Weds: Previous Guy Tells the Judge to Go F*$@ Himself

Enough is Enough!!



It felt like just another flight for South African pilot Rudolph Erasmus, until he noticed an extra passenger on his plane at 11,000ft in the air.

However, it wasn't a human, but a cobra slithering under his seat.

"To be truly honest, it's as if my brain did not register what was going on," he told the BBC.

"It was a moment of [...] awe," he added, saying he initially thought the cold feeling on his back was his water bottle.

"I felt this cool sensation, sort of, crawling up my shirt," he said, thinking he may not have closed the bottle properly and water might have been dripping down his shirt.

"As I turned to the left and looked down I saw the cobra [...] receding its head backwards underneath the seat."

He then made an emergency landing on his flight from Bloemfontein to Pretoria. The private plane, a Beechcraft Baron 58, was carrying four passengers, as well as the snake.

A bite from a Cape cobra is lethal and can kill someone in just 30 minutes, so not wanting to cause panic, Mr Erasmus says he thought carefully before calmly telling those on board that there was an extra unwanted voyager.

He was also "so scared the snake might have gone to the back and cause mass panic".

In the end, he decided the tell them. "I did inform the passengers: 'Listen the snake is inside the aircraft, it's underneath my seat, so let's try and get down to the ground as soon as we can.'"

So how did the passengers react? Mr Erasmus described a moment of absolute silence: "You could hear a needle drop and I think everyone froze for a moment or two."

Pilots are trained for lots of scenarios, but certainly not for dealing with snakes in the cockpit he said, telling the BBC that panicking would have just made the situation worse.

The plane made an emergency landing in the city of Welkom.

However, the presence of the snake, although shocking, was not a total surprise. Two people working at Worcester flying club where the plane first took off, said they had earlier spotted a reptile taking refuge under the aircraft. They tried to "grab" it, but without success.

Mr Erasmus said he tried to find the snake before boarding the aircraft with his passengers, but "unfortunately it was not there, so we all then safely assumed that it must have crawled out overnight or earlier that morning, which was on Monday".

The slithering passenger is still missing, as engineers who then stripped the plane are yet to find it.

DeathSentence Goes After Public Unions.  

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could head into the GOP presidential primary against Donald Trump with a shiny new conservative credential: destroyer of public-sector labor unions.

Republicans in the Sunshine State are moving ahead with legislation designed to make it harder for government employee unions to collect dues and, well, to exist at all. The bill cleared the GOP-dominated state Senate in Tallahassee last week, despite several Republican lawmakers joining their Democratic colleagues and voting against it.

The bill has not yet passed the state House, which is also under solid GOP command, and it must make it through committee before reaching the House floor. DeSantis, who’s leading a broad attack on what he claims is “wokeism” in education, has publicly backed the bill as it relates to teachers unions.

Unions and their Democratic allies have managed to keep the grab bag of anti-labor provisions at bay for several years. But now they are alarmed — and furious — at the legislation’s advance.

Adding to their fury is the fact that Senate Republicans included a carveout to the bill that protects unions representing police, firefighters and corrections officers — that is, unions more likely to politically support Republicans.

In its current form, the bill would affect teachers, school support staff, bus drivers, janitors and sanitation workers, parks and library employees and others across the public sector whose unions tend to support Democrats.

“The goal of the bill is to eliminate collective bargaining for public-sector workers who the governor doesn’t like,” said Rich Templin, director of politics and public policy at the Florida AFL-CIO labor federation. “Nobody that’s directly involved has asked for this. This is another in a very long line of policies being advanced solely for the governor’s run for the White House.”

It Didn't Exactly Skyrocket Scott Walker's Presidential Hopes

I Sure As Hell Don't Want to Be in Jerusalem If Netanyahu's In Charge.

U.S. Jews will end their ritual Passover meals Wednesday night in essentially the same way as Jews in Israel, with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem.” To some the ancient prayer said at the close of the Seder is literal, a kind of Zionist call; to others it’s more about aspiring to a better world, to personal redemption. Either way, the holiday about Jewish liberation from slavery is the most-celebrated for U.S. Jews, a time when even the dispassionate join in a display of peoplehood.

Washington Protects Women's Rights.  Washington State, That Is.

Washington state's government said on Tuesday it had purchased a three-year supply of abortion pill mifepristone as a Texas judge mulls a nationwide ban on the medication's sale.

The state's Democratic governor directed its Department of Corrections, which has a pharmacy license, to purchase the medication last month, a government statement said.

The full shipment was delivered on March 31, it added.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas could soon order the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its 22-year-old approval for a pill used in the most common form of abortion in the United States, or order the approval revoked outright.

"Health care should be decided by a patient and their doctor, not a judge in Texas," Washington Governor Jay Inslee said in a tweet, adding that the purchase ensured "continued access" for all patients in his state.