What We Learned

Ladies and germaphobes: With apologies to Jerry Springer, here's what happened in 2011 on our news blog and what we learned from it all. Enjoy!

With contributions from R. Scott Moxley, Nick Schou, Michelle Woo, Brandon Ferguson, Chasen Marshall, Marisa Gerber and Gustavo Arellano.

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Orange County isn't Detroit when it comes to murders, but we get off to a swift start in the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 2011, when Robert Sickles, 27, of Mission Viejo, is stabbed to death outside a New Year's Eve party in a Costa Mesa hotel. Adam Baker, 23, of Dana Point, is arrested for murder.
What we learned: Also unlike Detroit, some murder suspects here can make $1 million bail, as Baker does.

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A federal appeals court on Jan. 6 upholds the public-corruption conviction of Mike Carona. Later in the month, Orange County's sheriff-turned-felon starts his five-and-a-half-year sentence in a federal prison in Colorado.
What we learned:
A Little Sheriff can't outrun the long arm of the law, and we sure love mixing euphemisms, metaphors and appendages.

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Orange County is the only major metropolitan area in the United States with an African-American community that's less than 5 percent of the entire population; we clock in at an embarrassing 3 percent. Yay, diversity! We are reminded of what happens when gabachos don't grow up among blacks on Jan. 17, when a Laguna Beach surf shop offers a special Martin Luther King Jr. sale: all black items half-off. HAR HAR! Our marking of the civil-rights martyr gets even more hilarious a week later, when a UC Irvine cafeteria sells fried chicken and waffles in his honor.
What we learned: Why black people don't live here.

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Former Angels second baseman Adam Kennedy is arrested Jan. 26 for driving drunk on the 73 toll road through Newport Coast. He is later charged, convicted and sentenced to the “California minimum”: two days in jail, three years' probation, $390 in fines, and enrollment in a three-month, first-offender alcohol program.
What we learned: Second baseman Howie Kendrick batted .285 for the Halos in 2011. Kennedy, who hit .234, is now a Dodger. The right LA has him.

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It's reported Jan. 31 that Huntington Beach ranked first among California cities in its size category in 2009 for alcohol-involved collisions per capita, according to the state traffic-safety office. Surf City has been in the top 10 in this category for the past decade.
What we learned:
Bus routes.

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Embarrassed by that last item, Huntington Beach police on Feb. 2 reveal the bars producing the most drunken driving arrests are all within stumbling distance of one another on Main Street: Baja Sharkeez, Hurricanes Bar & Grill, and Killarney Pub & Grill.
What we learned: “Taxi!”

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Chapman University undergrad John Taylor Skilling is found dead in his Orange apartment Feb. 3 near bottles of medication. He was the son of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who is denied permission to leave his federal prison cell to attend the funeral.
What we learned: There is something worse than prison.

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Second-time drunk driver Jeffrey David Kirby, 53, of Costa Mesa, is sentenced Feb. 4 to nine years in state prison for causing the crash that killed Charles “Mask” David Lewis Jr., the co-founder of the Huntington Beach-based mixed-martial-arts clothing company TapouT.
What we learned: Just go ahead and Krazy Glue our butt to the bar stool at Sharkeez.

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Finding out in February who resides in that isolated house, lit up night after night, in the rolling hills above Brea isn't a startling revelation, but it was fun to wonder what it would be like to live in those hills, separated from humanity, surrounded by rusty old oil derricks in the shadow of a crumbling nuclear missile base. We can hear the lonely yip of coyotes and the whirring of nodding donkeys as the 57 freeway rumbles in the distance just thinking about it.
What we learned: The structure, which really looks like a house, is a Cooper and Brain Oil Co. facility.

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Villa Park City Councilwoman and Orange County GOP vice chairwoman Deborah Pauly tells a crowd outside a Yorba Linda Muslim charity event Feb. 13 that “sheer, unadulterated evil” is happening inside. As families with small children somberly file in, Pauly mentions that her son and others in the U.S. Marines would be willing to “help those terrorists to an early meeting in Paradise.”
What we learned: Pauly puts the “cunt” in conservative.

