I just saw this mentioned over at Candleblog. But, apparently (former?) Seven Days writer Peter Kurth, whose Crank Call column has always been one of my favorites, spent two months in a British prison after an incident of air rage.

Here’s an excerpt…

My sins, in brief: When the cabin crew refused to radio JFK to see if I’d left my laptop at the gate and also declined to move me to another seat, “an altercation ensued” — not physical, but verbal, with the flight attendants becoming snootier by the minute and me becoming, well, let’s say, more American. I behaved badly in-flight, yelling at the crew, “I am an American citizen! You are our lapdog ally!” and other remarks of a vulgar and unhelpful nature. Very vulgar, I’m afraid: At one point I called that tired stewardess the worst thing you can call a woman — you all know what it is — but by then I was in full-blown air rage, something the airlines used to understand but, on the evidence, no longer do.

Finally, I went back to the galley and sat on what is called the “bustle,” which is where they keep those rubber slides should a plane go down in water and where, over many years of these flights, I’ve seen lots of people sitting and children playing without anyone making a fuss about it. But times have changed, and now parking your ass on the bustle constitutes “endangering an aircraft,” which is a very high crime under Britain’s new anti-terrorism laws, and can get you sent to prison for a minimum of two years. I was warned about this (so they tell me), but I still refused to move; and when we finally landed at Heathrow the next morning I was escorted off the plane by two of London’s finest — not the sort of “bobby” I remember from many years in London, but fully outfitted SWAT-team types, bristling with munitions and in no mood for smart alecks. They dragged me past customs straight to police headquarters at Uxbridge, an indescribably dreary, prefabricated suburb and corporate-operations center west of London, where “incidents” originating at Heathrow are all referred for jurisdiction.

It wasn’t until I got to the police station that I began to realize, slowly, the nature of the trouble I was in.

And it goes way downhill from there.

All I can say is, hey, better you than me, buddy.

No, I mean, wow, that sucks.

Greg Palast will be in Montpelier tonight. I urge you to go see him, if you can. Among many interesting things, Palast compellingly ties the prosecutor purge scandal to the RNC’s effort to purge Democrats from the voter rolls.

Go here to listen to the excellent interview by Mitch Wertlieb this morning on VPR.

And here’s the text from VPR’s site complete with event details…

A recent Bill Moyers journal on PBS looked back at the events leading up to the war in Iraq and asked why so many journalists weren’t skeptical enough about Bush Administration claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

BBC correspondent Greg Palast was not one of those journalists. Palast appeared with Phil Donahue and expressed serious doubts about WMD assertions before Donahue’s show was cancelled by MSNBC.

Palast did some investigative reporting in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and was charged with anti-terror violations for his efforts.

And tonight in Montpelier, Palast will talk with more of the investigative journalism from the updated paperback version of his best selling book Armed Madhouse. In that book Palast says vote rigging determined the last two presidential elections, but that news didn’t get much play in American media.

He spoke with VPR’s Mitch Wertlieb about his book.

Palast will be speaking at 7:00 pm at the Unitarian Church in Montpelier.

I can’t tell you how great it is to have Pat Leahy as chair of Judiciary during the U.S. Attorney purge, or, to be more accurate, during the investigation of the corruption that has infested the Department of Justice from top to bottom.

The latest is that Leahy and Sheldon Whitehouse from Rhode Island have written a letter to the Inspector General of the Justice Department requesting a review of public corruption cases brought by the Bush Administration.

Specifically, the letter requests a review of the Department’s public corruption investigations commenced under the current administration, and prepare an analysis that is stripped of any identifying information as to target or district, but reveals the breakdown of cases by party affiliation of targets at key investigative points, such as opening of case, commencement of grand jury activity, charging, trial, and conviction.

What this review will demonstrate is whether the administration has focussed on Democratic candidates and office holders when they have pursued charges of election fraud and other allegations of public corruption.

Any predictions of what the statistics will show?

