Temecula burglar leaves calling card

 

10:56 PM PST on Sunday, February 13, 2011

 

SARAH BURGE
The Press-Enterprise

 

Identifying the suspect in a recent tire-theft caper in Temecula required a bit of work for investigators, but no great powers of deduction.

"World's dumbest criminals," said the victim of the theft, Rich Richardson, owner of Best for Less Tire Pros. "I think he could qualify for that."

A man was caught on surveillance cameras removing tires from Richardson's business while driving a van that -- unfortunately for him -- was emblazoned with "Jeff Tires" and his cell phone number, court records state.

Jeffrey Lewis Yancey, 32, also known as Jeff Yance Lewis, of Rancho Cucamonga, has pleaded not guilty to burglary and property fraud. He has several prior convictions, court records show. His attorney could not be reached for comment Friday because of the holiday.

Investigators arrested Yancey last month after they went to his home on the ruse of purchasing tires from him, Riverside County Sheriff's Sgt. Kevin McDonald   said.

They simply called to arrange the meeting, McDonald said.

"After all, we had his phone number."

Richardson said he arrived at his Via Montezuma business the morning of Jan. 17 to discover the padlock removed from his used-tire storage container and more than a dozen tires missing.

Reviewing surveillance camera footage from around 4 a.m. that day, he clearly saw an older two-tone van with "Jeff Tires" and a phone number on the side pulling up to the container.

The driver, who police later identified as Yancey, can be seen in the video retrieving bolt cutters from the van, then tossing them into a trailer attached to it. Another man can be seen throwing tires into the trailer.

Investigators learned that the phone number belonged to Yancey and matched his driver's license photo with surveillance images of the van driver, court records state. They also discovered that, when Yancey had been arrested in the past, he had listed his occupation as "Tire Sales," the documents state.

A search of Yancey's home uncovered stolen tires, bolt cutters and a methamphetamine pipe, court records show.

McDonald said investigators suspect Yancey in similar thefts of used tires, including a burglary reported Jan. 19 at 5 Brothers Tire and Service on Jefferson Avenue in Temecula. In that case, 40 tires worth about $2,000 were stolen. But that theft was not captured on video.

Richardson said that, while he was upset his business was targeted, he can appreciate the humor. With a look of disbelief, he shook his head.

"It's so stupid, it's funny."

 

 

LINK TO SURVEILLANCE VIDEO:

www.pe.com/video/index.html?bcid=790154910001

WTF? Man Accused Of Making 2,000 $%*&# Obscene Phone Calls

February 25, 2011 5:05 PM

 

SANTA ANA (CBS) — Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested a man Friday accusing him of making more than 2,000 obscene phone calls over the past year.

Officials say Israel Vasquez, who has been deported twice, called 911 operators and would make “obscene and sex-laden” conversation, according to Orange County sheriff’s spokesperson Jim Amormino.

Vasquez was in custody on an immigration hold and is expected to face charges of making obscene phone calls to female 911 dispatchers since last March, Amormino added.

“He would call 911 operators at Garden Grove police, California Highway Patrol offices, the Orange County sheriff and possibly other law enforcement agencies,” Amormino said. “If a male 911 operator answered, he wouldn’t say anything, hang up and call back hoping a woman would answer.”

One dispatcher fielded about 1,000 of the calls alone, Amormino said.

Shortly after Vasquez allegedly made another obscene call to 911 Friday, deputies were able to trace it to where Vasquez was living in Stanton and arrested him, Amormino said. Deputies found eight cell phones in his home, the spokesman added.

The caller was able to evade authorities by repeatedly registering new cell phones to multiple identities, Amormino said. Also, by the time the calls were traced, the suspect was gone, he said.

 

LINK TO VIDEO AND PHOTO OF VASQUEZ:

http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/02/25/wtf-man-accused-of-making-2000-obscene-phone-calls/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1360777/Can-dreams-predict-future-The-intriguing-book-examines-psychology-paranormal.html

Two accused of using stun gun to discipline 13-year-old Tampa boy

 

Ileana Morales

Times Staff Writer
Posted: Feb 23, 2011 10:01 AM

 

TAMPA — Two people were accused of child abuse after police said they repeatedly used a stun gun to discipline a 13-year-old.

Christopher Roosevelt Lewis, 22, relative and caretaker of the boy, bought a stun gun a week ago. Since then, he and Deonjhane "Amy" Menifield, 19, used it to discipline him.

