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From The Virginian-Pilot:
Michael Vick plans to plead guilty to state dogfighting charges in an effort to get an early release from federal prison and enter a halfway house, according to papers filed in Surry County Circuit Court.
VICE UNIT: Obama is Biden his time and keeping rumors at Bayh when it comes to his VP candidate, but the two senators believed to be atop his short list are given prime-time convention speaking slots, raising speculation it’s one of them.
COLOR-CODED: Reuters offers an analysis of how race has bubbled below the surface throughout this campaign, and how it manifests itself in coded language.
SAVANNAH RIVER ECOLOGY LAB: Less than two years after it looked like the ground-breaking, 54-year-old lab would be shut down for lack of funding, its own fundraising ventures have exceeded expectations and drawn in $2 million.
BIGFOOT IN THE DOOR: The Clayton County cop and former corrections officer who claim to have a frozen Bigfoot body will hold a press conference this afternoon in Palo Alto, Calif., to announce their findings. So far, even Bigfoot experts aren’t buying it.
WETLANDS: Can survive a drought, despite appearing dried-up.
BRAVES: Swept by the Cubs in six games for the first time since 1876, despite Mark Kotsay hitting for the cycle.
VICK: Bankruptcy judge appoints a trustee to oversee the troubled QB’s finances, after his initial trustee was charged with securities fraud.
ETERNAL SUNSHINE: Falcons third-string QB Joey Harrington, whose Detroit teammates used to call him “Joey Sunshine” for his sunny disposition amid miserable circumstances, still hasn’t given up hope.
In 2004, Michael Vick signed a 10-year, $130 million contract with the Atlanta Falcons that made him the highest paid quarterback in the NFL.
Yesterday, the AJC reports, Vick filed for bankruptcy protection in Virginia with an estimated debt of anywhere from $10 to $50 million. Vick is serving a 23-month sentence in Leavenworth; his scheduled release date is June 2009.
WILDFIRES: Cumberland Island fire is 90 percent contained; progress made against California wildfires could be undermined by hot, dry weather this week.
VICK: Files for bankruptcy.
PLANE DEALING: The malfunctioning jet that Obama had to make an unscheduled landing in yesterday wasn’t his usual plane; it was previously used by Hillary Clinton. He still made it to Atlanta, though, appearing at two fundraisers last night and at McEachern High in Powder Springs today.
THE BURLY GATES: Atlantic Station’s Millennium Gate is revealed, and the Christian Science Monitor reports that the 82-foot-tall, $20 million monument is “a serious statement that risks, against the topsy-turvy backdrop of modern mass development, to become a legacy to 21st-century kitsch.”
HOUSE DIVIDED: An Atlanta family is trying to sell its mansion so it can give half its worth, about $800,000, to fight hunger in Ghana.
SEX OFFENDER LAW: Homeless Gainesville sex offender challenges a Georgia law that doesn’t allow him to register with the state’s sex-offender list without including an address.
IRONY: Paulding County restaurateur/racist thinks free speech should allow him to call Obama a monkey on his restaurant’s marquee but shouldn’t allow others to call him a racist:
“I believe in your right and my right or anybody else’s right to say what they want without being criticized as being a racist,” said Lanzo.
Today’s Washington Post reports on the fate of the dogs found at ex-Falcon Michael Vick’s notorious Bad Newz Kennels compound in Virgina. Apparently, animals rescued from similar – if less publicized – circumstances are typically considered poor candidates for rehabilitation and are typically put down.
But because of the intense public outcry over the treatment of the dogs in Vick’s operation, the judge provided for each of the 49 rescued pit bulls to be evaluated and considered for placement in shelters or even private homes.
Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption.
As editor Scott Freeman recently reported, one of those dogs, Lucky 7, had been fostered by Smyrna tattoo artist Brandon Bond, but was hit by a car and killed last week near its new home in Florida.
