Hold onto your genitals.

What you do when a substitute teacher tells her class that St. Nick isn't real?

By Peter Bernard

Staff Writer

Posted December 13 2002

Melissa Shea knew immediately that something was wrong when she picked up 5-year-old Hayley from Forest Hills Elementary on Tuesday.

The twinkle was gone from her daughter's eye.

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"When it comes to this girl telling me about her day, she's usually like the National Enquirer. On Tuesday, not one single word."

Not even a ho, ho, ho.

A little later, Shea discovered what had upset Hayley.

Her favorite substitute teacher had told the class of kindergartners at the Coral Springs school that there was no Santa Claus.

Shea overheard Hayley sadly sharing the news with her 7-year-old sister, Olivia, in the back seat of the car on their way to karate class.

Shea said she assured her daughter that Santa is real and would be delivering a load of gifts on Christmas morning.

"But I feel like no matter what I do or say now, the seed of doubt has been planted in Hayley's head," Shea said.

"I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to undo it, and Christmas is everything in my family."

But eventually, Hayley was somewhat consoled by Olivia. "I believe in Santa Claus," she told her younger sister.

Other parents complained that their kids came home from the class Tuesday questioning them about Santa. Some said their kids reported that one child had even cried upon hearing the teacher's words.

Toni Edworthy's daughter, Morgan, told her mom the teacher said there was no Santa and that all the presents come from mom and dad.

Edworthy said she told her daughter that "she should stick to her beliefs, no matter what anyone says."

Shea, Edworthy and another parent went to the school to complain, Shea said.

She said assistant principal Lisa George told them she had spoken with the substitute -- who was upset over student and parent reactions to her comments -- and advised her to be more sensitive to holiday traditions.

Shea wanted the substitute reprimanded and not allowed back into the class.

The school refused, Shea said. Forest Hills school officials would not comment.

The substitute, Fabiola Mehu-Pelissier, affectionately known to students as Mrs. P., was reading a holiday storybook that features a cat dressed as St. Nick.

"The discussion started to move toward the existence of Santa Claus," said School Board spokesman Kirk Engelhard. "No policies or rules were violated, but she obviously used poor judgment." Mehu-Pelissier could not be reached for comment.

Dr. Mitch Spero, a licensed psychologist with Child and Family Psychologists in Plantation and Weston, says it is vital for children to reach an appropriate level of emotional maturity before learning certain truths of life.

"The role of the teacher in a child's life is to educate, and the question is when is the child ready to learn certain things," Spero said. "Discovering why so many different holiday characters exist is really a role for the family."

In this case the substitute teacher may have meant well, but may have overstepped her bounds in terms of what was right for the children at this point in their emotional development, Spero said.

Spero said the role of Santa Claus in a child's life is to be an incentive for good behavior.

"Santa has a positive connotation that holds some weight in a child's life," Spero said. "It's the belief that if you do the right thing for its own sake, you will be rewarded. Once the fantasy has been taken away it can't be replaced. That's why timing is so important."

To make up for the teacher's lapse, the school district is sending a Santa to visit the school's kindergarten classes this morning to set the record straight.

"This is going to be awesome, a really good way to fix what happened," Edworthy said.

Today's visiting Santa, with a natural, full white beard, should convince even a classroom full of skeptics, said district spokesman Englehart. "He's the real deal."

Senate Cable Viewers Get a Shock

By Ed Henry

When Senators and their aides tune in to Channel 5 on the chamber's internal television system each morning, they normally get a replay of the previous night's edition of "Nightline" or a dry tutorial on parliamentary procedure conducted by the Congressional Research Service.

But on the morning of Dec. 6, two Capitol Police officers noticed something quite different emanating from Channel 5 and making its way to all Senate offices: a pornographic movie.

Officials at the Architect of the Capitol's office were alerted to the situation and quickly determined that an employee in the Senate Recording Studio had been dubbing a pornographic tape on taxpayer time.

