In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, people on the internet have taken to groundlessly speculating on the identity of the attacker or attackers based on photos and videos from the scene, a process known as "procrastinating at work," or "crowdsourcing." What they have uncovered is that the attacker is possibly one of a dozen or so people in the vicinity of the bombing wearing a black backpack.

Here is a guide to the internet's amateur sleuthing, which has so far relied on a few dozen hi-res photos from Flickr and news reports. (More than 2000 FBI agents are currently poring over tens of thousands of photos.)

1) Blue Robe Guy

Reddit, which has an entire subreddit dedicated to tracking down the attacker, and a bunch of weird right-wing bloggers have singled out Blue Robe Guy as a possible suspect. This is because he's carrying a black backpack that has markings vaguely resembling an FBI photo purporting to be of a black backpack that contained one of the bombs. Also, he's wearing a blue robe. Who does that? (Also it really looks like a fleece, not a robe.)

Blue Robe Guy has already been made into a meme.

2) Running Away Guy

A series of photos show a man sprinting away from the first bomb site in torn clothes directly after the bomb exploded. The Daily Mail and local Boston NBC affiliate WHDH have singled out Guy Running Away In Torn Clothes because he ran away instead of being stunned or crouching like many of the others at the bomb site. This ignores the fact that there is a guy right next to him who runs away even faster than him. See:

3) Brown Sweatshirt Guy

He had a backpack, and then he appeared not to have a backpack. Gateway Pundit asks: IS THIS THE BOMBER? Man With Black Backpack Before Bombing – Then Without Backpack Moments Before Blast

3) Brown-Skinned Terror Team

As the New York Post will tell you, any brown people in the vicinity of a bombing are suspect. Now, Reddit has shown the power of the crowd to racially profile more quickly and efficiently than any old media organization: Redditors and people from 4chan have identified a few brown people wearing backpacks in the area who appear to be communicating via some sort of in-ear radio.

4) Basically Every Brown Person Wearing a Backpack

This album from imgur, titled 4chan ThinkTank is probably the most definitive look at the internet hive mind at work. It's a mess of captions and blurry close-up photos that apparently show the work of 4chan members in trying to track down the bomber. Currently it has over 350,000 views. Most of these are repeats from above, but also identify a handful of additional brown people with backpacks, sort of like racist Where's Waldo.

5) Suspicious EBay Purchaser

Reddit has already identified the brand of pressure cooker apparently used in the attack as a FAGOR brand pressure cooker, based on FBI photos of remnants of the bomb. Now someone on Reddit found a guy who bought two pressure cookers on Ebay. Another Reddit user was skeptical: "Bad week to have bought pressure cookers in the last year. 'Hello Sir, we are from the FBI, some people on The Internet sent us.'"

Are people on the internet on the right track? Given that there is almost no information about the attackers, it is impossible to say. No doubt the authorities are examining many of the same photos the internet is. But one thing is certain: If any of these details turn out to be remotely correct, the 99% that weren't will be ignored and this will become the story of "How Reddit Solved The Boston Marathon Bombing."

After viewing security-camera footage from the surrounding area, investigators have identified a "possible suspect" in the Boston Marathon bombings, several outlets are now reporting.

That is literally the only "news" that everyone agrees on, not that it reallly even qualifies as news. All the other conflicting reports are below.

Update 3:36 p.m. Oh, what the fuck ever.

Update 3:08 p.m. According to the Globe, the federal court house has been evacuated. Lauren Collins of NECN says it's possibly a bomb scare or fire drill.

Update 3:04 p.m.

Update 2:58 p.m. Here's the FBI statement:

Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

Update 2:51 p.m. CBS is reporting that the man is a "white male, wearing white baseball cap on backwards, gray hoodie and black jacket."

Meanwhile, on CNN:

Update 2:44 p.m. So we just spend two hours watching CNN flail about, starting with John King breaking the news of the "possible suspect"—whom anchor John King, and John King alone, has described as a "dark-skinned male individual"—apparently seen on security cameras at a nearby Lord & Taylor, "carrying, and perhaps dropping, a black bag at the second bombing scene."

From there they (and some Boston outlets) reported that he had been arrested! And was heading toward a courtroom! (Meanwhile, NBC and CBS reported the opposite: no arrests had been made.)

And then they walked that back: he's in custody, but not arrested.

And then they gave up. Tom Fuentes said he had highly placed FBI sources saying no arrests had been made and no one was in custody; everyone else's sources vanished; and CNN started to feel more embarrassing than an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Update 2:34 p.m. CNN has more or less completely "taken it back," as they say.