The Post piece concludes:
As with any celebrity case, the legacy of the Vick bust has been far-reaching. Dogfighting raids across the country have tripled in the past year. Hundreds of law enforcement officers have been trained to detect the signs of underground rings. And, in some cases, officials have asked pit bull behavior experts to evaluate seized fighting dogs rather than automatically euthanizing them. But most dogfighters don’t have the kind of money that Vick did. So even those deemed worthy of a second chance don’t always get one.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
“Lucky 7,” a female pit bull rescued from fallen Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick was killed last Friday in Florida when she was struck by a car.
The dog was one of three that were fostered by Smyrna tattoo artist Brandon Bond and his organization, Atlanta Pitbull Rescue. The dog was eventually adopted by a man in Florida.
According to Bond, Lucky 7 was used as a “breeding dog” on the Vick property where rape stands were discovered, which are benches used in forced breeding and torture. Her face and legs were covered with scars from puncture wounds and tears from teeth where she had obviously been attacked by the males during breeding and fighting. She was pregnant when she was confiscated, and lost the puppies when she was spayed by veterinarians with the U.S. Justice department.
“She was so happy, full of life, curious, and not afraid of anything,” Bond said. “She never showed one single sign of aggression, or unhappiness, it was like she had forgotten the horrors of her past entirely. Today is a sad day for animal lovers everywhere.”
Lucky 7 escaped from her yard on Friday, and was struck by a car. The motorist stopped and drove the dog to an animal hospital, but it died en route.
“She finally got to be a dog, for the first time in her life,” Bond said. “She was happy, her new dad gave her the best six months of her life, and I know she was grateful for it, I could see it in her smile. She even slept in his bed with him. It’s a terrible loss.”
(Photo courtesy Atlanta Pitbull Rescue)
OBAMA: Tries to solidify his standing as presumptive nominee by visiting the House of Representatives and taking a “victory lap,” as the NYT calls it.
BONEHEADED: Without even being asked, teen being questioned about an unrelated crime tells police officers that he and a friend dug up a 1921 grave, stole the skull and made a bong out of it.
ATLANTA NO. 1 FOR SINGLES: Maybe now there actually will be thousands of local singles waiting for our call.
BAN KI-MOON: U.N. secretary-general, while visiting Atlanta, calls for Myanmar to allow in foreign aid workers.
CLAYTON COUNTY: Has the best-tasting water in metro Atlanta.
BURNING TO THE VICK: Judge orders Michael Vick to repay more than $2.4 million to a Canadian bank for defaulting on a loan.
UNIONS FIGHT LAYOFFS: Fired city workers and union leaders say Mayor Franklin didn’t exhaust enough short-term options before laying off 441 employees.
YOU’VE COME A LONG WAY, RABIES: Hall County has its 20th reported case of rabies this year. AccessNorthGa has used one of its finest rabies file photos for this story.
EVENT VERIZON: Girl discovers that a Verizon store manager, while doing an “emergency battery charge” on her phone, sent himself a copy of a revealing photo she had taken of herself on her phone. WSB is so outraged on her behalf that it posted a (cropped) copy of the photo on its home page.
FALCONS: Put a period at the end of Michael Vick’s sentence.
AL FRESCO: Rejuvenated Al Horford and the Hawks try to even the series with the Celtics tonight.
CLAYTON: Has another chaotic school board meeting, this time while trying to vote on a contract for its new corrective superintendent.
A LOAN IN THE DARK: Only one Georgia technical school participates in the federal student loan program, leaving the state with the highest percentage in the country of tech schools students without access to the federal loans.
SWAMPWISE: Late Okefenokee stalwart Oscar the alligator, who was at least in his mid-60s when he died last July, will be memorialized in a dinosaurlike skeleton display at the park.
VICIOUS CYCLE: Kanstantin Sivtsov of Belarus wins the Tour de Georgia.
GA. DEMS: Hoping Obamania and GOP infighting will grease their wheels in November, but also having to robo-call in a search for candidates for certain districts.