The 13-year-old told an employee at his school, and police found visible marks matching a stun gun on the victim's upper thigh. Police arrested the suspects Tuesday night at their home and charged them both with child abuse.

When police contacted Lewis, the boy's relative and caretaker, he took off a jacket, revealing a 12-inch hunting knife. That led to a charge of carrying a concealed weapon.

Child Protective Investigations officials took custody of the boy. Police would not describe the relationship between Lewis and the boy.

[Last modified: Feb 23, 2011 02:02 PM]

Christopher Lewis, 22, and Deonijhane (Amy) Menifield, 19, of Tampa, Fla., were arrested after they allegedly used a Taser to 'discipline' a 13-year-old boy in their care.

Trump trailing Obama by a hair in recent poll and billionaire developer says he isn't surprised

 

 

Saturday, February 26th 2011, 4:00 AM

Watts/NewsDonald Trump pondered a Reform Party run for the presidency during the 2000 election.

Donald Trump says the nation's best and brightest rarely seek public office anymore - although he knows just the guy to buck that trend: Donald Trump.

"People always say the strongest, smartest, most successful people never run," Trump told the Daily News this week. "I may have to test that theory. The country really needs it."

Trump, whose name seems to routinely surface when the presidential race begins, said he wasn't stunned by a Newsweek/Daily Beast poll showing he trailed President Obama by just 2 points.

"I wasn't as surprised as some many people," the billionaire developer said. "I do think the numbers are amazing. The President is campaigning. I'm not even campaigning.

"Zero dollars, zero campaigning, and I'm two points behind."

The poll found Obama barely beating Trump in a head-to-head matchup, just 43% to 41%.

Those numbers, combined with Trump's well-received speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee, hyped speculation about The Donald making a move on the White House.

A Draft Trump 2012 Committee was launched via the Internet, declaring its hopes of landing the Queens native on the ballot in some early battleground states.

As for the incumbent, Trump offered criticism similar to his shots at Obama before the CPAC conference earlier this month.

"You've had somebody like Obama running for President, and he never really did anything," said Trump, 64.
Trump - although a political apprentice - first raised his presidential ambitions back in 1988.

He pondered a Reform Party run for the 2000 election, but has yet to put his name on the ballot for any public office.

Trump said his appeal is simple: "People are sick of getting pushed around, and being a whipping post for the world.

"If I ever did run, and I ever won, it would be a bad day for a lot of countries ripping us off," he added.

Although Trump has become increasingly outspoken about the White House and foreign policy, he still has yet to make up his mind about a run for the presidency.

"I don't know," Trump said. "But when the best people and the most qualified people can't run, that's sad commentary on this country."

Democrats just don't understand the new populism

 

Timothy P. Carney

02/23/11 8:05 PM

Senior Political Columnist

 

 

Andrew Breitbart addresses a Tea Party rally at the State Capitol in Madison, Wis., on Saturday, Feb. 19, 2011, during the fifth day or large scale protests.-Andy Manis/APThe Obama campaign and other liberals are looking to tap into the populist current of today's politics and turn the Wisconsin union fight into a national issue in the 2012 election. While the liberals can wield rhetorical pitchforks and light political torches, they should realize that it's their guys who are living inside the castle today. Specifically, public-sector unions -- by many measures the most entrenched special interest in American politics -- are not fighting against The Man, which is to say the entrenched powers of government. In this struggle, The Man is the government unions, which are sitting in the smoky back room divvying up the spoils of a crooked racket. And cronyism -- not wealth -- is the object of today's populist ire.

The Left has misread the postbailout populist sentiment all along, assuming public anger was directed at the rich. But American anger, I suspect, is directed not at some people who have money or success, but at those who profit through cronyism and their connections to power.

In other words, anti-bailout anger is not anger at the rich, but anger at those unfairly getting rich -- at the taxpayer's expense.

The Obama administration was startled in March 2009 when Americans exploded with anger at AIG executives -- living off the taxpayer dime -- who pocketed huge bonuses. There was plenty of anti-Wall Street feeling, and (to the confusion and consternation of liberals) it helped Republicans win many congressional races in 2010. Democrats apparently learned the wrong lessons.

Just after the election, public sentiment didn't favor the Democratic efforts to reinstate the old death tax -- which only affects the upper class. Class warfare talk didn't help the Left's efforts to increase taxes on the rich.