Boston P.D. says no arrest:

Update 2:21 p.m. CNN is now walking back their arrest report, but insisting someone is in custody:

That being said, local Herald crank Howie Carr is reporting that an arrest has been made.

And the Globe is saying someone is custody:

Update 2:05 p.m. CBS is reporting that no arrest has been made, so. SOMEONE's gonna be wrong.

Update 1:46 p.m. CNN's John King, citing both a Boston and a federal source, is reporting that an arrest has been made.

Update: According to WCVB and AP, an arrest is "imminent or may already have taken place"; meanwhile according to NBC's Pete Williams, there is no suspect at all.

No image or other identifying information has been released (it's "sensitive," John King says), so, uh, all we know for sure is that authorities saw a dark-skinned guy who maybe dropped off a bag at the second bombing scene. Guess they were on Reddit too?

[Boston.com, CNN]

One of the two Parks and Recreation episodes airing tomorrow features a cameo by the inimitable Patton Oswalt who demonstrates at length what makes him so inimitable.

Oswalt, playing an aggrieved Pawnee resident, invokes a local bylaw allowing for a citizen filibuster to prevent a city council vote from taking place.

For the scene, the show's producers asked Oswalt to "ramble a bit about whatever subject he wanted."

And so he did.

For eight magical minutes, Oswalt completely improvises a glorious rant about the Walt Disney Company's upcoming J. J. Abrams-helmed Star Wars sequel and the crossover possibilities that stem from Disney's ownership of Marvel Entertainment.

As the AV Club says: "Patton Oswalt's improvised Parks And Recreation filibuster will make you wish [he] was writing Star Wars: Episode VII."

[video via NBC]

On the heels of Connecticut's post-Newtown push to restrict assault weapons, a Texas tea party congressman has plans to send form letters to Yankee gunmakers, goading them to move their operations to the Lone Star State.

"I encourage you to relocate to Texas, where we can provide a business-friendly environment that encourages innovation and understands the right to bear arms," Republican Rep. Blake Farenthold writes in the as-yet unsent form letter, a copy of which was provided to Gawker by a congressional staffer (see full text below). "We look forward to calling y'all Texans!"

Attracting major gun manufacturers from liberal-leaning Connecticut would be a coup for the relatively quiet Farenthold, a onetime conservative talk-radio host who won his House seat in the tea party wave of 2010—and whose largest previous media splash also came that year, when photos surfaced of him in PJs with a scantily clad woman who was not his wife.

A representative from Farenthold's office acknowledged the letter's existence, but was surprised to hear that a copy had made it out into the open. "Let me try to get back to you," she said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is reportedly 100 percent behind the campaign to lure gun makers from Connecticut, the home to a bevy of weapons factories since Samuel Colt mass-produced his first revolvers in Hartford in the 1840s. Many of America's other large gun manufacturers, including Ruger and Mossberg, call Connecticut home. The state had reportedly been working to bring Bushmaster in, too, until one of the firm's AR-15s was used by mass-killer Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Perry "has been reaching out to firearms manufacturers and makers of associated products" quite heavily since the fallout from the Newtown shootings, says spokeswoman Lucy Nashed.

Perry has sent his own letter of enticement, also included below, to "about 30 companies around the country," Nashed says, adding that the governor's message is simple: "If you are in a state that's considering tightening regulations, you should come to Texas."

Full text of the Farenthold form letter:

Dear Insert Company Name:

In Texas, we are committed to protecting our right under the constitution to own and use guns. My fellow Congressmen and I urge you to consider relocating your firearms manufacturing facilities to Texas. We are also committed to being a business friendly state with low taxes and reasonable regulations.

As home to half of all the private sector jobs created over the last decade nationwide, Texas has shown, time and again, to be the country's leader in job creation. Our state is open for business, whether it's manufacturing firearms, developing new technologies, or pursuing other business opportunities.

The business-friendly environment in Texas prompted CEO Magazine to name Texas the best state in the nation for doing business, eight years in a row. Texas lawmakers have paved the way for business through reasonable regulations, low taxes, a skilled workforce, cutting-edge infrastructure and the advantage of being a right to work state.

Our governor is committed to providing advantages for manufacturers looking to relocate through initiatives like cash grants, low-interest loans, employee training programs and sales tax exemptions. You can see these business-savvy methods at work as our growth rate is double the national average, and from 2002-2011, we created nearly a third of the country's highest paying jobs.

Under the Texas model, we have proven that economic growth is a key to solving our fiscal problems. We make it easy to do business and assist job creators and do not impose unnecessary restrictions and regulations.

