Tuesday Reads, Including Obits

 Obituary:  Former Wyoming senator Mike Enzi, 77, has died from injuries sustained in a bicycle accident last Friday.

Enzi recently retired from the U.S. Senate.

Snip:

Enzi crashed near his home about 8.30pm Friday, Daly said, around the time Gillette police received a report of a man lying unresponsive in a road near a bike. 

Police have seen no indication that anybody else was nearby or involved in the accident, Lt. Brent Wasson told the newspaper.

Enzi, a Republican, retired in January after four terms as senator. 

He was first elected to a six-year term in 1996 after a close primary. He represented Wyoming, the country's least populated state with 578,759 residents.

Often ranked as one of the most conservative members of Congress, he won re-elections handily in 2002, 2008 and 2014 with more than 70 percent of the vote each time.

It sounds as if he had some underlying health issue which caused his accident.

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Another Obit:  I forgot to include this death of Borscht Belt comedian Jackie Mason, who I believe was a fixture on The Ed Sullivan Show way back when. Sullivan loved those comedians, and Mason was one of them.  He was about the last of those guys when he died the other day at the age of 93.

Snip:

Mason was born Jacob Maza, the son of a rabbi. His three brothers became rabbis. So did Mason, who at one time had congregations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Comedy eventually proved to be a more persistent calling than God.

“A person has to feel emotionally barren or empty or frustrated in order to become a comedian,” he told The Associated Press in 1987. “I don’t think people who feel comfortable or happy are motivated to become comedians. You’re searching for something and you’re willing to pay a high price to get that attention.”

Mason started in show business as a social director at a resort in the Catskills. He was the guy who got everybody up to play Simon Says, quiz games or shuffleboard. He told jokes, too. After one season, he was playing clubs throughout the Catskills for better money.

Note in this article he was banned by Sullivan for two years for supposedly giving the host "the finger."

More about the alleged event is here.  Footage does not exist on the internet of the alleged incident.  The heirs to Sullivan are keeping it out of circulation.

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Nothing like nepotism, and that includes the Olympic Games.

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The courts are really messing things up regarding the pandemic.  People who refuse to vaccinate are violating other people's rights, but they can't see that.

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Girls are not compelled to compete against a cheater, either.  They must refuse to do it.

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In case you missed it:

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Thanks to genetic genealogy, another old, old cold case has resulted in an arrest.

Snip:

Christopher Speelman has been charged with robbery, rape and homicide in the 1987 killing of 85-year-old Edna Laughman.

Laughman was found dead in her home on the 1500 block of Carlisle Pike in Oxford Township on Aug. 13. In court documents, state police said the home appeared to have been ransacked and multiple cigarette butts were found, even though Laughman was not a smoker.

Police initially arrested Edna's distant relative, Barry Laughman, for the crime. He was convicted and served 16 years in prison. He was released after DNA showed he was not the killer.

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