Novel spices up politics
AUSTIN, Texas The willowy brunet laughed heartily, lustily, as she dismissed the notion that her romance novel full of steamy sex scenes crossed the line into pornography.
“Everybody thinks it’s fun,” said Susan Combs, who happens to be Texas agriculture commissioner and is now running for state comptroller, the top financial post. “It’s lighthearted and entertaining.”
Combs, a 61-year-old Republican who champions abstinence education and is a darling of Texas conservatives, is being portrayed by her Democratic opponent as a smutmonger and a hypocrite for writing a 1990 bodice-ripper titled “A Perfect Match.”
The dispute has spiced up an otherwise little-noticed contest and led other romance writers of various political stripes to rush to Combs’ defense.
The now-out-of-print novel pairs government code-breaker Emily Brown with Ross Harding, a spy assigned to protect her after she intercepts a message that endangers her life. Our heroine is “a freckle-faced brunet” who is drawn to “the gray-eyed bodyguard,” and desires him to “fill the aching void at her center,” where a “deep heaviness throbbed in her belly.”
Combs’ underdog Democratic opponent Fred Head–who cuts a dashing figure himself with his shock of white hair and tuxedo in his Web site photo–said the book is pornography, and from someone who is seeking support from Christian conservatives.
“We call it two-faced up here where I live,” said Head, a former state representative from East Texas. “She’s not who she says she is.”
Combs, who has three sons and has been married to the same man for 31 years, said her book’s characters are consenting adults in their 20s and 30s, and their activities have nothing to do with her promotion of abstinence education in schools.
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Police: Hospital dumped homeless patients on streets
LOS ANGELES Authorities have launched a criminal investigation into the dumping of homeless people on Skid Row after several ambulances were spotted leaving patients who were recently discharged from an L.A. hospital on the streets there over the weekend.
Police videotaped and photographed five alleged dumping cases Sunday in which the patients later told authorities they did not want to be taken downtown.
Authorities were investigating whether the patients were falsely imprisoned during their transfer and whether the hospital, Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center, violated any laws regarding the treatment of patients.
Hospital officials denied they had improperly handled the patients.
“With all of the issues, why would we send someone there who did not ask to go there? It is illogical,” said John Fenton, president and chief executive of Los Angeles Metropolitan Medical Center.
Skid Row has one of the nation’s largest concentrations of homeless people, in part because it has a cluster of shelters and services to help them.
Police have long suspected that several institutions, including law enforcement agencies from outside the city, were using the downtown neighborhood as a dumping ground for homeless people.
This is the first criminal probe by the LAPD into the practice.
“This is the most blatant effort yet by a hospital to dump their patients on Skid Row against their will,” LAPD Capt. Andrew Smith said.
The investigation began Sunday, when an LAPD sergeant saw a patient being left in front of the Volunteers of America homeless services facility.
The sergeant called an LAPD videographer, who over the next few hours recorded four more ambulances arriving at the facility and leaving recently discharged patients.
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iPod code cracked?
A hacker known for cracking the copy-protection technology in DVDs claims to have unlocked the playback restrictions of Apple’s iPod and iTunes music products and plans to license his code to others. The move by Jon Lech Johansen, also known as “DVD Jon,” could pit the 22-year-old against Apple’s lawyers, experts say.
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5 bodies pulled from river
The bodies of four men and a woman–all believed to be illegal immigrants who drowned in the Rio Grande while trying to slip into the U.S.–were pulled from the river in Harlingen, Texas. The bodies were recovered Monday after a Mexican fisherman spotted them and notified U.S. authorities. It was unclear whether the victims tried to wade across or used a raft.
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Ohio executes cult leader
A religious cult leader was executed Tuesday in Lucasville, Ohio, for murdering a family of five followers who were taken one at a time to a barn, bound and shot to death. The youngest was a 7-year-old girl. Jeffrey Lundgren, 56, did not think the family was enthusiastic enough about his teachings and referred to the killings as “pruning the vineyard.”
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Teaching plan could change
For the first time in a generation, public schools have won broad freedom to teach boys and girls separately, stirring a new debate about equality in the classroom. The Education Department on Tuesday announced rules that will make it easier to create single-sex classes or schools, a plan that’s been expected for almost three years.
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AND FINALLY
Watch out for that vending machine
Three-year-old Robert Moore went fishing for a stuffed replica of SpongeBob and ended up trapped in a vending machine in Antigo, Wis. When the toddler’s grandmother turned her back to get some money, Robert squeezed through an opening in the machine. He landed in the stuffed animal cube. Store employees couldn’t find a key, so Robert had to wait for the fire department to arrive.
