Iraq Vet Killed by Drunk ‘Jackass’ Buddy

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Zachary Hartwell was a 30-year-old Navy veteran who had been married less than a year. In the wee hours of Monday morning, after drinking at a bar in West Chester, Pa., Hartwell made the mistake of climbing into “Jackass” star Ryan Dunn’s Porsche.

Dunn’s blood-alcohol level was .196 — more than twice the legal limit — and his 2007 Porsche 911 GT3 was traveling more than 130 mph before the crash, police said. There was a skid mark more than 100 feet long on Route 322 near the Pottstown Pike exit, which some interpreted as evidence that Dunn slammed on the brakes after overshooting the exit. His car hit a guard rail and flew into the woods, crashing into a tree and bursting into flames. Both Dunn and Hartwell were killed.

Hartwell had worked as a stunt driver on the “Jackass” movies and also appeared in “Minghags,” a 2009 comedy directed by Dunn’s “Jackass” co-star Brandon “Bam” Margera.

Margera visited the crash site Tuesday and said: “[Dunn] was the happiest person ever. He was the smartest guy. He had so much talent. He had so many things going for him. It’s just not right.”

Dunn had been busted for DUI in 2005 after an earlier wreck near the site of Monday’s crash. He and Hartwell had been drinking Sunday night at Barnaby’s, a bar in West Chester where Dunn was said to be a regular. The night turned into a “massive party,” one friend said, when Dunn started buying rounds for the house and reportedly had at least three beers and three shots himself.

When film critic Roger Ebert tweeted about the accident — “Friends don’t let jackasses drink and drive” — it set off a backlash from “Jackass” fans, and Margera responded on Twitter: “I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterically for a full day and piece of shit roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents. . . . Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat fucking mouth!”

Ebert semi-apologized for what he called his “unseemly” comment, saying he “was probably too quick to tweet.”

Show of hands: Who thinks it’s a good idea to drive 130 mph at night while drunk?

Anybody? I didn’t think so.

UPDATE: Video interview with Margera:

SOURCES:


Al Gore, Population Control Expert

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“One of the things we could do about [global warming] is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principle ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children have, the spacing of the children . . . and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.”
— Al Gore, “Games for Change” conference keynote speaker

If the former vice-president can masquerade as an authority on environmental science — even winning a Nobel Prize for his climate-change fear-mongering — why shouldn’t he venture into family-planning and other fields where lesser mortals are in need of his all-purpose expertise? So now, thanks to Al Gore, we know what the most dangerous threat to the planet looks like: Continue reading Al Gore, Population Control Expert →

O.J. Confesses … to Oprah?

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Evidently he told one of her producers in a jailhouse interview that, indeed, he killed his ex-wife Nichole and her friend Ron Goldman.

We already knew he did it. Now he’s reportedly claiming that these heinous murders were committed in self-defense.

Because those white bitches, they’re so dangerous, see? Unless you cut their throats from ear-to-ear, you’re never really safe.

Don Surber cautions that this story is based on a National Enquirer report.

IRS Strips CAIR of Charity Status

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About damned time, too:

Donations to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) no longer are tax deductible after the organization was among 275,000 tax-exempt organizations purged earlier this month by the Internal Revenue Service.
The groups failed to file required annual reports, known as form 990s, detailing their revenues and expenses, for three consecutive years. CAIR had been a non-profit on its own, but in 2007, the IRS approved a separate tax-exempt CAIR Foundation. The foundation never filed any subsequent reports. Both the foundation and CAIR national are on the purge list.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Palin Parks Her Bus

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Scott Conroy of Real Clear Politics — who got an early scoop about the Sarah Palin documentary The Undefeated — seems mystifed by the pause in her “One Nation” bus tour:

Though Palin and her staff never announced a timeline for the remaining legs of her trip, aides had drafted preliminary itineraries that would have taken her through the Midwest and Southeast at some point this month. But those travel blueprints are now in limbo, RCP has learned, as Palin and her family have reverted to the friendly confines of summertime Alaska . . .
More than a few of Palin’s core supporters have grown impatient and confused about her strategy, venting their frustration on Internet fan sites.
The former governor herself has consented to only one interview since her East Coast jaunt ended early this month, and her lack of recent public activity has generated a host of rumors about what her next step might be. Last week, the American Spectator, citing a single and unnamed Republican source, claimed that her presidential decision was imminent. Palin shot this speculation down immediately, but she didn’t counter it with anything definitive.
And earlier this week, some of her staunchest supporters grew concerned about gossip suggesting that she had reached out to Texas Gov. Rick Perry about lending her support to his potential presidential run. . . .

It wasn’t “speculation.” What I reported was a fact: Certain people were told to expect a decision this week, although whether they were told this with Palin’s authorization (or knowledge) is obviously a question mark.

However, Conroy notices what I noticed: Palin’s response was not “anything definitive,” so tea-leaf readers would naturally find signficance in the fact that Palin’s bus tour itinerary is now in “limbo.”