We're getting things right in the Texas state, and I'm working hard every day to show my colleagues in Washington how our nation could benefit from following the Texas model. I encourage you to relocate to Texas, where we can provide a business-friendly environment that encourages innovation and understands the right to bear arms. We look forward to calling y'all Texans!

Perry's letter:

[Image via Getty]

Well-adjusted teen Justin Bieber posted a fun image to Instagram yesterday: a drawing of him, nude, cuddling in post-coital bliss with an anonymous fan, also nude (and helpfully labeled "BELIEBER"). He posted it to his feed without comment, leading hundreds of thousands of anonymous teenage girls to conjecture that the girl in the image represented them, specifically.

Over the weekend, Bieber found himself embroiled in controversy after speculating that, were Holocaust victim Anne Frank alive today—or, perhaps, were Justin Bieber a global superstar at the time of the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands— she too might be a Belieber. He also described her as "a great girl." So it's possible, but unlikely, that the Belieber in the picture represents Anne Frank.

As for provenance, the image was created by a Spanish illustrator named Laia who is great at drawing pictures of Justin Bieber. It appears to have been inspired by a 64-chapter Justin Bieber fanfiction epic titled "Danger," in which an alternate universe version of Justin Bieber—nicknamed Danger—shoots someone at a party and then falls in love with a great girl named Kelsey.

Sample line of dialogue:

"Take it down a notch shawty, I ain't gonna kill you."

(That's what Danger Bieber says to Kelsey after she sees him shoot someone over unpaid debts.)

Last night Justin Bieber tweeted that he was "Up watching funny YouTube vids."

[via Instagram, h/t The Sun]

Texas Republican Congressman Louie Gohmert, the patron saint of marginally literate Nacogdoches bigots, has taken time from his busy schedule of indulging big oil to advise America on how it can prevent future Bostons: Build a huge wall and keep an eye on those Mexican fundamentalists.

"We know Al Qaeda has camps over with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border," he told CSPAN this morning (video above). "We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanic when they're radical Islamist. We know these things are happening and it's just insane not to protect ourselves."

Gohmert's comments came shortly after he criticized conservative icon Ronald Reagan, saying the Gipper had "dropped the ball" on immigration and arguing that America needs to be more like Israel:

What I first thought—after, uh, my thoughts and prayers went for the victims and the families in Boston—was, my gosh, we've seen this in Israel. And after israel had to suffer the slings and arrows and deaths and maimings for so long… finally the Israeli people said, you know what? Enough. They built, ah, over 70 percent of it is just a fence, and the rest of it is a wall, prevents snipers from knocking over their kids—and they finally stopped the domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy 'em. And I'm concerned, we need to do that as well...

We want America to continue to be a have for people who just want to live free. And unfortunately when you have the greatest country, the greatest liberties, you're gonna have people that want to destroy you.

[ThinkProgress, CSPAN]

Researchers at the University of British Columbia say they've discovered yet another use for Tylenol besides breaking a fever and relieving pain: Reducing anxiety associated with "thoughts of existential uncertainty and death."

Published in the journal Psychological Science, the research involved a double-blind study in which several groups of participants were given either Tylenol-brand acetaminophen or a placebo.

Members of the Tylenol groups reported feeling less upset following conversations about death and other existential topics.

"Nobody has shown this before, and we are surprised that the effect emerged so robustly," said lead researcher Daniel Randles, "that a drug meant primarily to alleviate headaches also prevents people from being bothered all that much by thinking about death. It was certainly surprising."

One of the study groups was tasked with watching a "surreal [and] confusing" short film by David Lynch and discussing it afterwards.

The researchers found that those who had taken the Tylenol did not experience feelings of existential dread and "looked just like the control group that hadn't talked about their death or watched the unpleasant [film] clip."

Previous studies have already determined the effects acetaminophen can have on social anxiety due to its impact on the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex — the part of the brain that hands both physical pain and social distress.

One study noted by PsychCentral found that Tylenol can also be useful in reducing "the non-physical pain of being ostracized from friends."

[photo via AP]

This is what has been happening on cable news for the past few hours: After insisting that they had confirmation from two separate sources that an arrest had been made in the marathon bombing, and while ignoring reports from nearly every other source that said otherwise, CNN was forced to admit that there were then three sources telling them that no arrest had been made and just recently changed their report status to "conflicted." Meanwhile, there were several different descriptions of the "suspect" that was never identified in the first place in is not at all in custody but might be for all we know.

Yet another person with close ties to Anne Frank has come forward to defend Justin Bieber from critics deriding the questionable comments he left in the guestbook at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam last week.

"Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a belieber," the 19-year-old pop singer inscribed in the museum's guestbook.

The remarks drew the ire of many online who felt they were self-serving and in poor taste.

