FROM RAM TO COWBOY: Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted into the NFL, last week received another shot to be a Macho Man. Sam will be part of the practice squad for the Dallas Cowboys after being cut by the team that drafted him, the St. Louis Rams. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, still lamenting his lack of vision in failing to draft media sensation Johnny Manziel, undoubtedly pushed hard for bringing Sam’s star power to Dallas. There’s no truth to the rumor that Jones is now seeking a cop, leatherman, soldier and chief to join Sam on the practice squad.
NORTH KOREA SHOWCASES PRISONERS: Showing its openness to Western tourism, the government of North Korea allowed three Americans detained in the DPRK to speak with CNN reporters last week. The prisoners naturally asked for help during the five-minute interviews, which were closely monitored and recorded by North Korean officials, no doubt for an anticipated Blue Ray release of leader Kim Jong Un’s greatest hits. He may need the money – reports are circulating that the man in charge of his personal slush fund is on the run with $5 million of slush in hand.
CELEBRITY NUDES – COLLECT THEM ALL: A hacker somehow managed to obtain nude photos from the private collections of various female celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence and Kate Upton, and shared them with the thoughtful people at 4chan. Lawrence and Upton confirmed the photos legitimacy; other celebs claim the images of them are fakes, a story that few believe. The nudes are believed to have been obtained from smart phone storage, either by phishing for passwords or hacking into Apple’s i-Phone cloud database, the latter security breach denied by Apple. Of course, this never happened with Polaroids, the original nude selfie camera.
BEHEADING SPARKS OUTRAGE (AT OBAMA): Freelance journalist Steven Sotloff was beheaded in a gruesome video distributed by ISIS last week. President Obama is expected to address the nation this week on his plan to contain the barbarians after his tepid responses to the deaths of James Foley and Sotloff about “managing” the problem resulted in widespread scorn. On the other hand, people were cheering VP Joe Biden’s vow to follow terrorists to “the gates of Hell” to get them, the exact response Americans wanted to hear from their leader. Expect Obama to ramp up the passion in this week’s speech.
JOAN CROSSES RIVERS STYX: Comedian Joan Rivers died last week after suffering respiratory and cardiac arrest during throat surgery at a Manhattan medical clinic. Rivers, 81, was perfectly healthy and working hard at the time of her death, making the clinic’s conduct extremely suspect and prompting authorities to examine just how a so-called “minor procedure” resulted in the death of an apparently healthy woman.
HOME DEPOT HACKED: In the latest security breach of a major retailer, Home Depot announced last week that customer payment information was possibly exposed. Earlier this year, Target experienced a similar intrusion, and last month, the Albertson’s food chain said stores in eight states may have been compromised by hackers. An online black market for stolen information is growing ever more powerful, leaving cybersecurity experts scrambling to stay one step ahead of the bad guys.
FERGUSON POLICE WILL BE EXAMINED: The Justice Department vowed to give the Ferguson, Missouri police a top-to-bottom witchhunt look-see last week in the wake of Michael Brown’s police shooting death and subsequent civil unrest. This is in addition to the ongoing civil rights investigation stemming from the same incident. In the meantime, a grand jury is sifting through the evidence in the case and is expected to announce their decision next month on whether to indict the police officer involved in the shooting. Of course, there’s no pressure on them to deliver an officially approved verdict rather than one based on the evidence.
NEXT MAN UP: The Somalia militant group Al-Shabaab lost leader, Ahmed Godane, to a US drone strike last week. The new head man is Ahmed Omar Abu Ubaidah, the group’s third leader, according to a message posted online by a spokesman. “The death of Godane will not stop the group from carrying out its terror operations,” the spokesman said. Meanwhile, US church groups funded by government-backed money vowed to step up their efforts to import “refugees” from Somalia and other nations before more drone strikes lessen the available pool of potential immigrants.