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Facing a severe budget crisis spurred in part by wild overspending on unnecessary police services—spending that made several lazy cops millionaires—Costa Mesa's all-Republican City Council decides Feb. 15 to kill a wasteful and morally corrupt police-helicopter program called ABLE. 
What we learned: Dirty birds eventually crash and die.

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Anaheim Union High School District decides to track habitual school-skippers Big Brother-style by giving them handheld GPS devices, we report Feb. 18. As part of the pilot program aimed at keeping kids off the streets, students enter a code five times a day so officials can identify their location.
What we learned: An alternate, less exciting ending to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

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Cal State Long Beach student-published newspaper Union Weekly is under fire for publishing an article March 14 titled “Pow Wow Wow Yippee Yo Yippy Yay” that slams a Native American campus festival with ignorance and crassness (“Indian tacos? What the fuck are Indian tacos?”). After the American Indian Student Council demands university administrators condemn the piece, the paper issues an apology.
What we learned: Kemo Sabe write with forked tongue. 

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Apparently distraught about looming layoffs by a city that has pink-slipped a large chunk of its workforce, maintenance worker Huy Pham leaps to his death from the fifth floor of Costa Mesa City Hall March 17. While others gather at the civic center to support mortified city workers, Mayor Gary Monahan is at his Skosh Monahan's bar, dressed like a leprechaun.
What we learned:
Frosted Lucky Monahan, he's magically outrageous!

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The Weekly on April 15 posts a copy of an email cast wide by Marilyn Davenport, a little old Fullerton lady who belongs to the Tea Party and Orange County GOP Central Committee, that depicts Barack Obama as the baby in a family portrait of chimps above the caption “Now you know why no birth certificate.” Davenport swears the image is not racist, a media shitstorm ensues, and county Republican chairman Scott Baugh calls for her resignation to no avail.
What we learned: Moxley can crush a softball.

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A Laguna Beach winery owner paints over an 82-foot-long mural on the sidewall of his business, claiming he didn't know it was a public work of art. The now-invisible masterpiece was created in 2003 by students of Laguna College of Art & Design, and the teacher ain't happy, as we report April 18.
What we learned: Sniffing paint really does kill brain cells.

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City Church, which holds services at all-ages venue Chain Reaction in Anaheim, launches a billboard campaign with the web address godscrewedmeover.org to be unveiled April 25, but billboard owner CBS Outdoor declines to run the ad—or comment. Kyle Steven Bonenberger, Christ Church's 27-year-old pastor who'd wanted to promote a sermon series on Christian doubts about faith, is irked because CBS ran ads from atheist group and porn stars.
What we learned: “He loves justice and fairness . . .” (Psalms 33:1-5)

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On May 14, we report the unthinkable: The Catholic Diocese of Orange is pondering whether to buy the Crystal Cathedral (which was going on the bankruptcy shopping block due to the nepotism of the Reverend Robert H. Schuller and his spawn) and turn it into a Catholic cathedral. Everyone laughs, since Orange Bishop Tod D. Brown has long-planned to build a $100 million cathedral up the street from South Coast Plaza—until a month-and-a-half later, when the Orange diocese admits it is interested. In the fall, Brown would purchase the Crystal Cathedral for more than $50 million, therefore saving him from the public embarrassment that had become his long-planned cathedral.
What we learned: God will always smile on the dimwitted. Heckuva job, Brownie!

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Syrian freedom activists on June 2 protest outside the Newport Beach medical office of radiologist Dr. Hazem Chehabi, who is also Syria's honorary consul general in Newport Beach and president of the UC Irvine Foundation. The activists, on behalf of those dying in the streets of their homeland, have also protested Chehabi's ties to the brutal Bashar Asaad regime at UCI and the Syrian consul office in Newport Beach.
What we learned: Wait . . . there's a Syrian consul office in Newport Beach?

