7:30 p.m.

• Oh this better not start a trend.

The United States will have a female president next year—on the Fox TV series "24."

That is, unless this TV prez gets killed.

• And yet we continue to bitch about $3/gallon gasoline.

A federal appeals court has ordered Shell Oil to stop its exploratory drilling program off the north coast of Alaska at least until a hearing in August.

 

The order, issued Thursday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, comes after the federal Minerals Management Service in February approved Shell's offshore exploration plan for the Beaufort Sea.

Well, this ruling is by the 9th Circus, so there is a chance it'll get overturned.

• Gee, what’s this? A tax that didn’t do what it was supposed to do? I’m shocked. Boy, I can’t wait for this FREE government health care.

A decade-old telephone tax intended to help bring affordable service to rural areas has instead turned into something quite different: a bottomless and politically protected well of cash for cell phone companies that do big business in rural America.

 

Over the past four years, there has been nearly a tenfold increase in government-ordered subsidies paid to a few "competitive" providers—cellular phone companies paid by the fund to offer service in rural areas where an existing carrier already receives a subsidy.

 

The Universal Service Fund has collected $44 billion over its 10-year lifetime from a surcharge on the phone bills of nearly every American.

• Don't you know that forbidding prayer while at work during unscheduled breaks is one of the worst things you can do to a Muslim male?

Supervisors at a meatpacking plant have fired or harassed dozens of Somali Muslim employees for trying to pray at sunset, violating civil rights laws, the workers and their advocates say.

 

The five- to 10-minute prayer, known as the maghrib, must be done within a 45-minute window around sunset, according to Muslim rules. The workers at the Swift & Co. plant in Grand Island say they quit, were fired or were verbally and physically harassed over the issue.

 

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has drafted a complaint to be filed with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The petition compiles testimony from at least 44 workers who had planned to sign the complaint during a meeting Sunday. The signing was changed to a later date because of a logistical problem.

 

Jama Mohamed, 28, said he was fired in June for leaving a production line to pray. Supervisors would not allow him a break, he said.

 

"Some of them took the (prayer) mat from me; they started shouting, they started telling me to stop it, and one of them grabbed me by the collar of my shirt," Mohamed said through an interpreter.

 

"I was crying at the time this was happening to me, and when I finished I told them while they were doing that I was in the middle of a prayer."

I really don't care about all this shit, but what caught my eye was this guy's name.

Mohamed Rage, chairman of the Omaha Somali-American Community Organization, said Swift had fired at least two dozen workers for praying since May.

12:15 p.m.

• So I just heard on the NFL Network that you can get 177 different words from Houshmandez. Damn.

• I goofed on Philly's mayor a while back regarding his waiting in like for an iPhone. All is forgiven.

The mayor and two of his bodyguards happened upon a house fire and ended up rescuing a cat, helping a victim and warning neighbors, officials and witnesses said.

 

Neighbor Dorothy Young said she saw the smoke Friday morning and went outside to find two children who lived in the house crying at the bottom of her steps.

 

"We were all in shock, just yelling and crying," Young said. "I couldn't believe what was happening. It was like a movie."

 

Mayor John Street and two bodyguards, who had been walking to City Hall when they saw the burning home, rushed over to help, Young said.

 

The bodyguards carried a boy who suffered minor burns into Young's home and went into the burning house to rescue a cat.