for the condom-store photo to 15 days. In the aftermath, Ward warned the cheerleaders that she would kick them off if there were any more incidents. "Good luck with that," one is said to have replied. Not surprisingly, there were more incidents, including the night of the homecoming dance, when some of the cheerleaders arrived in a limo packed with students who had apparently been boozing. All of this might have remained below the radar had it not been for Ward. In October, she abruptly resigned and recounted her experiences with the girls to the media. In the resulting uproar, the school district called in Jones, whose report makes clear that he was as dismayed by the behavior of the adults as he was by that of the Fab Five. He criticized Ward for abetting the cheerleaders' misconduct. He lambasted school administrators for giving the girls far too many second chances. And he rebuked Theret for failing to balance her dueling obligations as a mother and a principal. The parties involved, of course, dispute these conclusions. Theret's attorney, Bob Hinton, says that she was doing her best to control her recalcitrant daughter and that as principal, she propelled the school to the "pinnacle" of academic excellence—a point that Jones agrees with. One of the Fab Five claims that their depiction as "Girls Gone Wild" is unjustified. Critics "made us out to be people we're not," she says. Ward didn't return calls for comment. At McKinney North, the tumult is finally beginning to subside. None of the Fab Five remain on the team, according to one of the ousted cheerleaders. Theret recently reached a settlement with the school board, agreeing to resign in exchange for a payment of around $75,000 and a letter of recommendation. In her wake, an interim principal has been named. "We want to move on," says a McKinney schools spokesman. Perhaps now that the reign of the Fab Five is over, they can.

http://usmagazine.com/k_feds_text_message_to_lindsay Kevin Federline Hits On Lindsay Wednesday January 3, 2007 Kevin Federline doesn’t waste time. On December 22, less than a month after ex Britney Spears partied with Lindsay Lohan, the aspiring rapper, 28, texted the actress, 20, suggesting, “We should hang out.” But, as reported in the new issue of Us Weekly, the invite went over about as well as K-Fed's debut album. “She was totally grossed out,” a Lohan pal tells Us. Says another, “She thought it was hilarious.” However, Federline didn’t appreciate Lohan’s “Why would I hang out with you?” reply. He fired back, calling her a "firecrotch." Says the source, “She couldn’t believe he was so pathetic. She doesn’t want him using her to make Britney jealous.” Both in Miami to ring in 2007, Lohan avoided Federline at Mansion nightclub on New Year’s Eve, where Federline kissed a mystery blonde named Rebecca at midnight.