Speculation and gossip are common enough, and the Palin-Perry deal was a topic that got kicked around among some of those who attended last week’s Right Online conference. But nobody I talked to claimed to have any specific knowledge about that, so I didn’t write about it.

If I may be permitted to play the tea-leaf reader, the uproar generated by my American Spectator item last week exposed one obvious truth: Once Palin makes a decision, her decision won’t stay a secret very long.

So count this as “speculation,” if you will: Formally announcing a genuine presidential campaign will require the involvement of dozens of people, and if Palin is moving in that direction, someone involved in the process will somehow (perhaps accidentally) tip off the media’s Palin-watchers and the news will leak. On the other hand, if we don’t see any such signals of an impending announcement, we are then likely to start seeing leaks to the effect that Palin has decided against running.

One final tea leaf to consider: Sarah Palin hasn’t posted a new Twitter message since Sunday.

UPDATE: Obviously, she’s reading my blog. At 4:12 p.m. ET, I mentioned she hadn’t Tweeted in three days, and at 4:31 p.m., she started Tweeting up a storm, including this:

She’s also promoting Bristol’s new book, Not Afraid of Life: My Journey So Far.

UPDATE II: Dave Weigel proposes a new philosophical principle he calls Palin’s Razor: The simplest explanation for what Sarah Palin does is most likely that she is Sarah Palin.

A Christian Virgin in Hollywood?

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Sixteen-year-old Courtney Alexis Stodden, pictured above, is said to be an aspiring singer, but no one had ever heard of her until she married 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchison:

“We’re aware that our vast age difference is extremely controversial,” the couple told E! News in a statement released by their spokesperson. “But we’re very much in love and want to get the message out there that true love can be ageless.”
Stodden’s mother gave parental consent so the two could wed in Las Vegas.
“We are totally supportive of this marriage,” Krista Stodden told RadarOnline.com. “Doug is a wonderful man and we love him.”
She added, ““Courtney was a virgin when she married Doug. She is a good Christian girl.”

Oh, my goodness. The teen bride’s mom vouches for her prenuptial virginity and Christian faith? What could be less fashionable — indeed, what could be more politically incorrect — than a Christian virgin in Hollywood?

Civil Rights and ‘Elevator Eyes’

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“Elevator Eyes: When someone looks another person up and down, giving their eyes the resemblance of elevators.”
— Urban Dictionary

Michael Barone explains that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights sent a 19-page letter to colleges and universities in April:

The OCR letter includes a requirement that universities adopt a “preponderance of the evidence” standard of proof for deciding cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault. In other words, in every case of alleged sexual harassment or sexual assault, a disciplinary board must decide on the basis of more likely than not.
That’s far short of the requirement in criminal law that charges must be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. And these disciplinary proceedings sometimes involve charges that could also be criminal, as in cases of alleged rape.
But more often they involve alleged offenses defined in vague terms and depending often on subjective factors. [Foundation for Individual Rights in Education president Greg] Lukianoff notes that campus definitions of sexual harassment include “humor and jokes about sex in general that make someone feel uncomfortable” (University of California at Berkeley), “unwelcome sexual flirtations and inappropriate put-downs of individual persons or classes of people” (Iowa State University) or “elevator eyes” (Murray State University in Kentucky).

Wait a minute! We’re talking about college students. If young people on our nation’s university campuses aren’t permitted to tell “jokes about sex” or engage in “sexual flirtations” without risk of a federal civil-rights action, who among us is safe?

This Department of Education letter — a seeming threat to deploy Federal Flirting Police — was, in fact, a belated reaction to last October’s incident at Yale University, where fraternity pledges undergoing initiation were made to chant rude things about rape. The offensive fraternity (of which both President Bushes are alumni) was suspended for five years, but not before the feds announced an investigation of Yale. And part of the government’s response was to issue this 19-page letter (sent to all universities) imposing the “preponderance of evidence” rule.

Note that this was undertaken by the department’s Office of Civil Rights, showing how the term “civil rights” has been hijacked. Continue reading Civil Rights and ‘Elevator Eyes’ →

Ladd’s Ad Gets Results

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And by “results,” I don’t mean merely a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer for the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. No, as I report at The American Spectator:

Tuesday, the National Republican Congressional Committee debuted a new “Hahn Got Me Out” Web site telling 36th District voters: “Janice Hahn helped steer taxpayer money to support violent, inner-city criminals who mocked police officers and were involved in breaking the law — including assault, rape, drug possession, and home invasions.”
On Twitter, the TRUSA PAC ad’s director claimed victory. “My ad is working. … Welcome to [the] bandwagon, boys,” Ehlinger wrote, adding later: “I woke up the sleeping elephant.”

Meanwhile, the “Give Us Your Money, Bitch” ad is nearing 600,000 views.

UPDATE: Death threats?

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