Even so, Obama's Democratic National Committee now thinks it has the winning hand in the labor scuffles that began in Wisconsin this month. In the view of the Left, the Democrats are standing with the working man against the greedy. The acrid Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times that government unions provide a "counterweight to the political power of big money."

Hard facts utterly contradict Krugman's claim. First, unions are "Big Money." Of the top 10 sources of political contributions since 1989, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, five are unions. Of the top 20 sources of 2010 campaign funds, 10 are unions.

And the notion that Big Labor is cancelling out Big Business -- well, that's a Big Lie, too. The 10 industries that contributed the most during the 2010 elections -- from Wall Street to government unions -- all gave more to Democrats than to Republicans.

The top donor to House and Senate campaigns in the 2010 elections -- the Service Employees International Union -- is otherwise known as "Obama's Union." The company that spent the most on lobbying in 2010 -- General Electric -- is also known as "the for-profit arm of the Obama Administration."

In the retrograde liberal way of thinking, though, populism is about class warfare, in which the wealthy and corporations are the "special interests" arrayed against the poor working man. But in today's Wisconsin skirmish, the "working man" is implausibly the Wisconsin Education Association, the third-largest political donor in the state last election cycle.

Union-funded lawmakers take money from taxpayers and give it the government unions, who kick some of it back to union-funded lawmakers. It's not too different from banks or defense contractors donating to politicians who bail them out or give them no-bid contracts.

As long as Democrats think they're on the side of "the people" because the unions agree with them, they're politically lost.

What about the Republicans? What is their fight with the unions really about?

Is Krugman partly right? Are Republicans just trying to defund a Democratic piggy bank? Or are GOP politicians really trying to bust up immoral rackets?

If the latter, Beltway Republicans' next target should be subsidy sucklers and bailout bandits. Recent House votes striking at ethanol subsidies and the military-industrial complex are a good first step. Killing other green-energy rackets, export subsidies, and all forms of corporate welfare should be the goal, for both Congress and Republican presidential hopefuls.

Democratic wins in 2006 and 2008 were fueled by a populism sparked by Jack Abramoff and Wall Street bailouts. Republican wins in 2010 were powered by Tea Party populism angry about bailouts and Washington game playing.

The same anti-elite sentiment could persist in 2012. Democrats' nationalizing of Wisconsin shows they misunderstand it. Now it's Republicans' turn to show they can hear the voice of the people.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/02/democrats-wage-populist-fight-against-their-allies##ixzz1Exj4zHEa

Dispute over noisy kids gets bride bounced from courthouse

 

 

Kimball Perry

Cincinnati.Com 

 

 

Janice Doane was all dolled up in a black-and-white gown she wore Thursday for her wedding ceremony at the Hamilton County Courthouse.

But some attitude and hurt feelings resulted not only in Doane not getting married, but also in getting her thrown out of the courthouse with her fiancé and four kids in tow.

"I've been here 18 years, baby. This is a first," said Percy Milton, a Clerk of Courts employee who witnessed the incident.

Doane, 27, of Colerain Township, got her marriage license Thursday and went to the courthouse with her fiancé, Luis Fabian Ruiz, and her children.

While waiting for Municipal Court Judge Ted Berry to perform the ceremony, Doane, Ruiz and the children waited in the hall. But the children created such a racket running up and down the halls and screaming, Berry said other workers on the floor complained.

Berry's pregnant bailiff, Jamie Coates-Donohue, went into the hall a couple of times to ask for quiet. The last time, she asked one child to calm down.

That set off Doane, who thought it improper for the bailiff to directly address her child.

"She wasn't woman enough to tell me to my face," Doane said.

Coates-Donohue insisted she wasn't rude to Doane, she just wanted her to keep her children from disrupting court proceedings.

"She said, 'Don't tell me what to do,' " the bailiff said.

Doane insists her child was needlessly scared by the bailiff.

"I told her, 'What you did was wrong,' " Doane said. "I told her I didn't want to hear anything else she had to say and to get out of my face.

"(She) should have handled it professionally instead of like someone off the streets."

The bailiff suggested Doane would listen to the judge and summoned Berry.

"She was very rude to my bailiff," Berry said. "She's my bailiff. She's an arm of the court."

Doane and Ruiz have been together for 10 years, Doane said, and have been anxiously awaiting their wedding day.

