The Morning Briefing - August 21, 2015
** The Morning Briefing will be returning right after Labor Day.
TRENTON – Apparently, it can be legal to leave your kids in the car. The state Supreme Court has sided with a mom who left her sleeping 19-month-old daughter when she ran into a Dollar Store in 2009. It was a 55-degree day, so she figured the toddler would be okay. Cops arrested her, but the state Supreme Court now says you can leave your kids if you take “precautionary measures,” the Record reports. No longer will you be automatically enrolled in a state registry for child abusers and you can plead your case at a hearing. Or, just wake your kids and drag them into the store.
STATEWIDE — Yeah, property taxes here are darn high. But no other state can boast have six public high schools – each a magnet school – in Newsweek's top 10 list of U.S. high schools that do an outstanding job preparing students for college. Heaps of kudos to High Technology High School in Lincroft which ranked a not-too-shabby No. 2 in the nation. All told, 22 Garden State high schools are among the magazine's top 100 and 56 ranked in its top 500 nationally. Good to see some of our tax money is invested in the right place.
ASBURY PARK – Someone must have lost their brraaaaains, as the record-breaking New Jersey Zombie Walk is dead. Even zombies apparently aren't immune to financial troubles, even though the annual event has exploded over the years, with tens of thousands of participants. It even earned the Guinness Book of World Records certification as the planet's largest gathering of the undead, the Asbury Park Press reports. An Oct. 3 send-off is planned before organizers pull the plug. Since successful events often attract money, there's still some hope the undead may walk again.
SPARTA — Button up your Lederhosen. Dust off your Alpine hat: New Jersey may get an official state “Weihnachtsmarkt!” That's a German Christmas Market, in case you didn’t know. And, state Sen. Steve Oroho wants the annual Lake Mohawk German Christmas Market in Sparta to serve as the state’s official State German Christmas Market. This festive faux-Bavarian village is open only one weekend each December – mark your calendars, our freunds, Dec. 5-6 – bringing 18,000 shoppers to the Lake Mohawk Country Club to sip mulled wine as they shop for stuff destined for a future garage sale.
IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS
ONLINE – What a mess. Hackers continue to dump confidential information about the cheating website Ashley Madison, steadily destroying the company from the inside. Now, the Pentagon is dragged in, as hundreds of U.S. government employees — including some with sensitive jobs in the White House, Congress and law enforcement agencies — have used their office computers to sign up and pay for their subscriptions on Ashley Madison, AP reports. And hackers likely have even more sordid details about married folk seeking the banned flesh of another. Did we mention this is a mess?
WARREN, MI — With your very own flamethrower, you could thaw snow and ice; incinerate pesky weeds; or charbroil that yapping Yorkie next door. And that's just what city officials in this Detroit suburb are afraid of. They want to ban personal flamethrowers that shoot 50-foot streams of fire, the Detroit Free Press reports. Their popularity is on the rise since two Midwest companies began selling these flamethrowers online for $900–$1,600. "You just know something like this will be used by bad people for bad things," says Warren Mayor Jim Fouts. Ya think?
THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Hard to imagine, but lawyers have not always been thoroughly intertwined with professional sports. It was this day in 1953 that Ralph Kiner (NL) and Allie Reynolds (AL) hired their first lawyer for $15,000 to give legal advice to players in their negotiations.
WORD OF THE DAY
Nudiustertian – adjective
Definition: Want a new way to mention something that happened on Wednesday – the day before yesterday? Here you go.
Example: “I shared some corned beef hash that nudiustertian morning.”