"To add insult to injury, he pushed the wrong button and [the porn movie] went out over Channel 5," Senate Sergeant-at-Arms Alfonso Lenhardt confirmed in an interview.

Lenhardt said Architect officials "quickly pulled the plug"on the movie and apparently very few people made it into their offices early enough to catch the show. "To be exact, it was 7:05,"he noted. "Suffice it to say, there were not a lot of people who saw it."

Lenhardt's office oversees the recording studio, a nondescript facility in the basement of the Capitol that Senators normally use to tape hometown cable shows or get videotaped copies of speeches they've delivered on the Senate floor.

The Sergeant-at-Arms said the employee in question, whom he would not identify, has been suspended pending an investigation by officials from the human resources office. The employee is being disciplined for violating workplace rules prohibiting the use of pornography at work and using a nonofficial tape on the job.

"It was a personal tape - it had nothing to do with the Senate or the recording studio at all," said Lenhardt. "This is contrary to our policies on pornography and illegally taping any kind of materials that are not connected to Senate business."

Lenhardt stressed that he was most disturbed by the fact that pornography had been viewed in the recording studio and then was piped into Senate offices.

"Iabhor pornography in the workplace,"he said. "And we have strict policies against anyone who has pornography - or uses pornography - in the workplace."

David Bass, manager of the 45-employee studio, said "Stop right there"when asked about some of the details of the incident. "I can't comment on that," he said.

Lenhardt noted that the employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the results of the investigation. "I will not comment any further on personnel matters,"he said.

When asked for the name of the movie in question, Lenhardt answered matter-of-factly, "I have no idea. I did not see the video so I couldn't speak to that."

Lenhardt is leaving his post next year because of the shift in the chamber's majority. He was one of the few people who arrived at work extra early on the morning in question, given the current recess that allows employees to sleep in a little late.

But he was just a couple of minutes late for the show. "I was at work at 10 minutes past 7 o'clock and Channel 5 was clear"of any pornography, he said.

Drunken Elephants Kill Six

Tue Dec 17,10:54 AM ET

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GUWAHATI, India (Reuters) - A herd of wild elephants driven berserk by country liquor trampled to death six people, among them four children, during a rampage in India's northeastern state of Assam, police said Tuesday.

The animals came out of the forest Sunday, attacking granaries and drinking country liquor stored by villagers in Tinsukia, about 340 miles east of Guwahati, Assam's biggest city.

"The elephants, after consuming huge quantity of country-made liquor, went berserk, killing six people on the spot," a police spokesman said.

Experts say hundreds of wild elephants in search of food regularly emerge from the forests of Assam to trample rice fields and destroy granaries.

Destruction of the animals' natural habitats and a growing elephant population are the main causes of the problem, they say.

"It has been noticed that elephants have developed a taste for rice beer and local liquor and they always look for it when they invade villages,," Dinesh Choudhury, an elephant expert in Guwahati, told Reuters.

The region, racked by separatist and tribal insurgencies for more than 50 years, is home to more than half of India's elephant population of 10,000.

Choudhury said the Assam government's protection of elephants over the last 20 years, including a ban on their capture, had spurred a rise in their population, to about 5,500 now.

Forest officials said wild elephants have killed at least 200 people and angry villagers have killed more than 100 elephants in Assam in the past couple of years.

My music

Jarring, jarring

Jarring, jarring sounds to banish sleep

One Man's Info War on al-Qaida

By Brian McWilliams 02:00 AM Dec. 18, 2002 PT

In a case that shows both the risks and rewards of vigilante tactics, an American man has hijacked two Web addresses apparently used by al-Qaida to laud terrorist attacks.

The domains, jehad.net and jehadonline.org, are now in the control of a manager for a large Minnesota financial services firm. The man said he wrested control of the domains from their owners after reading on Dec. 8 that al-Qaida used jehad.net to claim responsibility for recent attacks on an Israeli airliner and a hotel in Kenya.