"For that to happen to me today just broke my heart," Doane said. "They just politely threw me out."

Every 14 weeks, each Municipal Court judge is the "duty" judge, responsible for duties that include performing wedding ceremonies that can include walk-ins. Doane was scheduled to be married at 2 p.m. but was thrown out of the courthouse before then.

"We're not refusing to marry her," Berry said. "She can come back next week."

Doane said she planned to hire someone to perform the ceremony Thursday night.

Berry is no stranger to controversy.

In a July 10, 2007, court case, Berry ordered Ivan Boykins to spend 30 days in jail. An upset Boykins responded by telling the judge "f--- you." Berry responded to Boykins using the same phrase.

Surgery saves girl's face from rare disorder

 

Amanda Gardner

February 25, 2011 8:20 a.m. EST

When Christine Honeycutt was five years old, one side of her face seemed to mysteriously stop growing.

• Parry-Romberg syndrome is an extremely rare autoimmune disorder
• One side of her face was developing normally while the other side was deteriorating
• The relocated tissue will grow along with Christine as she matures

 

(Health.com) -- The line in the middle of Christine Honeycutt's forehead was barely noticeable at first. It was a faint gray smudge, just a half-inch long from top to bottom.

"It looked like she ran into a doorjamb, which kids do," says Christine's mother, Vicki. But the five-year-old swore she'd done no such thing.

When she looked closer, Vicki also noticed what appeared to be a small bruise or birthmark on the left side of her daughter's neck. That, too, seemed like nothing, but when the marks didn't go away after a couple of weeks, Vicki took Christine to the doctor.

"It's just a discoloration," the pediatrician said, giving Vicki a cream. "Keep her out of the sun and put this on it."

The cream didn't work. Five months later, the gray line was still there -- and it now extended halfway down Christine's forehead.

The Honeycutts consulted a second doctor -- this time in southern California, where the family had recently moved from Charlotte, North Carolina -- and received the same advice. Vicki wasn't reassured, but she wasn't unduly worried, either. Christine was otherwise healthy, and she seemed to be enjoying kindergarten at her new school.

Then, in first grade, Christine started inexplicably gaining weight and suffered a violent seizure at home one evening, losing consciousness and convulsing. The ER doctors who treated her concluded that the seizure had been brought on by the 102-degree fever she'd been running, but Vicki suspected it wasn't that simple.

A surprising diagnosis

\Within a few months of the seizure, the line on Christine's forehead stretched down to her eyebrow and looked more like an indentation than a shadow. People were noticing. One of Christine's teachers told her to wipe the ink off her forehead. "I can't," she replied. "It's always there."

There were other troubling signs: One side of Christine's forehead was normal, but the other was "meaty," Vicki recalls. And her ears looked out of proportion to one another -- an asymmetry that seemed to extend over her entire face.

"One side of her face looked like a baby," Vicki says. "It looked like one side of her face was growing and the other was not."

As it turns out, that's exactly what was happening.

In 2008, two and a half years after the line first appeared on Christine's face, a geneticist who specializes in facial deformities finally diagnosed her with Parry-Romberg syndrome, an extremely rare autoimmune disorder that affects roughly one in a million people. Christine's own immune system had turned against her so that one side of her face was developing normally while the other side was slowly but surely deteriorating.

Parry-Romberg syndrome, also known as progressive facial hemiatrophy, was first identified in the early 1800s. It usually starts in childhood and gets worse with time, and it seems to be more common in girls. (Although Christine was diagnosed by a geneticist, the condition does not appear to be inherited.) In addition to the distinctive atrophy that occurs on one side of a patient's face, it can also cause seizures and other neurological problems.

The indented line in Christine's forehead -- a feature found in about one-quarter of people with facial hemiatrophy -- is known as coup de sabre, a French phrase that translates as "cut of a saber" and evokes a scar that someone who has sustained a gash in a sword fight might be left with.

After Christine was diagnosed, Vicki went home and looked up Parry-Romberg on the Internet. What she saw was not comforting. "There were horrifying pictures," she says. "One side [of a patient's face] was a skeleton and the other side wasn't."

A bleak prognosis

There is no cure for Parry-Romberg syndrome. Nor are there any proven treatments, although drugs that suppress the immune system have been shown to be beneficial in some cases.

For two years after Christine's diagnosis, the Honeycutts consulted expert after expert, and all of them told the family that not only was there no cure, but Christine could not have her face reconstructed until the disease stopped progressing, which could take years. By that time, the underlying facial bones might also be affected.

