Leaping horses, apologies and crime.

Thursday morning this week, a two year old filly named BF Chang was standing in front of the grandstand at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY, with exercise rider Marelio Garcia on her back. They were waiting to begin a routine run around the dirt track. Suddenly she twisted and flipped over the grandstand rail, into box seats, crashing through chairs and winding up in the clubhouse near a guest parking lot. The horse, which sustained lacerations and numerous cuts, was taken by ambulance to an equine hospital. She is expected to recover without problem.

Oddly, about a half hour later another 2 year old filly, which had been waiting in a similar spot and fashion, flipped and unseated her rider. She then got up and ran into oncoming horse traffic on the backside.

There has been discussion of what caused the two horses to act this way on the same day and near the same time. No conclusions have been reported.

It's been an odd few days.

Rand Paul, the GOP candidate for the US Senate in Kentucky, sent a letter to the editor of the local paper. Paul says that although he said abhorrent things on live and recorded broadcasts, he was misunderstood. He further said that because these ideas of his were subsequently discussed by newspapers, news media and blogs, his reputation has been sullied!

Marc Murphy, June 18, 2010, Courier-Journal

A further development with Rand is that the professional certificate he has listed as being the recipient of has turned out to be similar to those online mail order divinity degrees; easily obtained and requiring no actual accreditation.

Thursday, before a Congressional hearing on the BP Gulf disaster got underway, Rep. Joe Barton from Texas apologized to the BP Corporation. His concern seemed to be that this Swiss Corporation, headquartered in England, was the victim of a shakedown for being asked to set up a $20 billion dollar fund in escrow. I'm not sure whether his concern was that they were being asked to pay for their disaster or that they were being asked to turn over the money where someone other than they was administering it.

Some time later Rep. Barton apologized for apologizing to the BP Corporation. He first said he was sorry for his statement's misconstruction. A third statement retracted his apology to BP.

Watching these guys dance around things they try to defend as righteous beliefs can sure be entertaining.

Then last week, there was the Southwest Airline cargo worker who saw three suspicious boxes at the Little Rock airport. The worker opened the boxes and found 45 human heads. The heads were addressed to a medical lab in Texas.

Shipping body parts by air is not unusual. This was an issue because the packing and labeling of the boxes was so badly done they aroused concern by the cargo worker. The local authorities and FAA were notified. The local coroner has seized the heads and is investigating. His concern is that the heads may have been illegally harvested.

I have not been able to find out the status of the naked six year old and his two nightly home escapes mentioned in a previous post.

This past week a three year old boy, living with his mother, was shot. The bullet entered his body and ricocheted in the room and entered him a second time.

Two hours later his mother called 911 and an ambulance picked the child up and took him to the hospital. He is fine and in custody of social services.

His mother and a man were with the child arguing when he was shot. It is not known who shot the gun. During the two hour delay between the incident and the emergency call the two of them cleaned up the crime scene. The man made over twenty calls on a neighbor's cellphone.

The mother is in custody under a $500,000 bond.

The man is in custody under a $100,000 bond. He is further sentenced to six months in jail for loudly cursing at the judge during his arraignment.