But now, Anne Frank's stepsister Eva Schloss has spoken out in support of Bieber, saying Anne "probably would have been a fan," were she alive — and presumably still fifteen — today.

"Why not? He's a young man and she was a young girl, and she liked film stars and music," Schloss, an Auschwitz survivor herself, told The Sun.

A close childhood friend of Anne, Schloss became a member of the Frank family when her mother married Frank's father after the war.

"We used to play together, skipping and sitting on the steps together by our apartments," Schloss recalled. "Anne was very lively but I was more shy. I was good in sports but she was more intellectually developed, quite interested in clothes and boys."

Schloss, who lives in London, adds her voice to that of the Anne Frank House's spokeswoman Maatje Mostart, who praised Bieber for bothering to come to the museum at all.

"He could be doing other things in Amsterdam, he was very interested," Mostart told the AFP earlier this week.

[screengrab via BBC]

Following the clusterfuck that was—and continues to be!—the media's coverage of Monday's Boston Marathon bombing, the latest disaster being CNN's completely false scoop that a suspect had been arrested, the FBI is finally sick of everyone's shit. This afternoon, the federal police body released this statement, which explains that there have been no arrests and that the FBI thinks the media is a bunch of rubes:

Contrary to widespread reporting, no arrest has been made in connection with the Boston Marathon attack. Over the past day and a half, there have been a number of press reports based on information from unofficial sources that has been inaccurate. Since these stories often have unintended consequences, we ask the media, particularly at this early stage of the investigation, to exercise caution and attempt to verify information through appropriate official channels before reporting.

The media will almost surely respond by completely ignoring the FBI:

[Image via AP]

A Texas prep school teacher who stands accused of molesting a black first grade student claims she's completely innocent.

Her proof? She's a racist.

61-year-old Esther Irene Stokes of Montgomery was charged with felony indecency with a child last week after allegations surfaced that she had touched the private parts of a 7-year-old female student at Northwest Preparatory Academy Charter School in Humble.

"The victim said that she was in the classroom alone with the teacher and that the teacher touched her on the outside of her clothes, on what she called her ‘private part,' her vaginal area," a Humble Police Department detective told KHOU.

According to detective, Stokes insists that she couldn't have fondled the student because she a racist and doesn't like touching black children.

"The defendant stated that she doesn't like black students because she was prejudiced," reads the official criminal complaint.

Stokes also told police she "does not like the complainant."

A statement released by the school says Stokes was initially placed on administrative leave, but was subsequently terminated upon completion of an internal investigation.

Stokes is currently free after posting a $10,000 bond, but is due back in court on May 21st.

[H/T: The Raw Story, mug shot via Humble PD]

The most common refrain you hear in the wake of tragedies like Monday's Boston Marathon bombing is also the one that sounds most like a redneck bumper sticker: "Don't be scared." In an interview with the Washington Post yesterday, author and security expert Bruce Schneier said the appropriate response to terrorist violence is to face it fearlessly: "If you are scared, they win. If you refuse to be scared, they lose, no matter how much carnage they commit."

President Obama echoed the cliche on Tuesday, in his second speech on the Boston attacks, saying Americans "refuse to be terrorized," and that we we will respond to this latest blow "selflessly, compassionately, not afraid."

Unfortunately, as is the case with most of our political platitudes, fewer Americans than one would like are living up to the ideals touted in our impassioned speeches. Heroes are never in short supply in a catastrophe, of course, but neither are cowards and egoists and creeps who have decided to wallow in melodrama and fear, restless miserablists whose only mile-markers in life are the tragedies that have befallen them. Enough.

It's been sad to see, for instance, how quickly the bombs in Boston have led us into the same modes of thought and reactionary patterns that darkened America when the smoke cleared from 9/11. Literally moments after two explosions sent Copley Square into panic and chaos, when only the bomber himself had any idea what was happening, a spectator still thought it his duty to take down an Arab man he'd in that instant deemed suspicious. At airports, where our post-9/11 fears are at their most palpable, people were similarly anxious and lizard-brained. Part of New York LaGuardia was evacuated for an hour Tuesday morning when travelers got spooked by some loose wires sticking out of a light fixture. Then, at Boston's Logan Airport, two people speaking Arabic were asked to disembark a plane while authorities inspected a piece of luggage they thought was shady. Once again, the investigation would reveal that neither Arabic speaker had done anything wrong.

Our media, the people who are supposed to analyze and explain the contours of disaster when it strikes, has been as hamfisted as anyone who lunges at the first Arab he sees in time of crisis. While some outlets like the New York Post were reporting total falsehoods, Alex Jones used his pedestal to pawn off more of his emotionally unstable ramblings as political thought. Even the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof took the marathon bombing for his cue to rail against the GOP. All of this was perfectly nauseating, but the worst of the lot was the treacly fearmongering disguised as eulogy.