"This was mind-blowing," Vicki says. "She's going to go through adolescence with her face destroyed then they're going to reconstruct it?" That wasn't good enough for Vicki. Christine was now 11 years old, on the brink of a stage in life that can be tumultuous for even the healthiest and most ordinary kids.

So Vicki contacted Dr. John Siebert, M.D., a plastic surgeon whose name she'd come across during her online research. A professor of surgery at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison, Siebert specializes in microsurgery and has operated on about 400 patients with facial asymmetry over the past two decades, 140 of them with Parry-Romberg.

He looked at photos of Christine and agreed to operate in November 2010. The Honeycutts made plans to travel to Wisconsin.

"Like building a teddy bear"

The surgery took about seven hours. Siebert and his team transplanted tissue -- complete with functioning blood vessels -- from under Christine's left arm and inserted it under her face via an incision in front of her ear.

"It's like building a teddy bear," Siebert says. "The skin and the fur is all there. My job is to give the stuffing to bring out its natural form or shape." His goal in these surgeries, he adds, is to "sculpt" the transplanted tissue and integrate it with the healthy tissue on the other side of a patient's face "smoothly and gradually, so it looks like it was there all along."

The relocated tissue will grow along with Christine as she matures, Siebert says -- although he can't explain how. It could be that the transplanted tissue and blood vessels restore normal blood supply to the damaged side of the face and allow the cells of different tissues to "talk to each other" in ways that prevent further atrophy, he says.

Some Parry-Romberg experts are skeptical that the procedure can actually reverse the course of the disease and prevent damage to the underlying bone and muscle. But Siebert says he has rarely had to perform a second surgery, which, he says, would probably be needed if the disease continued to progress.

Back to school

Christine will undergo a brief procedure to fine-tune the tissue in her jaw this summer, and she'll have to visit Dr. Siebert's office every five or six months after that.

She has a scar that stretches from her underarm to her shoulder, an incision mark on her neck, and, three months after the surgery, her face is still a bit swollen. But she's going to school again and is starting to feel like she's returning to normal.

"I like my nose better now," she says.

Chick-Fil-A: FREE Fries on March 4, 2011

  

 

 

On Friday, March 4, 2011 you can get a  FREE medium order of waffle fries between 2:00pm and 4:00pm when you ask for Heinz Dip & Squeeze and mention the Free Dry Day Promotion.

Limit one per customer.

Available at participating Chick-fil-A locations, so you might want to call ahead to make sure your local store is participating before making a special trip!

http://www.wreg.com/news/nationworld/sns-special-people-of-walmart-pictures,0,2188570.photogallery

Originally Published:Thursday, February 24th 2011, 7:19 PM
Updated: Thursday, February 24th 2011, 10:09 PM

Ut/APCharlie Sheen had some harsh words for the Chuck Lorre, creator behind his hit CBS sitcom, 'Two and a Half Men.'

 

LOS ANGELES - CBS canceled production of "Two and a Half Men" for the rest of the season Thursday, quickly striking back at Charlie Sheen's venomous rant against the hit show's creator.

The hard partying star called his sitcom boss Chuck Lorre a "clown," "turd" - and a "contaminated little maggot." And he inexplicably harped on Lorre's Jewish birth name - "Chaim Levine."

"Based on the totality of Charlie Sheen's statements, conduct and condition, CBS and Warner Bros. Television have decided to discontinue production of 'Two and a Half Men' for the remainder of the season," the companies said in a statement released Thursday.

An undaunted Sheen immediately struck back in an open letter to TMZ.com.

"What does this say about Haim Levine after he tried to use his words to judge and attempt to degrade me," Sheen wrote.

"I gracefully ignored this folly for 177 shows ... I fire back once and this contaminated little maggot can't handle my power and can't handle the truth," he went on. "I wish him nothing but pain in his silly travels especially if they wind up in my octagon."

He boasted that he had "defeated this earthworm with my words" and implied that Lorre is lucky he didn't use his "fire breathing fists."

He implored his fans to rally around him.

"I urge all my beautiful and loyal fans who embraced this show for almost a decade to walk with me side-by-side as we march up the steps of justice to right this unconscionable wrong," Sheen wrote.

Hours earlier, Sheen, in a shocking and wide-ranging interview on a Los Angeles radio station, also insisted he can heal his addictions with his mind.

