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I have a theory about why Bill White ended up in jail.

It is my own flight of fancy. There is no hard evidence to back it up. I have had no conversations with anyone in a position to know the real story.

It's purely a guess, borne from years of covering and observing our criminal justice system, and knowing how some cops and prosecutors think.

It goes like this:

It is 2008, a history-making election year. Then-Sen. Barack Obama has captured the Democratic Party nomination.

Obama has appeared numerous times in Southwest Virginia during the presidential primaries, and now he has scheduled an appearance in Roanoke, the biggest city for miles around.

Now, there is a landlord/blogger/magazine publisher/neo-Nazi in Roanoke whose name is Bill White. He has a high IQ and (warning: upcoming contradiction) dresses up in Nazi costumes and celebrates Adolf Hitler's birthday.

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OK, that headline is a little unfair.

It's not like every hard-working employee of taxpayer-subsidized Valley Metro was stuffing themselves with flame-grilled, $41 slabs of beef and other gourmet restaurant meals at every opportunity -- all washed down by copious amounts of alcohol.

No, it seems that that practice was limited to the since-fired Valley Metro General Manager Dave Morgan.

But it appears fancy wining and dining has ended for good, according to a report by my colleague, Mason Adams. Valley Metro and city hall are cracking down! Hooray!

Here's the municpal auditor's report that recounts Morgan's  astounding excess.

And here's another auditor's report, raising a question of self-dealing and possible bid-rigging, that landed another ex-Valley Metro official in hot water.

Rush Limbaugh (AP file photo)

In a post from Sunday, The slow but inevitable decline of Rush Limbaugh, I offered up the hunch that Rush Limbaugh's star is fading at the expense of conservative radio and TV wild man Glenn Beck.

That was based on the notion that conservative listeners' attention spans, taken as a whole, can be seen like a pie. And that lately Beck has been hogging a larger and larger piece, attracting an advertising boycott crowd, bashing ACORN, and making the cover of Time magazine.

Now there is some objective evidence to support my hunch, courtesy of fivethirtyeight.com:

Buried in the cross-tabs of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll is a question that takes a temperature reading of Glenn Beck. Beck actually makes out pretty well. While just 24 percent of Americans have a favorable view of him (13 percent strongly so), only 19 percent have an unfavorable one (14 percent strongly). That leaves 57 percent who either don't know Beck or are indifferent toward him.

This compares quite favorably to, for example, Rush Limbaugh, who was the subject of a similar question in the NBC/WSJ poll in June. Limbaugh was regarded favorably by 23 percent of Americans, but unfavorably by 50 percent -- including 37 percent who held a strongly negative view.

Glenn Beck / scrapetv.com

Limbaugh, by the way, occupies the noon-3 p.m. slot on Roanoke's news-talk station, WFIR 960 on the AM dial. The station broadcasts Beck on Sunday afternoons when there's no football game to preempt him.

Rush Limbaugh/CSPAN

Rush Limbaugh is on his way down. And he knows it.

And he's fighting against it, almost as uselessly as an inexperienced swimmer caught in a bad riptide.

The signs of a talk-show titan in decline? Increasingly wilder and more reckless statements, designed to bring attention to himself.

Earlier this year he anointed himself the leader of the Republican Party.

Friday, Limbaugh called for segregated busing of students, while facetiously observing that the white student attacked by two black students on a bus in Belleville, Ill., deserved the beating he took.

Limbaugh's declining influence isn't necessarily related to his listeners coming to their senses, or to attacks from the left (those always have helped Rush, rather than hurt him).

No, the threat is coming from the right, and that's the interesting factor here.

You can see it in the rising popularity of Glenn Beck, the crazed radio and Fox News host. Beck, who made the cover of Time Magazine's last week, is grabbing all the attention these days.

Glenn Beck / scrapetv.com

That's coming at Rush's expense. He's becoming less and less relevant.

That's why Rush is flailing madly, like a poor swimmer in a riptide.

The problem is, like that swimmer, the more desperately Rush acts, the more he's going to wear himself out. And the more likely it becomes that he sinks into oblivion.

It's going to take a while. But Limbaugh's going down.

Phillip Arnold Paul, 57

The answer: Because they took him on a field trip to the county fair.

And he escaped.

That's why.

Why did they take him to the county fair?

THAT is the big question.