In a National Journal piece bearing the leading headline, "Why Boston Bombings Might Be Scarier Than 9/11," Ron Fournier attempted to make the case that the real collateral devastation of Monday's bombing is Americans not feeling safe in their private lives anymore. "It's one thing—a dastardly, evil thing—to strike symbols of economic and military power," wrote Fournier. "It's another to hit the heart of America. Death at the finish line in Boston makes every place (and everybody) less secure." At the end of the piece, after attempting to weave together several disjointed ideas, Fournier throws in this grim and strained non sequitur: "Today, officials identified the 8-year-old boy killed at the finish line. His name was Martin Richard. He left a world unworthy of him."

Shortly after Fournier's piece went live, columnist Anne Taylor Fleming followed with her own sky-is-falling take at Reuters, with prose so purple Prince might write a song about it. This article was called, "With the Boston bombing, fear returns," and it, too, namedrops 9/11 to suggest that the world is terrifying, and we should be terrified.

We cannot keep our children safe. Yes, we can tell them they are good people and bad people, etc. etc. But we cannot keep them safe. That is the new reality. An eight-year-old boy died on the streets of Boston where he had gone to hug his father at the end of the race. This is your country now.

Presumably Fleming meant we can tell our children "THERE are good people and bad people," because surely we mustn't tell our children they are bad people. But that sort of typo is to be expected in a time when so many people are rushing to vomit out their nervousness and pass it off as analysis. I'm not sure if this world was unworthy of Martin Richard, but I am quite certain most of the half-baked requiems casually invoking him over and over in order to construct a neo-September 11 narrative are unworthy of his memory.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that some people have been behaving this week as if they wanted America to suffer another major terrorist attack, but the speed with which some have come forward to suggest that this is our new 9/11 has been ugly and disconcerting. Last year dozens of people—many of them children—were slaughtered wholesale in a movie theater and elementary school, and yet there was no Ron Fournier piece calling Newtown scarier than 9/11 because we could no longer feel safe going about our daily lives. Fournier's new article also fails to adequately explain his main thesis that the Boston bombing was any more personal than 9/11, when people doing something as quotidian as flying on planes were smashed into people doing something as quotidian as going to work.

Worth noting, and not to denigrate the victims of the marathon bombing, nor the losses of their families, is that despite the pandemonium around the Boston attacks, ultimately—and blessedly—only three people died. According to one estimate, at least four times more American children die each year when their parents pray to god for their illnesses to go away rather than getting them proper medical attention. And yet we don't say that every year these nutty Christian sects are allowed to operate within America is "scarier than 9/11." The Oklahoma City Bombing killed nearly 200 and injured almost 700, but nobody is staring skeptically at white men across the aisles of planes, the pale visage of Timothy McVeigh forever haunting their inner-thoughts with memories of the evils your average white guy can commit.

Knowing America, it will—and should—forever acknowledge and remember the three people killed and dozens injured in Monday's godawful bombing. But when will we learn to be wary of the conditioned responses we've fallen into the way we're wary of suspicious packages? When will we stop the fear-baiting and admit that incidents of terrorism are exceedingly rare? When will we stop tackling Arab people at the first sign of trouble, ignoring how alienating that might be to an Arab who previously had no problem with Americans? When will we stop arbitrarily holding violent incidents up to 9/11 to see how the two compare in macabre and stupid thought experiments? When will we stop using dead children to convince everyone they should be scared, because the world is scary? We can talk about fearlessness in the face of violence all we'd like, but as long as we continue doing the above without question, it's obvious to everyone, terrorists included, that we are scared as all hell.

Refusing to be frightened, as Bruce Schneier suggests we do, is easy when all that means to you is writing "Pray for Boston" on your Facebook wall or putting up a plaque in honor of the victims. It becomes a lot harder when you see it as asking you to continue walking your kid through public squares crowded with trash cans and other people's backpacks, teaching them to see a world in which there's not another 9/11 around every corner.

[Image via Getty]

On Wednesday, over 2,300 mourners attended the funeral of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in London.

But only one of them was hot. Her name is Amanda Thatcher. She is Margaret Thatcher's 19-year-old granddaughter. She was everyone's favorite part of the funeral.

Because it would be crass to come right out and say "Girl, you are so smoking hot that I wish your grandmother were alive so she could see how smoking hot you are," British papers are commending Amanda on her reading of Ephesians 6: 10-18. They're calling it "pitch perfect," "flawless," "emotional yet poised," "flawless," and "flawless." (FLAWLESS.)

