News of the Weird - In Hizzoner

In honor of the dishonored, here comes a two-fer:

Voters in tiny Sodaville, Oregon, population 290, elected Thomas Brady Harrington, 33, mayor in November, despite a criminal rap sheet that included robbery, eluding a police officer, illegal firearms possession, reckless endangerment, and assorted other charges. One resident trying t explain the outcome suggested that voters might have confused Harrington with his father , local businessman Thomas L. Harrington.

By the way, according to the Lebanon-Express, he took on the incumbent mayor and whooped her behind! A whopping 79-66 votes. Yes, it does make Wasilla look still silly, but still... read on.
Further news from the Express details that Harrington became interested in local politics when he found out that a previous city recorder embezzled $30,000.*

In Massachusetts in November, a Suffolk County judge turned down a compensation claim by Robert Aldrich, described by prosecutors as a career criminal, for income lost during "wrongful" incarceration after he'd been illegally arrested for burglary. The judge said she'd been able to find any "income" Aldrich migh have earned during his six months in jail aside from home-improvement work he admittedly kept "off the books" to avoid paying taxes, but a prosecution spokesman summed it up more bluntly: "The defendant is a career B & E (breaking and entering) man seeking compensation for burglaries he couldn't commit while locked up."

According to The Boston Globe, Aldrich the judge may have allowed Mr. Aldrich to make some collection on his "lost" under-the-table dealings, if she had believed that he was making as much as he was claiming. The problem may have been, however, that Aldrich was claiming $4000 per month for a total of sixty-seven thousand dollars. Furthermore, although previous judges had ruled his arrest as 'wrong', she looked over the evidence in the cases provided and had no doubt that he had committed the burglaries.
Natch.

via Chuck Shepherd in "News of the Weird" from Chicago Reader, December 11, 2008 edition, p. 79. (btw, notice how in previous editions of my NotW I would list the page around 100? 88 pages total, this time. Papers are shrinking...)

*The faux-journalist in me says that I should report that he didn't mean it that way, that he seems troubled by the ineptitude of the council and how it has not been looking for solutions for its monies- or water-shortages. But if you want that, that's why we give you the source...