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It's reported June 22 that bloated ex-Bell city administrator Robert Rizzo, who put the “pig” in “pig at the trough,” is listing his Huntington Beach home for sale. The pad that's been T.P.-ed and shaving-creamed by good-government gremlins eventually sells for just less than $1 million—which is less than Rizzo's annual salary and benies from tiny Bell.
What we learned: You can beat city hall (from within city hall).

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Homeless man Kelly Thomas is beaten senseless by Fullerton Police officers on July 5 and taken off life support five days later. A vigil held in Kelly's honor—across the street from the Fullerton Police station—draws a diverse crowd of local transients, conservative homeowners, elderly folks, teenagers from as far away as Santa Clarita and the Thomas family, all holding candles and seeking the same thing: justice.
What we learned: With two cops later charged in Thomas' death, some justice may happen.

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Pedro Pimentel Rios, who'd been living in Orange County, is deported back to Guatemala July 12 to stand trial for murder. In 1982, Rios was an officer in the Guatemalan army's elite Kaibiles, the unit of special forces responsible for some of the worst massacres during that country's horrific civil war, including the systematic wiping out of the entire village of Dos Erres, where more than 200 people were killed, women were raped and babies' brains were smashed in with sledgehammers before everyone was thrown into a well. Rios was rewarded for his efforts with a job training cadets at the U.S. Army School of the Americas, also known as the “School of Assassins,” before he slipped into obscurity (otherwise known as a gang-infested Santa Ana neighborhood).
What we learned: Every once in a while, even a bleeding-heart liberal can stand tall and salute the fine efforts of la migra—nice work, ICE!

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Eric Naposki played linebacker for the New England Patriots before he murdered a wealthy Newport Beach businessman in 1995. It took years for the police to solve the case, but when they finally nabbed Naposki (and before a jury convicts him July 14), he offers up an alibi so absurd it defies Albert Einstein's space-time continuum.
What we learned: Stupid people will say the funniest things.

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FullertonsFuture.org is the first website to post photographs and videos pertaining to the beating death of Kelly Thomas, but the Weekly is the first media organization to get them up, on Navel Gazing July 25. The combination of the image Thomas' battered face in the hospital bed taken shortly after his death and the videotape taken by onlookers who watched as the cops tortured him as he screamed, “Dad, dad, dad” eventually plays a role in a stunning decision by prosecutors (read ahead).
What we learned: As a veteran Orange County defense attorney once remarked, no cop will ever be charged with murder in this county unless the victim is a) white, b) handcuffed, c) lying down and d) part of an incident in which cops are stupid enough to be caught on camera.

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Ninjas on Aug. 2 supposedly attack and rob Margaret Howell in Gallery HB at the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach and later in her Fountain Valley home. Howell claims in legal complaints that Todd White, the SpongeBob Squarepants illustrator-turned-internationally known gallery artist, is behind the mayhem, while White fires back that no one was attacked and his representatives were amicably confiscating unauthorized copies of his work Howell sold.
What we learned: Patchy the Pirate better watch his arrrrrrrrse.

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We here at Team Navel Gazing are used to being informed that fewer eyes gaze on our hard news (and film) posts than those on other Weekly blogs about computer games, undie runs and undies running while playing computer games. But when we are skunked Aug. 12 by a Heard Mentality music blog post titled “Ten Album Covers Improved by Cats,” we shed a collective tear just as Iron Eyes Cody did in that PSA from the '60s.
What we learned: Okay, kitty tongues on Prince did make us moist.

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Steven William Barton wanted to smell soiled white panties from a Huntington Beach granny, and he was willing to break into a 66-year-old woman's home to satisfy his craving. As we share in an Aug. 16 report on Barton's unsuccessful appeal, he succeeded for a couple of minutes until police tracked him down and took the panties away.
What we learned: One sniff is worth 40 years to life in state prison.

