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NFL legend Dick Butkus has reportedly died on Thursday at the age of 80. Emergency crews arrived at Butkus’ home in Malibu around 12.51pm, where he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The recent Arizona Senate debate between Republican Blake Masters, Democrat Mark Kelly, and that Libertarian who was eerily focused on the age of consent laws being way too high, taught us two important things besides that you should never let a Libertarian babysit your tween. First, Mark Kelly is going to get crushed, and second, he’s short, and after Blake beats him in November, he should find something else to do with his life, like toiling for mithril in the mines of Moria or maybe bearing a ring to Mordor.

Pinal County announced Thursday that David Frisk is no longer its elections director, with the removal coming two days after some voters dealt with ballot shortages at various polling locations during the primary. Frisk will be replaced by Virginia Ross, who resigned from her role as county recorder to take on the position. “Pinal County can announce that David Frisk is no longer in the position of elections director and is no longer employed by Pinal County,” the county said in a statement.

Two top Arizona election officials abruptly quit their jobs before the state's primary elections, citing continuous threats from former President Donald Trump's supporters after the 2020 elections, multiple reports say. Leslie Hoffman, the elected county recorder in Yavapai County, said on Friday that she was stepping down later this month after facing two years of "nastiness" from election deniers, The Washington Post reported. Hoffman said elections director Lynn Constabile, who had worked for the county for 18 years, was leaving for the same reason, The Post reported. Constabile did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

If you don’t live in states such as California, Georgia, or Wisconsin, you may have been unaware there were various elections going on last night. A mix of local and special elections took place, including the first step in a special election to replace recently retired GOP Rep. Devin Nunes. Given what we know about the current electoral environment, namely that it’s terrible for Democrats, the results weren’t shocking. But they did provide more evidence of a coming red wave as November’s mid-terms approach.

A Russian state TV host called on the U.S. to remove President Joe Biden and reinstate former President Donald Trump days after Biden made his own call for a regime change aimed at Vladimir Putin in an off-scripted remark.

The Tucson City Council voted Friday to require city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. On Friday, in an emergency meeting, Mayor and Council in a 6-1 vote passed the ordinance that now requires employees to provide proof of at least one COVID-19 vaccination shot by Aug. 24. The measure includes a five-day suspension for city employees who do not comply; however, there are religious and medical exemptions to the ordinance.

"No less than the New England Journal of Medicine has dealt a body blow to America’s growing army of mask fascists......

My wife and I are in our mid fifties. We are grandparents. We have tried to play by the rules. Yesterday, I came home from lunch to find his and her notices in our mailbox from the IRS. The fiends have recalculated our income from a few years back and now suddenly want over 21,000 dollars in fees and penalties. They don't even audit you anymore. They just recalculate and demand payment. This is how they operate. So if this thing is worked out, we will pay five hundred bucks a month to the IRS for most of our remaining...

Andy Pafko, a Wisconsin native who eventually got his wish to play for the Milwaukee Braves and became a fan favorite, died Tuesday at 92 in a nursing home in Stevensville, Mich. Beyond playing for the Braves during their glory days in the late 1950s, Pafko played for the Chicago Cubs in the 1945 World Series, the last year the Cubs made it that far. He also played left field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951 and stood with his back against the wall at the Polo Grounds as Bobby Thomson hit the "shot heard 'round the world" to give...

Never did a vanity before. Sorry. But I do have a question.

SAN DIEGO -- Tony Gwynn, the prolific-hitting Hall of Fame outfielder who spent his entire 20-year career with the Padres, has been diagnosed with cancer of a salivary gland. Gwynn, a 15-time All-Star voted into the Hall in the first year he was eligible in 2007, has had three procedures since 1997 to remove non-cancerous tumors to the largest salivary gland, he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. But the latest operation last month discovered a malignant growth, he said.

Scolding Americans for our various sins is proving popular among an elite group of self-appointed moralists. Take well-meaning environmentalists who warn us that our plush lifestyles heat up and pollute the planet. To listen to former vice president Al Gore or New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, we must immediately curtail our carbon emissions — or face planetary destruction. Yet these influential prophets of doom do not have lives remotely similar to the lesser folk they lecture. From time to time, Al Gore hops on a private jet — and purchases “carbon offsets” as penances for the privilege. His mansion...

WASHINGTON -- The Minnesota Supreme Court has ended months of vote fraud and other assorted acts of skulduggery to pronounce Al Franken winner of the state's 2008 senatorial race over Republican Norm Coleman. The process was unseemly, and it is conceivable that the court's justices merely acted out of civic pride. They did not want Minnesota's U.S. Senate races to attain the sort of notoriety attached to aldermanic elections in Chicago or presidential elections in Iran. Franken is an admitted clown. As such, he will be the only admitted clown in the United States Senate, though he will be seated...

....The Republican opposition ranged from the denial that there is any proof that greenhouse gasses cause global warming. There are others who interpreted the bill as just another tax on Americans. The usual Republican crowd chanted that it will destroy the American industrial base and force American companies to move abroad where there are no such limitations.

President Barack Obama must not have had his Hopium before appearing on "The Tonight Show" last week, because he really screwed up. No, not the screw-up in which he abandoned his trusty teleprompter to ad-lib a joke about how he's such a lousy bowler, just like someone in the Special Olympics. If Obama were a Republican, he'd be toast, since Republicans have been cast as unfeeling monsters in the two-dimensional cartoon that is American politics on TV. But Obama is a Democrat, beloved by the glassy-eyed media as a symbol of hope and change, even if guys from Chicago's City...

As the U.S. financial crisis broadens and deepens, wiping out the wealth and savings of tens of millions, destroying hopes and dreams, it is hard not to see in all of this history's verdict upon this generation. We have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. For how did this befall us, save through decisions that brushed aside lessons that history and experience had taught our fathers? It all began with the corruption called sub-prime mortgages.

Rush Limbaugh ‘just an entertainer?" Well, Mark Twain was an entertainer. But he was also one of the finest satirical voices in our history, a searing mocker of our national conscience at the time of slavery. He made people laugh until it hurt, but his aim was fundamentally moral. For the Chairman of the Republican Party to call Limbaugh "just an entertainer" is both inaccurate and political suicide. Michael Steele saw that quickly, and apologized. ‘Nuff said. Steele allowed himself to slip on CNN's carefully scripted banana peel, but he knew better. Most of our media Neanderthals don't.

STIMULUS is one of those neutral, unexceptional words that is suddenly appropriated by politicians and debauched, so that ever after it will have connotations that are sinister, ironic and sleaze-ridden. Barack Obama's "stimulus" plan will be long remembered as the occasion when political euphemism triggered economic disaster. There is no terminology available to express adequately the appalling irresponsibility of this naked political banditry......

State by state, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill). is showing signs of breaking open a presidential race that looked deadlocked through much of September. A new wave of polls released Wednesday showed decisive leads for Obama in the critical states of Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania. That follows noticeable progress in polls in Virginia, which had looked safe for Sen. John McCain, and Florida, which had looked promising for McCain. This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds. Republican strategist Karl Rove had predicted this tectonic shift, writing at Rove.com...