Details
Unclear on the Concept
    Bernard LeCorn, running for the school board in Ocala, Fla., declared himself the best-qualified school steward among the three candidates because of his “doctorate,” but the Ocala Star-Banner discovered that not only was it from a well-known diploma mill (cost: $249), but that Alabama A&M, a real school where he had claimed to be a faculty member after receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees, had never employed him and had enrolled him for only one year.
    (In another diploma-mill fraud indictment in August, one alleged purchaser of a doctorate was Bart Anderson, superintendent of a school district in Columbus, Ohio.)

Can’t Possibly Be True
    Jose Rivera, 22, survived two tours in Iraq, but back home in California, he took a job at the high-security Atwater federal prison, where officers cannot carry even non-lethal crowd-control weapons, and Rivera was murdered 10 months later by two inmates armed with handmade shivs. “Every single inmate in there is armed to the teeth for his own protection,” complained one officer, but a Bureau of Prisons spokesman told CNN in August that “communication” with inmates is a better policy than even modestly arming guards.
When Eric Aderholt’s house in Rockwell County, Texas, burned down in June, it wasn’t because the fire department was too slow. They arrived within minutes, but none was aware that local hydrants were locked. Apparently, departments know that hydrants in rural areas have been shut off, as part of post-9/11 security, and must be turned on with a special tool, which no one brought that night. Texas law even requires shut-off hydrants to be painted black, but the firefighters still arrived without the tool, and by the time they retrieved it, Aderholt’s house was gone.

With Too Much Time on Their Hands
    In December 2003, Yves Julien worked a regular 11-hour shift, plus overtime, all at premium pay, for the Canada Border Services Agency, and then demanded an additional $9 (Cdn) for a sandwich he had purchased when asked to put in the extra hours. The agency said he was not entitled, by contract, because the overtime was already at premium pay. In September 2008, after nearly five years of multiple reviews, hair-splitting legal decisions and lengthy appeals, Julien won his $9.