He declared he didn't need the "cult" of Alcoholics Anonymous, calling its many members a bunch of "sissies."

"I have a disease? Bull----. I cured it with my brain," he said, adding that he preferred the company of his girlfriends - a porn star and a marijuana magazine covergirl - to the "bootleg cult."

"I'm dealing with fools and trolls," Sheen said, describing the backlash to his recent party spiral.

"They lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and just look at their loser lives and then they look at me and say 'I can't process it," he told controversial radio host Alex Jones.

Jones, who believes 9/11 was an inside government job, was speechless.

Sheen then blasted Lorre for imposing a month-long production hiatus so the actor could recover from a bender than put him in the hospital.

"I embarrassed him in front of his children and the world by healing at a pace that his un-evolved mind cannot process," he said. "I've spent close to the last decade, I don't know, effortlessly and magically converting (his) tin cans into pure gold."

For conservatives, Michelle Obama is fair game

Except for an ill-advised trip to an expensive Spanish resort last summer, Michelle Obama has escaped much of the criticism that has been directed at her husband, keeping a relatively low-profile while primarily focusing on childhood obesity, military families and the arts.

During her first two years in the White House, she was more Laura Bush rather than Hillary Clinton, but that has begun to change. Now, for conservative critics, it is open season on the first lady.

Obama’s admonishments on nutrition and advice on breastfeeding are examples of big government “nanny state” intrusion according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); her eating habits are evidence of her hypocrisy, according to Rush Limbaugh; her athletic physique is something to be lampooned on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, which posted a cartoon showing her as overweight and eating a plate full of hamburgers.

To date, the East Wing has managed to stay above the fray, not wanting to take part in a point-counterpoint kind of debate. But to one academic expert on first ladies, the attacks seem unusually pointed.

“There’s so much anger in the criticism surrounding Michelle Obama,” said Myra Gutin, a Rider University professor who has a biography of Barbara Bush and a book on 20th century first ladies. “It seems almost personal to me.”

Republicans have a simple response: Obama is now fair game because she is playing an increasingly political role in her husband’s administration.

When Obama made a string of campaign stops for Democratic candidates during the 2010 campaign, Republicans generally refrained from any attacks. But many of them point to the first lady’s e-mail to supporters earlier this month announcing the news that Charlotte had been picked as the host city of the 2012 Democratic National Convention as an example of her slow movement onto political turf.

And they say her support for the government playing a bigger role in advancing better nutrition is inherently political. “If the first lady doesn’t want criticism, then she shouldn’t propose policy,” said Republican strategist Mark McKinnon.

“While no one disagrees with encouraging good health, against the backdrop of her husband’s demonstrably invasive and expanding government, the fear is that her encouragement will cross over to government fiat,” said Mary Matalin, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In contrast to Hillary Clinton, who was put in charge of her husband Bill Clinton’s health care initiative shortly after he became president, Obama’s role in health care policy has been minimal. Clinton was an entirely new model of a first lady and quickly became a target of what she called “the vast right wing conspiracy” before dialing back her public involvement in policy after health care crashed and burned.

Republican strategist John Feehery said conservatives may be seizing on the fact that Michelle Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is perceived to be more liberal than her husband. But he sees a difference between the current first lady and Clinton, who was perceived as a “real ideological threat.”

“Michelle Obama isn’t heading up a health care task force,” Feehery said, referring to Clinton. “Michelle Obama is talking about issues that are relatively important. I think she’s a fairly traditional first lady.”

In that sense she has resembled her predecessor, Laura Bush, who promoted literacy and woman’s issues in Afghanistan as first lady, and never attracted much controversy.

“The thought of attacking [Laura Bush] was just not in the mainstream,” said Anita McBride, who served as Bush’s chief of staff. “I can’t really say she took a pounding on anything like this. Sure, she had her missteps but you really didn’t see much criticism. I think people saw her as someone who softened the president.”

Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, was as accomplished as Clinton when she became first lady, but from the beginning sought a relatively low profile in the White House.

Asked by POLITICO recently asked if it’s a first lady’s role to delve into policy issues, Obama said: “We talked about this when I first came in, and I think every first lady has the right to—or the privilege of determining what their agenda will be and every first lady’s agenda is as different as every first lady.”