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We mistakenly think the gig is finally up Aug. 18 when state Department of Justice officers herd an office full of employees from the Weekly World Headquarters building in Costa Mesa into the adjoining parking lot. But those weren't Weekly employees (this time); they were workers from the Law Offices of Anthony Kassas, which shares a common lobby with our newsroom. Attorney General Kamala Harris accuses the firm of running a marketing scheme aimed at further separating foreclosed homeowners from their money.
What we learned: We no longer have to deal with smug douchebag sales reps roaming the halls and clogging the urinals with tissue.

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Santa Ana's gentrification wars are always heated, but the discussion went to the inferno once City Councilwoman Claudia Alvarez compared a local, Jewish property owner to Hitler, as we report Aug. 25. Alvarez—never the sharpest tool in OC's council-member drawer, but surely the bitchiest (sorry, Beth Krom)—apologizes only once the Anti-Defamation League gets involved.
What we learned: Not all Mexicans are smart.

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San Juan Capistrano City Councilman Derek Reeve, who previously called for guns to be allowed in city parks, reveals during a Sept. 6 vote on a local dog park that he has a pooch named Muhammad after the Islamic prophet. Religious and civil-rights leaders soon demand apologies, and the host of The O'Reilly Factor deems Reeve “a pinhead.”
What we learned: We actually agree with Bill O'Reilly on something.

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In Orange County, citizens historically look the other way when dirty cops and deputies kill, maim, scar, harass, rape, steal, vandalize, lie or otherwise prove their corruption. But District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, a conservative Republican, finally says enough is enough during an emotional Sept. 21 press conference. Too bad it took the savage police murder of Kelly Thomas in Fullerton for the local justice system to confront scumbags wearing badges.
What we learned: There might actually be a limit on what dirty cops can get away with in OC.

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All defendants in the so-called “Irvine 11” case are found guilty Sept. 23 of two criminal misdemeanor charges—disturbing a public meeting and engaging in a conspiracy to do so—for disrupting a speech by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine in February 2010. The Muslim students are sentenced to three years of informal probation and 56 hours of community service.
What we learned: Only in OC is not minding your manners a crime.

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It's reported Sept. 28 that Rubicel Aguilar Perez claims that his 11-year-old daughter got pregnant not because he raped her, but because she sat on a sperm-drenched toilet seat in his Santa Ana home bathroom and accidentally allowed his post-masturbation output to climb into her vagina without his knowledge, a story a jury found pathetic.
What we learned: There is actually a more pathetic liar than ex-Sheriff Mike Carona.

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More than 25 years after he allegedly stabbed Saddleback College drama student Robbin Brandley 41 times in an unlit campus parking lot, Andrew Urdiales, a former Camp Pendleton Marine, finally returns to Orange County Oct. 4 to face trial for her murder, as well as that of several others. Seeing as how he confessed to the crime back in 1997, you'd think he'd have arrived sooner. But besides killing several women in Southern California, Urdiales also went on a murder spree in Illinois, where he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. Because that state abolished its death penalty several years ago, Orange County DA Tony Rackauckas figured the time is right to bring Urdiales back here for a jury trial, after which, if convicted, he'll be eligible for execution again.
What we learned: Despite the economic recession, as long as there's a chance to lethally inject you, Orange County has no problem picking up your one-way travel bill.

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Christopher Raymond Olague, the 39-year-old pastor of Refuge Southland Church in Buena Park and an AYSO coach, picks up an 8-year-old girl from her Huntington Beach home on Oct. 5 so she can play with one of his five daughters at his house in Westminster. But the girl later tells her mother that Olague instead pulled into a grocery-store parking lot, where, still inside his vehicle, he rubbed her legs, thighs and arms; unbuttoned his pants and pulled them down slightly; asked her to kiss him on the cheek; and then paid her $40 to not say anything. After pleading not guilty at his arraignment, he is again arrested for allegedly possessing child porn on his home computer, including images of a 6-year-old female relative.
What we learned: How to throw up in our own mouths.

