SNIPPETS

DECEMBER 20,  2009

ROME, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Italy's highest court of appeal affirmed the illegality of insulting someone by sticking your tongue out at them.  The case brought before the Cassation Court involved a farmer whose tongue gesture was captured by a cellphone camera held by the neighbor with whom he was arguing. The farmer, Carlo O., had been convicted by a justice of the peace of insulting the neighbor, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.

Do you get a sense of misplaced priorities here?

DECEMBER 19,  2009

APPLETON, Wis. (AP) - A Wisconsin teenager will need legal permission to date girls for the next three years after he was convicted of fleeing to Tennessee with his girlfriend in a stolen car.  Nineteen-year-old Jordan S. Christensen of Appleton was sentenced Friday to one year in jail and three years' probation. Outagamie County Judge John Des Jardins has ordered "no dating of the opposite sex without permission of your probation agent."

A creative ruling.  But the real question is why any member of the opposite sex would want to date this creep.