Grammar Day: ‘I would advise that you comply with our language laws’

It’s National Grammar Day. It’s also the 19th anniversary of the death of the great comedian John Candy. To celebrate, here’s a clip from “Canadian Bacon” that brings them together.

Police Blotter of the Day: Drunk man goes into wrong house, gets into bed with couple

Click to watch the report from WDIV-TV

Police said House had a blood alcohol level of 0.174.

Full story (WDIV-TV of Detroit)

Crackheads aren’t coming to get you

I tell MSNBC's Craig Melvin why sentences for crack will be closer to penalties for powder cocaine.

Cross-posted from msnbc.com’s Open Channel investigative blog, where it originally appeared:

No, thousands of “crackheads” aren’t going to start flooding America’s streets Tuesday.

That’s just one of several myths that have surrounded the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s vote in June to make federal sentence reductions retroactive for current prisoners convicted of crack possession or use.

What happens Tuesday is that some eligible federal prisoners who have petitioned for reduced sentences under rules Congress passed last year can begin being released. Those rules sought to address a disparity that meant crack offenders were given the same mandatory five-year minimum sentence as were offenders in possession of 100 times as much powder cocaine.

Bye, Mom

Myrna Faye Cambron Johnson was born March 8, 1939, in Birmingham, Ala., the only child of Edward and Myrtle Cambron. She died April 2, 2011, in Lilburn, Ga., her home of 35 years.

She grew up in Alabama and attended Birmingham Baptist Hospitals School of Nursing (now the Ida V. Moffett School of Nursing), graduating in 1960.

As part of her training, Myrna traveled with her class to north Florida that year, where she went on a date with a local boy. That boy was not Mel Johnson. But he introduced her to Mel — and that was the biggest mistake of that young man’s life.

Mel declared to his buddies the next morning that he was going to marry that “cute, beautiful woman” who looked more than a little bit like Elizabeth Taylor. “I had made up my mind,” he says.

Three weeks later, he up and married her. That was 51 years ago.

But … but … where do I tweet this?

If Twitter is down, is there anyone to tweet it?

Add to: Facebook | Digg | Del.icio.us | Stumbleupon | Reddit | Blinklist | Twitter | Technorati | Yahoo Buzz | Newsvine

Why I’m leaving Facebook

Goodbye, Facebook. I’ll miss the updates from my friends, but I won’t miss you or your always-changing, let’s-see-if-we-can-trick-users-into-divulging-all-their-info privacy shenanigans.

I won’t miss the flood of useless Farmville/Mafia Wars/You’ve-Earned-A-Star!/Support-My-Cause autogenerated spam.

I won’t miss your lockbox Terms of Service (which neither you nor I ever read all the way through) and their declaration that you own and can license all my content.

I won’t miss dreadfully misleading “delete account” process, which seeks to trick users into thinking they’ve deleted their accounts when they’ve actually only “deactivated” them — thereby leaving all their content on your servers to use as you wish.

It was fun for a while, Facebook, but now you’ve grown too big for your britches. I’m casting my lot with Twitter, instead (I’m at @MAlexJohnson).

Happy St. Patrick’s Day