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Those of you who know me know that, for personal reasons, I don’t touch environmental issues. I really shouldn’t go there, especially given that I’ve just never been a party line kind of guy. But I just can’t stand it. Especially after reading SPS’ diary today. SPS, you’re great and I always appreciate your POV, but, well… I just couldn’t agree less.

The Vermont Legislature’s climate change bill is in trouble. BIG trouble. Every corporate lobbyist in the state is trying to scuttle it, and if that’s not enough to tell us all that we need to get off our butts and call our legislators NOW, let me try some explanation.

First; the bill has a LOT of good stuff. Incentives for renewables. Firm goals. And of course, the expansion of efficiency programs into heating fuels. Now I’m as frustrated with this Legislature as the next lefty, but that’s no reason to sit in the corner muttering to ourselves. And sure, maybe this shouldn’t be Vermont’s first priority, but dammit – as we said with impeachment, these people CAN walk and chew gum at the same time. Okay, maybe global warming shouldn’t be the top priority, but if you really think it’s not a priority at all, then you’re a moron living with a bag over your head. This energy/sustainability/climate stuff is becoming life and death. We should take it that seriously.

But there’s suddenly unexpected resistance from random batches of Democrats, and this is not acceptable (continued below the fold).

I’m not privy to what the conversations are, but the close vote in the Senate could simply be a backlash against Shumlin’s wildly egoistic leadership style this session. If that’s it, and it’s essentially personal, the response is easy: Get over it. NOW.

What’s more complicated though is what SPS was talking about; that is, the resistance to the funding mechanism (the windfall profits tax on Vermont Yankee). I would remind folks that this needs funding, number one. That’s just a fact of life – and that the original funding was going to come exclusively from a tax on heating oil itself which was, quite frankly, a heels-dug-in stance from some who seemed patronizingly unmoved by concerns of up-front regressive taxation on a life-or-death utility such as heat regardless of concerns about whether or not some people had the money up front. That idea died an ugly death, and I for one popped the champagne.

But the idea of taxing Vermont Yankee is bringing Dems from out of left field to boost their pro-business bona fides. Treasurer Jeb Spaulding, of all people (who I like and respect a lot) has even decided to weigh in on the issue, presumably as a chance to grab the Dem pro-business crown.

Let me be absolutely clear: This issue is so straightforward, so clear cut, so easy, that if you can’t support this tax, you really don’t buy into the idea that businesses should be taxed at ALL. Period. If this one bugs you, you won’t find one that doesn’t, and what wing of the Democratic Party does that put you in?

If you want to be serious about this, it’s not a “business tax,” it’s a nuclear waste tax, which strikes me as more than reasonable. As far as business is concerned, this bill will drive down costs for small business. Nobody, as far as I know, is even wasting their breath disputing that.

And it has straightforward symmetry. It’s an energy bill, so it finds funding from the energy sector. And it finds funding from an energy producer that we are going to have to wean ourselves off of eventually. Until the waste and safety problems are solved, nuclear power is dangerously unsustainable. It’s not an option. Expanding nuke power to cover even an additional 15-20% of our nation’s needs would require a new Yucca Mountain sized waste facility every few years. Let’s consider this a sin tax, eh?

But more than that, Entergy is rolling in dough. Through no business acumen of their own – simply the market – they are raking in phenomenal profits. They. Can. Handle. It.

The line is that this will somehow break a deal with Entergy made during their relicensing, which walks dangerously close to outright dishonesty. There were no “deals.” Things change, and those things can come into play in the next relicensing if they wanna fuss about it. Just as the fact that the waste was supposedly going to be moved out of state. We might want to revisit that understanding next time.

Folks, don’t let the Legislature weenie out on this. Call your Senators and Reps ASAP. If we let this go by, we’ll be wishing we had a “do nothing” Legislature, rather than a Legislature that is part of the problem… if there was ever an activist ball that needed to get rolling on an issue this year, this is it.

(addition from J.D – Senate contacts here and Representatives here.)