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Parole is denied Oct. 5 for Omaima Aree Nelson, who, as a 23-year-old newlywed over Thanksgiving weekend in 1991, dismembered and disemboweled her husband in their Costa Mesa home, chopping off the 43-year-old's head and hands. But when the former Egyptian model ran into trouble disposing of the remains of the former William E. Nelson that she kept in trash bags, she froze, cooked, boiled, breaded, deep-fried and—yes—ate some of him, dipping his ribs in barbecue sauce and later joking, “Nothing tastes as good as the man I married. It's the sauce that does it.”
What we learned: I want my baby-back, baby-back, baby-back . . .

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Joseph Hyungmin Son, the mixed-martial arts fighter and Hollywood actor who received a life-in-prison sentence in September for torturing a Huntington Beach woman on Christmas Eve 1990, is accused of killing his cellmate in Kern County on Oct. 10. Son played Dr. Evil's henchman Random Task in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.
What we learned: Some monsters come out before Halloween.

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A heavily armed and armored gunman walks into Salon Meritage in Seal Beach on Oct. 12 and kills eight people and seriously injures a 73-year-old woman getting her hair done by her daughter, one of the murder victims. The worst mass killing in Orange County history is blamed on former Marine, Tea Party member and maimed boat skipper Scott Evans Dekraai, 41, of Huntington Beach, who allegedly confesses to having entered the salon to kill his ex-wife, a stylist with whom he was embroiled in a child-custody battle.
What we learned: How to wish for Dekraai to become Joseph Hyungmin Son's cellmate.

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Chuck DeVore, the former state assemblyman and current tech-savvy conservative, tweets on Oct. 14 that he won't run against fellow Republican Todd Spitzer for a seat on the Orange County Board of Supervisors, as he's leaving to become a visiting scholar at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. DeVore's parting shot: “As with many in the Golden State, I have found it hard to earn enough to support my family.”
What we learned: It's hard out here for a GOP pimp.

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Chuck Smith is a titan of American Christianity for starting the Calvary Chapel movement, but a gnat of a man. That's what we report on Oct. 18, after audio emerged of Chuckie lambasting Alex Grenier from the pulpit at the Calvary Chapel mothership in Santa Ana—er, Costa Mesa. Grenier is the stepson of an abusive Calvary Chapel pastor and has taken to his blog, Calvary Chapel Abuse, to call out Smith and his hierarchy for protecting kiddie abusers. Smith invited Grenier to a meeting, but it didn't go well: from the pulpit, Chuckie afterwards railed, “I feel sorry for [Grenier] because…what I could do wouldn't hurt much, but I'll tell you what the Lord can do can really. . . . I'm glad I have the Lord on my side.”
What we learned: Chuckie is even more batshit loco than we first thought.

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On Oct. 21, we detail a released policy memo that indicates the federal government will seize any property being used to cultivate or distribute cannabis, medical or otherwise. Someday, when historians chart the self-immolation of the Barack Obama presidency, it's possible they'll identify his administration's foolish war on weed as a major flashpoint.
What we learned: Despite admissions of college-era inhaling by the candidate and early promises that he wouldn't interfere with states that allow medical marijuana, by fall, the president betrayed that pledge.

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Congressman Dana Rohrabacher—a man so cheap he often dresses in foul-smelling polyester suits—deposited into his own bank account more than 50 percent of the campaign contributions he grabbed during July, August and September, we reveal on Oct. 26. His excuse? His wife, Rhonda, worked hard for the money as his campaign manager. Reality check: Rohrabacher has no serious primary- or general-election challenger.
What we learned: Dana's favorite new song is “Help Me, Rhonda.” 

