Lead Stories
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Though state tax revenues are shrinking nationwide, Kansas reported in January that its tax revenue from marijuana sales had risen 4 percent–and tax revenue from cocaine, methamphetamine, and other hard drugs was up 21 percent. The state taxes illegal drugs by selling gold-foil revenue stamps (in denominations from $10 to $1,000) that dealers are supposed to affix to their product before sale. Law enforcement is denied information on the buyers of the stamps, to protect them from unconstitutional self-incrimination, but even so a Kansas revenue department spokesman guessed that just about the only people who buy them are collectors.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals recently wrote to Yasir Arafat deploring the January 26 detonation of a bomb on a road near Jerusalem–not because there were human fatalities (one person was treated for shock) but because the bomb was delivered on a donkey. (Said a PETA official, “It’s not my business to inject myself into human wars.”)
Retired pediatrician Alva J. Hartwright, 63, pleaded guilty in February to sexually assaulting two boys, now 11 and 14, by giving them enemas as many as three times a week. (The boys had been living with Hartwright for years, though he could not provide evidence of legal custody; they’re now in foster care.) When police arrested Hartwright at his home in Morrisville, Pennsylvania, in June, they found human and animal feces everywhere, rotting food, a loaded gun, and thousands of photos of boys receiving enemas. (Prosecutors claim the present case may be part of a 30-year pattern.) Hartwright has insisted that all the enemas were “medically necessary.”
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Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Shawn Belschwender.