GRADY EXPECTATIONS: New York doctor demands severance from Grady after he quit his job in NY and moved to Georgia with his wife, only to have his job offer at Grady withdrawn after they got here.
NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP: Memphis crumbles, Mario Chalmers hits the shot of his life and Kansas wins in OT.
GRADY EXPECTATIONS: Robert M. Woodruff Foundation gives $200 million cash donation to the ailing hospital to keep it afloat as power is transferred.
THE LONGEST YARD: Michael Vick initiates mail correspondence with Arthur Blank, telling the Falcons owner he’s playing football in prison and washing pots and pans for 12 cents an hour.
FLIPPING A BIRD? Unnamed active Falcons player is subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in NFL performance-enhancing drug investigation.
SPRING BREAK! Despite having made almost no progress in the quest to meet SACS’s nine accreditation-hinging mandates, Clayton County Schools administration is taking its scheduled five days off for spring break like everyone else in the school system. Meanwhile, the interim superintendent pleads for leniency.
IT TOLLS FOR FEE: I-85 OTP could be getting optional toll lanes to ease traffic congestion, possibly as far north as I-985.
STONY BURKE: Lobbyist with vaguely subdivisionesque name is tapped as Southern Co.’s new “director of federal legislative meddling affairs.”
LAKE LANIER: Will be the site of Canadian Olympic trials next month, presumably for its mud-racing team.
GOING INTO LABOR: Delta flight attendants to vote on unionization.
ROAD TO HELL: Will be repaved with good intentions every weekend for the next eight months.
HOLDS WATER? Carol Couch stumps for state water plan at Ga. Tech.
DROUGHT: Downgraded from “exceptional” to “extreme,” skipping over “badass.”
DOGFIGHTING: Austell ring broken up.
MICHAEL VICK: State dogfighting trial postponed until June 27.
WIND OUT OF OUR SALES: Legislators are predicting the bill that would allow communities to vote on whether they want to allow Sunday alcohol sales won’t make it to the House floor for a vote.
SINISTER MINISTER: Habersham County reverend busted for allegedly having nine sexually explicit online chats with undercover cop posing as 14-year-old girl. (And I swear I won’t harp on this anymore, but AccessNorthGa.com has yet another insightful news graphic.)
A federal judge ruled today that former Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick is entitled to most of the $20 million in bonus money that he was paid by the team prior to his imprisonment on dogfighting convictions.
A special master had ruled in October that Vick had to return all the money to the Falcons. The NFL player’s union appealed that decision and U.S. District Judge David Doty of Minneapolis ruled that returning the money would violate the league’s collective bargaining agreement. He ruled that the league can only recoup bonus money, and only $3.75 million of the Vick money came from a signing bonus.
While the Falcons try to breathe life into their franchise, Vick remains in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan. No word on whether he was able to watch the Super Bowl.
Michael Vick’s pit bulls are getting the celeb-reality treatment. The much-pitied animals will be featured on the upcoming season of the National Geographic Channel’s “Dogtown,” according to a recent story in the Hollywood Reporter.
National Geographic Channel said Monday that its new series “Dogtown” will spend the next few months documenting the attempted rehabilitation of 22 dogs that belonged to jailed Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and are now residing at Dogtown, the Best Friends animal sanctuary in Utah.
“Dogtown” is in production on new episodes set to premiere in the summer.
The series will focus on four of the toughest cases as the experts at Dogtown try to “resocialize these seriously aggressive pit bulls.”
You may have noticed our print cover this week: A Jack Russell terrier named Roux is digging her teeth deep into a Michael Vick jersey.
No. 7. Get it? 2007? Well, I thought it was a witty idea.
Roux, who’s owned and trained by my friend Melissa Nunnink, actually was Staff Photographer Joeff Davis’ second model for the cover shoot. The first was Bella, a pit bull whose time was volunteered by former CL staffer Noah Gardenswartz.