If you would like to experience dynamite perfection in verbal form, here is a video of Amanda giving her reading.

Like many hot people, Amanda Thatcher is American. Born in Dallas, she spent the early part of her childhood in Cape Town, South Africa but returned, along with her mother and older brother, to her mother's home state of Texas in 2004 at age 11. The move happened after her father, a former race car driver, was arrested in South Africa for his alleged involvement in a failed coup to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. (You know, that old chestnut.) The U.S. refused to give Mark Thatcher a visa based on his record and he and Amanda's mother, Diane, separated. She now attends the University of Richmond.

Amanda's brother, Michael, a high school football star who majored in chemistry at Texas A&M, was also present at the service but did not read. He is the forgotten brother; James Middleton to Amanda's show-stealing Pippa. The siblings were Margaret Thatcher's only grandchildren.

As for what Amanda Thatcher will do now that everyone has fallen in love with her, it's unclear. She'll probably return to the University of Richmond, where she competes on the track and field team. Perhaps she will bake a chocolate lava cake, which this random lady (who bills herself as a family friend) says is her specialty. Maybe she will read aloud, slowly, from Ephesians — something she's been known to do in the past (see above).

The world is Amanda's oyster and Amanda is the hot sauce you put on the oyster.

And the single strand of pearls around her neck are the pearls you find in the oyster.

Maybe she'll have oysters.

[Daily Mail , h/t God for the glorious birth of Amanda Thatcher // Image via Getty ]

Today, almost four months to the day after a gunman opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Senate started voting on a series of amendments to President Obama's gun bill, and the body immediately voted down a bipartisan plan to extended background checks on gun sales. At 54 to 46, most of the Senators approved of the plan, which would have required checks for guns sold online or at gun shows. But that wasn't enough, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took a deal requiring every amendment get 60 votes to pass. Why did he do that? The Washington Post explains:

So, why didn't Reid try to get the unanimous consent agreement to set all amendment votes at a 51-vote threshold?

Because to do that would have opened the bill up to the very likely possibility that amendments favored by gun rights advocates would be added to it. One, for example, would allow gun owners who receive a state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon to take that weapon into other states that issue such permits.

By agreeing to a 60-vote threshold on all the amendments, gun control advocates have made passage more difficult for the amendments that, in their view, would weaken or, more likely, kill the larger bill.

What Reid was trying to do then was to thread a very fine needle by a) keeping open the possibility that expanding background checks might make it into the bill while b) keeping amendments that would have doomed the bill out of it.

In the end, it was too difficult a task.

Besides 54 senators, a full 80 percent of Americans supported increasing background checks, according to recent polling. And there you have democracy in action: Most senators liked it, most Americans liked it, the president liked it, and it's now dead.

[Image via AP]

A Missouri State Senator previously known best for appearing in a Tea Party movie about an armed revolt against the government and allegedly assaulting a staffer employed by his political rival is back in the news today after a heated email exchange with a constituent was published by the River Front Times' Daily RFT blog.

Wildwood native Bart Cohn somehow found himself on the mailing list of State Sen. Brian Nieves (R-Franklin County), and desperately wanted off.

Cohn, a former local lawmaker whose political views differ greatly from Nieves', sent the lawmaker an email last Friday asking him to "take me off your mailing list," before throwing in the word "freak" for good measure.

Nieves, who apparently couldn't think of anything better with which to occupy his time, decided to reply to Cohn with a petty email of his own:

Who are you? Is there something wrong with you? Are you incapable of communicating in a way that common, decent people do?

Tell me this, how did you ever even get on MY Distribution list?

Cohn responded to Nieves' inquiries with a reiteration of his original request: "Remove me from your list. I despise you."

That's when things got weird (sic throughout).

Nieves:

Tell me who you are and how you ever got on my list. I don't take we'll to some troll sneaking on to my distribution list.

Cohn:

I don't care what you take well to. Take me off your list. I don't know how I got on your list. And I don't sneak. I'll tell you to your face I think you're a freak. Now act like a big boy, senator, and remove me from your list as I've requested. And stop harassing me or I'll make an issue of it.

Nieves:

Explain "issue"

Are you threatening an elected official? I'm sure your very Big & Bad & Tuff.

The ONE and ONLY way for you to have gotten on my list is by YOU having communicated with me via email. I guess your the type who wants to be able to throw something my way but not hear back?

You'll be removed but be Very Careful to NEVER Threaten me! Also, don't ever send anything to this email address again because every time you do, you automatically get put back on the distribution list. :-)

Cohn:

I didn't threaten anyone, you tool. You are such a douchetard it's not even funny. Now go do some work on your insane conspiracy theories that everyone laughs about behind your back. You're a joke!

