One of the least covered current news stories of national interest involves Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, a U.S. Marine with two tours in Afghanistan, strangely being held --- almost two months now --- in a prison near Tijuana after he missed an exit and inadvertently drove across the San Ysidro border with three legal and registered guns and was arrested by Mexican authorities, notes Grumpy Editor.
While few news outlets have run an Associated Press piece on the development, it took Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren, a former criminal defense attorney and civil trial lawyer, to go on scene to bring the “wrong turn” incident to national attention over several days last week via her On the Record current affairs program.
She traveled from Washington to the San Diego-Tijuana border and to the prison on the Mexico side --- even duplicating the confusing road route taken by the 25-year-old Marine in the pickup truck he had driven from Florida to make a new start in San Diego.
Van Susteren’s two-days on-scene investigation included live coverage from the area. She explained to viewers: “Even prison officials said we could interview the sergeant in the prison. But after we waited outside the prison for two full days, other prison officials decided to keep us out, refusing to let us interview Tahmooressi.”
Jill Tahmooressi, the Marine’s mother, who was allowed to visit him in a gymnasium-like area at the prison, told Van Susteren that when she saw her son on April 14, six or seven guards surrounded him.
Even to this Memorial Day --- marking 56 days Tahmooressi has been imprisoned --- there has been no movement from the White House or secretary of state in efforts to release the Marine who reportedly has been chained to his bed in the Mexican prison.
In case you missed these…
YES, WEATHER CONSTANTLY CHANGES. Michael Ramirez at Investor’s Business Daily, had it right with his editorial cartoon showing a white-frocked science professor at a blackboard with lines draw through now passé terms of global cooling, global warming, climate change to underline the updated term --- climate disruption. Off to the lower right in the cartoon, a little boy adds his thought on the blackboard: It’s called weather.
AS COAL PLANTS FADE, POWER COSTS RISE. Along with current high U.S. gasoline prices (above $3 a gallon for 1,249 days now) around the country, look for electricity rates to rise 4 percent on average this year, biggest hike in six years, predicted the Energy Department. Key reason? Coal-fired plants, dominant sources of cheap power generation over the years, are shutting down around the U.S., socked by environmental regulations and economic forces.
FORGET WATER FOR VEGGIES. It took Congressman Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) to reveal in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece on Friday that in the middle of a Golden State drought the “Bureau of Reclamation drained Folsom and other reservoirs on the American and Stanislaus rivers of more than 70,000 acre feet of water --- enough to meet the annual needs of a city of half a million people --- for the comfort and convenience of fish.”
‘HAVE IT YOUR WAY’ MOTTO SHELVED. Burger King scrapped its "Have It Your Way" slogan, used for four decades, for "Be Your Way." The company explained the new phrase is intended to remind people that "they can and should live how they want anytime. It's OK to not be perfect...self-expression is most important and it's our differences that make us individuals instead of robots."
MAGAZINE COVERS SPORT AD MESSAGES. Time magazine and Sports Illustrated, in the Time Inc. family, debuted small ads for Verizon Communications Inc. near the bottom of their covers.
Comments