Lead Stories
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According to a December report in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call, U.S. Representative Dan Burton of Indiana brings his own scissors, comb, and electric razor to a Washington barbershop to have his hair cut. Reporters speculated that Burton is afraid of contracting AIDS, which may be the same reason he no longer orders soup in restaurants and stopped going to the House gym around the time colleague and gym regular Barney Frank revealed he was gay.
Unclear on the Concept
Keith Holliday, member of the city council of Greensboro, North Carolina, explained in January why the city was forced to hire a public relations firm to deal with its water-shortage crisis: “I’ll bet you I’ve been asked 100 times…why we just didn’t make our lakes bigger.”
Tale of two towns: According to a December New York Times report, residents of the unincorporated community of Brooksville, Alabama, are petitioning the state to create an official town charter based on the Bible and the Ten Commandments. Sinners would be welcome but expected to observe public behavior codes, and many town decisions would be made at church services. At the other end of the spectrum, officials in El Paso County, Texas, got a court order in November decertifying the town of Buford, calling it a sham set up solely to protect its only “residents”: a dozen adult bookstores and strip clubs that are exempt from county regulation.
The classic middle name, continued: Challenging the competence of his lawyer after his conviction for murdering a preacher near Lebanon, Indiana, in September: Gerald Wayne Bivins. Informing jurors at his sentencing hearing (after being convicted of murder in Torrance, California, in December) that he regretted not killing them too: David Wayne Arisman. Executed in McAlester, Oklahoma, in December for the murder of his wife: John Wayne Duvall. Captured after a brief jailbreak in Nashville, Tennessee, in December: accused murderer Michael Wayne Perry. Named the prime suspect in the disappearance of a 14-year-old girl in Roseburg, Oregon, in December: Dale Wayne Hill. Dead of a self-inflicted gunshot after critically wounding his ex-girlfriend in Brooklyn in July: Robert Wayne Jiles.