Nieves:

Wow. Your communications are so thought provoking, well written, and intelligent. Perhaps you secretly want to be on my distribution list because every time you send me a message, your email is recaptured and put on my distribution list. I'm tiring of taking you off every time you email me AGAIN so unless you are in love with me or have some other sort of sick obsession with me (sorry, I'm straight as an arrow) you should probably stop emailing me so that you don't keep getting put back on the list. Should I type these instructions slower? Are you having a hard time understanding? BTW - I archive ALL questionable emails like yours in case there's ever any doubt about who got ugly first. Go back to the grade school playground where people you can successfully bully and out smart are playing cuz junior... You are way out of your league with me.

At this point Nieves took a "brief break" so he could check out Cohn's Facebook page. Around 1 AM, he sent Cohn a final email: "BTW... You really don't look good with a beard."

Speaking with the Daily RFT, Cohn said he found Nieves' behavior "completely absurd" and "insane," adding, "I can't believe he said these things."

The Sideshow notes that Cohn made an appearance in the comments section of the post to apologize for his own behavior, saying "I shouldn't have called him names."

Still, Cohn insists Nieves "was spamming me left and right with his insane newsletters...and I couldn't take it anymore."

Daily RFT attempted to reach Nieves for comment, but so far not a peep. I guess he's all emailed out.

[photos via Wikimedia, Facebook]

On March 30, a woman in Florida started drinking to combat her loneliness. She soon became drunk. Standard enough, right? We've all been there. Less standard, however, is what the woman did next. According to police reports, 64-year-old Fleurette French then called 911 to report a fake medical issue. When a medic arrived on the scene, French told him the truth.

"French told [a medic] the real reason she called 911 was 'because she was lonely,'" a deputy wrote in an affidavit obtained by the TC Palm. The medic also noted that French was "highly intoxicated" but "in no obvious distress."

Despite the lack of obvious injury or ailment, the medic took French to the Indian River Medical Center, a nearby hospital.

The deputy who responded to the initial call grew suspicious and investigated French, eventually discovering that she had called 911 five times in the week before this incident; each time, she had been drunk and was taken to the hospital.

The deputy decided that, crushing loneliness or not, law enforcement officers in Florida had better things to do with their time, so he went to the hospital and arrested French, charging her with abuse of emergency services.

[via the New York Daily News]

In a speech at the White House this evening, President Obama minced no words when it came to criticizing those he deems responsible for the Senate's failure to pass expanded gun-sale background checks today. Flanked by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and family members of Newtown shooting victims, among others, the president said it was a "shameful" day for politics and outright called gun lobbyists "liars."

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill. They claimed that it would create some sort of Big Brother gun registry, even though the bill did the opposite. This legislation in fact outlawed any registry—plain and simple, right there in the text. But that didn't matter. And unfortunately this patter of spreading untruths about this legislation served a purpose. Because those lies upset an intense minority of gun owners, and that in turn intimidated a lot of senators.

Obama also seemed to speak directly to Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who earlier today said the president has been using Newtown victims' families as "props" to help him win the nation's battle over guns.

I've heard folks say that having the families of victims lobby for this legislation was somehow misplaced. A prop, somebody called them. Are they serious? Do we really think that thousands of families whose lives have been shattered by gun violence don't have a right to weigh in on this issue?

The president also said this: "All in all, this was a pretty shameful day for Washington."

Though when isn't it anymore?

The trial has finally begun for Southern California woman who (sort of) famously cut off her husband's penis before throwing it in the garbage disposal. Opening statements were heard on Wednesday from the prosecution and from the woman's public defender.

In case you don't recall the incident, which occurred in the summer of 2011, here's some background information: According to police, Catherine Kieu, then 48, now 50, drugged her husband (with tofu, no less), tied him up, cut off his penis with a 10-inch kitchen knife, and then, to top it all off, threw the severed penis into the garbage disposal and turned it on. She was arrested and charged with "aggravated mayhem."

But why did she cut off her husband's penis and throw it into a garbage disposal? One theory suggests that Kieu was upset by houseguests staying with her family. But Kieu's attorney offered up other, sadder and more plausible-sounding, reasons.

Deputy Public Defender Frank Bittar told jurors that Kieu's traumatic childhood in war-torn Vietnam caused mental illness that bars her from a mayhem or torture conviction.

Bittar said Kieu met the victim at a gym, and after they married he subjected her to sexual and verbal abuse, and filed for divorce while they continued to live together in his Garden Grove home.