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Five former Theo Lacy Jail inmates charged with the behind-bars beating death of John Chamberlain, a fellow prisoner suspected of being a child molester, are convicted of second-degree murder on Oct. 26. Defense lawyers tried to paint their clients not as innocent, but rather as misguided players in a systemically brutal jail atmosphere that was perpetuated by corrupt and lazy guards, including Kevin Taylor, who allegedly labeled Chamberlain a pedophile and ordered the brutal assault that involved dozens of inmates.
What we learned: If you're going to participate in the mass slaying of an OC jail inmate, make sure the color of your uniform is green, not orange.

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A video hosted by pastor Bobby Blakey of Aliso Viejo's Compass Bible Church preaches that those who are “trapped in the lifestyle” of homosexuality can be “freed” by Jesus. In response, students at Orange County High School of the Arts launch an impromptu Gay Pride Day Oct. 27, complete with rainbow flags and a dance party to Lady Gaga's “Born This Way.”
What we learned: Don't mess with jazz hands.   

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Jason Alexander Mahoney, a member of PEN1, the white-supremacist criminal street gang, loved to yell pro-Hitler crap on the streets. But it's revealed Nov. 2 that when Mahoney was facing a life-in-prison term, he told a judge his Nazi leanings had been disingenuous efforts to gain the affection of fellow PEN1 hoodlums.
What we learned:
There is a hope for a white supremacist's remake of Brokeback Mountain.

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David Whiting—The Orange County Register columnist who attacked heroic citizens for standing up to the Fullerton Police Department after cops savagely killed a homeless man—finally discovers something worthy of outrage: the floor mats at the Richard M. Nixon presidential library. A disturbed Whiting suggests in a Nov. 17 column the carpets are proof of a liberal conspiracy to smear the dead president.
What we learned: Stupid, stupid David Whiting, the real liberal conspiracy involves the presidential library's pink drapes.

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News on Dec. 8 that the Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles are getting one of the best lefties in baseball to come home—Newport Beach-born pitcher C.J. Wilson—is preceded by the scoop that the Halos landed one of the best hitters in baseball, future first-ballot Hall of Famer Albert Pujols. The former St. Louis Cardinal first baseman shakes up not only the Angels' batting order, but also Christian-celebrity star power in a county that has produced Rick Warren, Chuck Smith, Robert Schuller, Kenton Beshore and Bishop Brown—okay, scratch that last one. . . .
What we learned: Pray for no rain!

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Members of Santa Ana and Irvine Occupy movements join hundreds of protesters from Pasadena, Las Vegas, Long Beach and Los Angeles in attempting to close the Goldman Sachs-owned SSA Terminal in the Port of Long Beach on Dec. 12. Though they don't succeed, activists show real chutzpah standing face-to-face with Long Beach Police armed with big sticks and later CHP officers rocking bright-orange shotguns.
What we learned: While restraint by both sides saw the day end peacefully, we now know for future reference that vinegar is a good thing to have in the event of a tear-gas assault.

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JSerra High School teacher and girls' volleyball coach Ricardo Aldana is arrested on Dec. 14 and fired the following day from the private Catholic school for allegedly having sex with a 14-year-old girl. The victim's mother wonders what took so long, saying she informed the principal in the fall that Aldana was either a predator or inappropriate.
What we learned: You can be a private Catholic school not affiliated with the Diocese of Orange and still have pervert teachers.

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It's reported Dec. 16 that the fortune of a Newport Coast couple will soon be split in half with Vanessa Bryant filing for divorce from Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant. The cause: philandering. WTF? Kobe? Cheating? Naaaaw!
What we learned: It'll take a helluva lot more than a huge diamond ring to settle this one, as Kobe has no pre-nup with former Huntington Beach video dancer Vanessa, the mother of his two children. Wish you were on that bus to Dallas with Lamar, don't you, Kobe?

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The city of Santa Ana, under pressure all year from animal-rights activists, announces Dec. 16 it's getting rid of the elephant ride at the city-owned Santa Ana Zoo. Officials say the decision is not based on animal abuse complaints, but on a change in Association of Zoos and Aquariums policy that calls for minimal direct contact between elephants and handlers.
What we learned: To go back to enjoying monkeys throwing feces.

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