Officer Eric Casebolt bravely subdues unarmed, 100-lb black teen without shooting her to death.

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- A birthday pool party in the affluent Craig Ranch community of McKinney, Texas, erupted in chaos and violence early Friday evening amid accusations of police racism and brutality. The excessive actions of Corporal Eric Casebolt -- which included a lot of profanity, a James T. Kirk-inspired combat roll, tackling scantily clad girls in bikinis who were armed with only towels, and drawing his sidearm on bystanders attempting to peacefully diffuse the aggression -- renewed public outcry about the extreme use of force by police. But Republican lawmakers in the South see the situation differently. According to them, the fact that no unarmed black teens were actually blown to pieces by cops demonstrates “tremendous restraint and progress in the evolution of our peacekeeping policies.”

SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- As summer approaches, California is preparing to enter its fourth year of a record-breaking and potentially devastating drought. Concerns voiced by state lawmakers and emergency management officials about the crisis led Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency. But this week, despite lackluster conservation efforts and voluntary rationing, some of Southern California’s largest cities managed to exceed the state’s cutback goals. “California still leads the nation in unemployment,” one assemblyperson noted. “Our long-term jobless have been forced to eliminate a lot of luxuries and extraneous bills from their lives to stave off poverty. The silver lining is that their inability to keep the water on is working wonders for our attempts to lower consumption and usage levels.”