"I believe in free speech, but it upsets me to see people using this great medium for such evil purposes," said the man, who asked not to be identified but said he was willing to cooperate with U.S. investigators.

But some said the Minnesota man's actions, like those of other patriotic hackers, could hinder rather than help the U.S. government's war on terrorism.

"This guy might think he's being a hero, but in fact he's an idiot," said an official with DV2, the Atlanta ISP that hosts the sites. "The FBI has been closely watching these sites, and by taking the law into his own hands he may have screwed that up."

A spokesman for the FBI's terrorism task force in Atlanta said he could not comment on the incident.

The owners of both jehad.net and jehadonline.org configured the domains to point to the same site at DV2. In an October message on the site, al-Qaida praised an attack in Yemen on a French oil tanker. Last July, the site posted an audio message attributed to an al-Qaida leader who threatened new attacks on the United States.

The Minnesota man said he was able to gain control of the two domains last week after breaking into the MSN Hotmail account of someone using the name Julliou Armani, a resident of Saudi Arabia listed as the contact for jehadonline.org.

The handful of saved messages in Armani's account included some with user names and passwords for managing the domains, the Minnesota man said. Armed with that information, the hacker vigilante could have modified the domains' records so that they no longer pointed to the al-Qaida messages. But he has so far resisted the urge to sabotage the sites.

"If I see a crime taking place, I'm the sort of person who would jump in to try to stop it," he said. "I don't like that kind of thing happening in my world."

Eugene Schultz, a security expert with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, said law enforcement has "been burned" in the past by trying to collaborate with online vigilantes.

While Schultz said the government is unlikely to "deal effectively" with al-Qaida sites, he added that patriotic hackers might unintentionally tip off terrorists or even goad them into retaliatory action.

"When faced with the opportunity to drive the bad guys off the Net, the only ethical and legal solution is to contact law enforcement and hope for the best," Schultz said.

To gain access to Armani's e-mail account, the Minnesota man said he used a Hotmail feature that provides hints for users who forget their passwords. He said he correctly guessed the answer to Armani's self-chosen Hotmail "secret question," then he reset Armani's password.

Microsoft representatives were not immediately able to comment on whether MSN would officially report the Hotmail account hijacking to law enforcement.

The hacker said he is willing to provide officials with the information he got from the account, which included credit card data used by the original owners to register one of the domains with VeriSign, as well as aliases and addresses used by the site operators.

But even the organizer of an online effort to shut down terrorist sites frowned on hacking al-Qaida.

"I think information warfare is best left to governments and should not be waged by civilians," said Aaron Weisburd of the Internet Haganah, which relies exclusively on notifying ISPs and law enforcement.

Swingers club shut over loud moaning

Wed Dec 18,10:38 AM ET

BERLIN (Reuters) - A swingers club in Berlin has been forced to shut because a court ruled that members' moans and shrieks of pleasure broke noise regulations.

Partner-swapping customers at the ground-floor club called "Zwielicht" -- a German word meaning both "twilight" and "dubious" -- upset those living upstairs, a Berlin court ruled this week.

"There are other clubs and brothels in this area and the customers there don't make so much noise. They are more discreet," a court spokeswoman said on Wednesday.

An additional problem was that Zwielicht offered a limousine service to ferry its members to and from affiliated clubs.

"Cars came and went, doors were slammed and people talked loudly outside on the street," the spokeswoman said.

Berlin actress Anouschka Renzi, who lives above the club, told the court she was tired of seeing men wearing only bathrobes getting out of limousines on their way into the club.

"This is not a red-light district," she said.

Thus bedded to my woes and bedded, bedded to my tomb

Oh let me living die, oh let me living

Oh let me living die

Till death do come, till death do come

Till death, till death do come

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Santa's not real???

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Hey you dickhead up there with the stupid name: fuckin leave you bitch, you're hung like a light switch.