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'Cracy News
Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird
The Las Vegas Sun reported in January that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency has begun phasing in an
underpublicized policy of ending all walk-in traffic. Eventually, all immigration offices, to improve efficiency, will do
business only by appointments made over the Internet (even though many immigration clients, most notably migrant workers,
obviously do not have convenient Internet access). [Las Vegas Sun, 1-13-05]
After five years of the New Mexico government always accepting Viola Trevino's child support claims against Steve Barreras
(over the vasectomied Barreras' objections), a court in Albuquerque finally ruled in December that the child never existed.
The judge concluded that Trevino had lied numerous times and had forged DNA evidence, birth certificates, and other documents
and that Barreras had been unjustly forced to pay $20,000 in support, even though Trevino had never publicly produced the
child. In December, having run out of excuses, Trevino borrowed a little girl from a stranger on the street and took her into
the courtroom to "be" her and Barreras' daughter (but the stranger followed Trevino inside and exposed the ruse). Gov. Bill
Richardson ordered an investigation as to how so many state officials had been hoaxed for so long. [The New Mexican-AP, 12-13-04]
"I don't think I've done more than two days' work in three years," said the New York Liquor Authority's director of wholesale
services, Patricia Freund, explaining to the New York Post in December that she is another example of how bureaucracies deal
with "problem" workers who are hard to fire. Freund was exiled to an office with no work and no responsibilities (though continuing
to draw her $82,000 salary), which she said was in retaliation for raising a stink about Gov. George Pataki's Christian prayer
breakfasts and Jesus-laden mementoes, which she said was discriminatory toward Jewish employees, such as her. [New York Post,
12-28-04]
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