In her case, she made childhood obesity her main focus, though recently she has also spent time publicizing the needs of military families. Her kitchen garden and warnings about the dangers of junk food seemed fairly benign – at least in the beginning. But as the first lady began to talk specifics and a more policy-oriented role, her critics saw an opening.

Last summer, when she talked about telling her kids that “dessert is not a right,” it became an instant headline. Palin took a swipe at the line on her reality show as she made s’mores with her daughter. “This is in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert,” she said.

Around the same time, the first lady took heat for taking the private trip to Spain as unemployment plagued millions of Americans.

Some expected the attacks to continue when she hit the campaign trail to stump for Democrats in the midterm elections last fall. But her role in the campaign did not become an issue.

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said Obama “became an easier target” by becoming more political recently with the DNC announcement. “She made herself more political and thus fed these kinds of attacks,” he said.

Still, even the Charlotte comments were fairly innocuous.

“Vibrant, diverse and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds,” Obama wrote. “And of course, great barbecue.”

But some Republicans saw the move as political because as one Republican strategist put it, “a party convention is inherently political” and not something a first lady usually deals with. 

As Obama marked the first anniversary of the Let’s Move! campaign and began to ramp up efforts for the second year, the scrutiny that had largely escaped her became intense.

When the White House served up deep dish pizza and bratwurst at its Super Bowl party earlier this month, Obama was forced to answer questions about why.

“It’s about balance,” she told reporters during a luncheon at the White House earlier this month to mark the first anniversary of Let’s Move! “It’s always been about balance.”

At the luncheon, the first lady briefly mentioned breastfeeding and how children who are nursed “longer have a lower tendency to be obese.”

“We also want to focus on the important touch points in a child’s life. And what we’re learning now is that early intervention is key,” she said.

Her comments received wide coverage. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service announced that costs for breast pumps would be eligible for tax breaks. And just like that, the story was on The Drudge Report.

The next day, Bachmann took the first swipe, criticizing Obama for trying to implement a “nanny state” based on her push to get mothers to breastfeed their children in order to help combat childhood obesity. Palin joined in two days later, taking a shot at the first lady while blaming her husband’s policies for the rising cost of commodities and items like milk.

“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breastfeed your baby,’” she said. In a column, Michelle Malkin also chimed in, saying that the first lady and her “food cops” aren’t “interested in slimming down kids’ waistlines but rather “boosting government and public union payrolls.”

Big Government then ran its cartoon portraying an overweight eating a plate full of hamburgers and French fries. And this week, after the first lady indugled in spareribs with her daughters over the holiday weekend in Colorado, Limbaugh weighed in – like Breitbart – on her appearance.

“I’m trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you,” Limbaugh said.

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote that Limbaugh was the right person to comment “being perhaps the finest example of the male form since Michelangelo sculpted David,” but the White House said nothing.

Not all Republicans think that attacking Obama is smart politics.

“Cheap shots against Michelle Obama are stupid,” Feehery said. “She’s a good first lady and I think that conservatives are better off keeping their focus on President Obama. There’s nothing I’ve seen from Michelle Obama that I’ve found offensive.”

And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has an interest in nutrition thanks to his own struggles with weight, was even more supportive.

“She’s been criticized…out of reflex rather than out of thoughtful expression,” he said Wednesday at a session with reporters in Washington. “It’s exactly what Republicans say they believe, which is you put an emphasis on personal responsibility…I thought that’s what we were about.”

Originally Published:Thursday, February 24th 2011, 4:10 PM
Updated: Thursday, February 24th 2011, 4:16 PM

The anti-abortion billboard that claims 'The most dangerous place for African Americans is in the womb,' is coming down - one day after it was put up, sparking local outrage.

A controversial anti-abortion billboard in SoHo equating abortion among black women with genocide is coming down.

The Rev. Al Sharpton says Lamar Outdoor advertising has agreed to yank the ad above Sixth Ave. and Watts St., which features a picture of a young black girl below the message, "The most dangerous place for African Americans is in the womb."

"The billboard was offensive, especially during Black History Month, and I had intended to hold a press conference Friday in front of the billboard to protest the message of racial profiling and against a woman"s right to choose," Sharpton said Thursday.

Life Always, the Texas-based anti-abortion group that sponsored the ad, said it hoped to raise public awarenewss of Planned Parenthood's "targeting of minority neighborhoods."

It was scheduled to remain in SoHo for three weeks.

Representatives for Life Always