The opening statements also revealed the existence of a recording of the incident. According to Deputy District Attorney John Christl, Kieu hid a voice activated recorder in the bedroom where the attack took place. At one point during the recording, you can hear her yelling, "You deserve it" three times. At another point, you can hear the garbage disposal being turned on.

As you might expect, the penis was too damaged to be reattached. The trial is expected to last for two weeks. If convicted, Kieu faces life in prison.

A giant explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas has killed between five and 15 people and injured over 160, prompting a widespread evacuation of the small town. The blast was felt and heard for 45 miles, and the force of it reportedly leveled dozens of homes and businesses, a nursing home, an apartment complex, and a nearby middle school. From DallasNews.com:

"The fertilizer plant down here exploded, said Jason Shelton, a clerk at the Czech Best Western Hotel in West. "It was a small fire and then water got sprayed on the ammonia nitrate and it exploded just like the Oklahoma City bomb.

"I live about a thousand feet from it and it blew my screen door off and my back windows," Shelton said. "There's houses leveled that were right next to it. We've got people injured and possibly dead."

A triage has been set up on a nearby football field, as you can see the image below. The CEO of a local hospital told CNN they were expecting at least 100 people with injuries.

The Waco Tribune spoke to one witness who said everything within a four block area of the plant was destroyed. These AP photos show the extent of the devastation in the town itself:

Bill Bohannan, who was visiting his parents at their house in West, near the plant, witnessed the explosion and said it was a devastating blast.

"I said, ‘This thing is going to blow' ... and I told my mom and dad to get in the car," Bohannan said. "I was standing next to my car with my fiancee, waiting for my parents to come out and (the plant) exploded. It knocked us into the car... Every house within about four blocks is blown apart."

According to KWTX, among those injured are several firefighters who had been at the scene at the time of the explosion to investigate a separate incident. KWTX is also reporting that several children were injured.

UPDATE 11:15 PM EST: According to the Waco Tribune, the entire town of West, Texas is being evacuated due to concerns about a second explosion at the plant.

UPDATE 11:28 PM EST: A rescuer told KWTX that at least five people died in the blast.

UPDATE 11:34 PM EST: ABC is now reporting that 200 people were injured, 40 critically. 75-100 homes or businesses were also reportedly destroyed.

UPDATE 11:42 PM EST: There have been multiple reports of fatalities, though it should be noted that none of these numbers have been confirmed. West EMS Director Dr. George Smith told KWTX that as many as 60 to 70 people died in the explosion. KHOU 11 is reporting 70 deaths, including five firefighters and one police officer. CBS 11 is also reporting that 60 people were killed. CNN is citing a source who says there are two confirmed fatalities.

And here's reported video of the explosion. The blast occurs at the 30 second mark.

UPDATE 12:21 AM EST: West's mayor told CNN that the explosion leveled 60-70 homes, a middle school, a nursing home, and an apartment building. The Associated Press is reporting the blast could heard from 45 miles away.

UPDATE 12:50 AM EST: West's Mayor Tommy Muska told the Waco Tribune that six or seven firefighters were in the plant at the time of the explosion and are unaccounted for.

UPDATE 1:06 AM EST: D.L. Wilson from the Texas Department of Public Safety spoke at a press conference. "There are a tremendous amount of injuries, and we do have confirmed fatalities," he said. He couldn't confirm any specific numbers.

UPDATE 2:17 AM EST: CNN is now putting the number of hospitalized victims at 156. The blast was so powerful it registered a 2.1 on the richter scale, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

UPDATE 7:51 AM EST: The death toll now stands at five to 15, and the number of injured over 160. Three to five firefighters are still missing, and there may still be people trapped inside a nursing home that had collapsed. West is littered with debris, and fire is still reportedly burning inside the plant, though the chemical tanks are thought to no longer pose a threat. "I've never seen anything like this," McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara told the Chicago Tribune. "It looks like a war zone with all the debris."

[Image via Instagram]

The Boston Bruins played the Buffalo Sabres last night in the city's first major sporting event since Monday's bombing of the Boston Marathon.

But the game itself was an afterthought following the touching tribute to resilience that took place during pre-game singing of the Star Spangled Banner.

In a move that will no doubt become emblematic of the city's recovery in the wake of this week's tragic events, the Bruins longtime national anthem singer Rene Rancourt lowered his microphone partway through the song and turned instead to lead 17,565 hockey fans as they sang the anthem in unison.

"Being out here today, the energy from the crowd, it's as though your tears turn into joy," said David Blaides, commander of the Boston Fire Department Honor Guard. "It was fulfilling being out there today."

[photo via @NHLBruins, video via NHL]