Dateline: Spokane, Wash.

From the Associated Press:

Authorities searched by air and land Friday for a criminally insane killer who escaped during a mental hospital field trip to a county fair that has infuriated residents and officials around Washington.

Authorities have said they believe Phillip Arnold Paul is heading to the Sunnyside area, where his parents and many siblings live. The Spokane County Sheriff's Office launched a helicopter on Friday in the search, and the public was urged to call 911 if Paul is spotted.

"He is in a bad mental state," his brother, Tom Paul, told The Associated Press. "Why would they load him on a bus and take him to a fair?"

That's a question many are asking.

UPDATE

Phillip Arnold Paul has been captured,

From Flickr

Question: Does Abercrombie & Fitch sell No Excuses jeans?

The teen retailing chain, which sold $3.5 billion in apparel last year, sure doesn't back down when they screw up. None of that 'the-customer-is-always-right' nonsense for them.

The A&F outlet at the Mall of America in Minneapolis has just been tagged with a $115,000 fine from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights because they refused to allow a girl to help her autistic sister try on clothes in a changing room.

It could have gone differently, of course. All the family wanted, initially, was an apology, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

"The hefty penalty from the Minnesota Department of Human Rights pleased the Maxson family of Apple Valley, which was forced to push hard for satisfaction after the retailing giant refused to apologize for the incident and even questioned whether the girl was disabled. The fine was levied in June but made public this month.

"...When several complaints to the company were ignored, the girl's mother, Beth Maxson of Apple Valley, took the case to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.

"...In the Maxson case, the company denied that the girl suffered from a disability until the first day of an administrative law hearing in April. She was diagnosed as autistic at age 2."

Charges of discrimination are nothing new to A&F, of course. Back in 2004, the company agreed to pay $40 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that charged it discriminated in hiring. (The company admitted no fault in that case).

In this case, it sounds like they could have gotten off the hook with an apology! Just think: no $115,000 fine, no lawyers' fees -- nothing!

If you want to tell A&F what you think about this, click here. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Contact us."

And give them a piece of your mind.

Brian Diaz, former head of LU's College Democrats/LibertyStudentNews

Brian Diaz, the president of the College Democrats at Holier Than U ( aka Liberty University) in Lynchburg, has announced he's resigned his post and will transfer from Liberty to a university that places a higher value on diversity.

The move follows a ruling from Nepotism U Liberty U Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. that Maria Childress, a secretary in the LU honors program, can no longer be a sponsor of the club.

As followers of this blog may recall, Holier Than U revoked the College Democrats' charter in May because the student organization supported a party platform and candidates who advocated for abortion rights and gay marriage.

That is why we held a contest looking for a more appropriate name for the university. We had 2 winners.

"Holier Than U" won the grand prize, an autographed copy of "The Big Book of Irony" by Jon Winokur. The runner up was "Lobotomy U," which won an unautographed copy of that fine book.

(Many, many, many readers noted that calling Liberty a university at all would be quite misleading.)

Falwell's decision regarding Childress, according to the Lynchburg News & Advance, stemmed from her misdemeanor convictions for assault, disorderly conduct and trespassing that related to a child visitation dispute at her ex-father-in-law's house.

Because of that, Falwell said, Childress may no longer have "direct contact with students." Good grief!

Anybody who's been paying attention to this brouhaha could see this coming.  Diaz's departure is a train that's been ready to leave the station for at least 3 weeks.

Liberty Holier Than U is an institution that tolerates dissent about as well as a diabetic tolerates a candy bar. (Sorry, diabetics).

The administration sent Brian an email that read, at least in part: “You are distorting the truth, and you know it. You have no credibility with me.” That also was a factor in Brian's decision to leave.

Does anyone else find it amazing that the LU administration would accuse Brian of "distorting the truth"?

You cannot make this stuff up, folks!

Here is Brian's statement, posted on LibertyStudentNews.

Good luck, Brian, wherever you wind up.

It would be a lie to say that many of us are surprised.

Here's a hope that those credits will transfer.

It turns out that The Roanoke Times is on angry Bill’s “Hall of Shame” list of “Media Outlets that Traffic in Defamation.” We’re right up there with Newsday, the Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and US News & World Report.

Thank you, Bill, for the tout!

Why would I suggest that Angry Bill’s damnation is the equivalent of high praise? Well, let’s look at the record.

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