Let’s start in Annapolis, where it should be too damn cold to get into trouble, but nooooo.

Ronald Ernest Phelps is 54 years old and “accidentally” shoots his 23 year old son in the stomach.  He was cleaning his shotgun and it, bygawd, accidentally went off.  Come to find out, the elder Phelps is prohibited from owning firearms.  But, the entertainment value does not stop there.

Detectives executed a search warrant at the residence and located the gun used in this incident as well as a rifle and ammunition. In addition, Northern District Tactical Narcotics Detectives responded to assist with the search warrant and recovered over 200 grams of marijuana from the apartment.

Detectives charged the father, Ronald Phelps, with possession with intent to distribute marijuana, possession of marijuana, as well as illegally possessing a shotgun, rifle, and ammunition as a prohibited person.

The son will be in the hospital for a week or two.  Dad will be in prison a little longer.

Next, a 55 year old Michigan woman earned herself what probably may be the worst obituary ever.

“She was having trouble adjusting her bra holster, couldn’t get it to fit the way she wanted it to. She was looking down at it and accidentally discharged the weapon,” said St. Joseph Public Safety Director Mark Clapp.

When I was a teenager, we used to stuff bobbie socks in our bras, which, on recollection, seems relatively tame and a whole lot safer.

Y’all, promise me that if I die trying to hide a gun between by ta-tas, you will keep it out of the newspaper.

Thanks to Carl and Nancy for the heads up.

Take a deep breath.

There’s a Republican State Representative in Mississippi named Gene Alday who says he’s not a racist just because he walks, talks, and quacks like one.

Alday said he comes “from a town where all the blacks are getting food stamps and what I call ‘welfare crazy checks.’ They don’t work.”

Alday also told the newspaper about a time he visited an emergency room.

“I liked to died. I laid in there for hours because they (black people) were in there being treated for gunshots,” Alday was quoted as saying.

Alday didn’t deny the comments attributed to him. However, he said he was not a racist.

“I am definitely not a racist, at all,” Alday told Mississippi News Now. “Because, I mean, I get along with everybody. And I’ve spent a lot of time helping people.”

He later claimed that yes, he said that, but it was off the record.  You know, because being an off the record racist is so much … better?  And that the reporter took him back to his “days in law enforcement.” “I have a way of talking and saying, ‘take this off the record.'”  Because it’s okay for law enforcement to be off the record racists?

I’ll bet State Representative Gene Alday is kinda shocked at what’s going on in New York.

More than 30 people have been nabbed for food stamp fraud in the North Country.

Investigators say over the past couple month’s people used their food stamps to get food or alcohol at the Old Time Butcher Block store in Brushton.

Texas Senator John Cornyn used to be a relatively quiet and unresponsive piece of senatorial furniture.  But since Ted Cruz got elected, Ole John found his voice.  Ole John has started fretting about getting primaried.

For those of you who don’t know John, he’s a drugstore cowboy who wore embroidered on his shirt and never pulled a trigger in his life.  I once claimed that he singlehandedly put fringe on the endangered species list.  (For you other rhinestone cowboys, if it’s cold enough to wear a leather jacket in Texas, you ought not to be wearing a straw hat.  Any damn fool knows that.)

John’s latest attempt to piss off yankees is his concealed-carry-reciprocity bill.  That means if someone in a gun-nut state has a concealed carry permit, they can conceal carry in a state that doesn’t.

A top priority for the National Rifle Association, the measure would force states like New York with relatively strict gun laws to allow individuals who have concealed-carry privileges in their home state to pack heat.

In other words, they believe that one state’s laws should be carried to all states, you know, like federal law.  But just for guns.  Not for marriage equality or women’s health.  

Honey, that reasoning is the other kind of fringe.

Thanks to Larry for the heads up.

In case you’re wondering what the political law of thermonuclear dynamics is — when the heat is on someone else, it’s not on you.

Thank you, Arizona, for taking the heat off Texas.

Arizona is trying to pass SB1435, in which they redefine what an Open Meeting is.  It used to be that in Arizona any time a governmental body met in a quorum which discusses any manner of the public’s business, it was an open meeting subject to attendance by the citizenry and recorded for prosperity.

I guess they got tired of the horrendous and very public ridicule they were getting.  They want to change that to mean “only when action is taken.”  That means they can say all the dumb stuff they want behind closed doors, but the only part of the public’s business you get to see in public is the actual vote, which generally takes less than a full minute.

In other words, the open meetings law will be changed to mean the open voting law.

That whole democracy thing isn’t working out very well in Arizona.

Thanks to Bunny for the heads up.

Herman Cain.  Yeah, he’s still around.

And he’s still screwing around, too.  From his website —

That’s not quite true.

The President’s 2016 Budget includes $168.8 billion for VA in 2016. This includes $70.2 billion in discretionary resources and $95.3 billion in mandatory funding. Our discretionary budget request represents an increase of $5.2 billion, or 7.5 percent, over the 2015 enacted level.

Yep.  He’s still screwing around.

Thanks to AlanInAustin for the heads up.

I live in South Texas.  We don’t have weather here.  We have hot, not so hot, and steam bath.  That’s not totally true.  We do have a spring season.  Last year it was on a Tuesday.

If you want to see weather around here, you have to watch The Weather Channel.  Jim Cantore is the superhero of weather.

Thundersnow in Boston yesterday.

Dude, that was number six!

Joy is a wonder to behold.