Did Ron Paul Supporters Cross the Line?

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Fuzzy Math

The town clerk of Sutton, New Hampshire incurred the wrath of Ron Paul supporters following last week's primary election. Jennifer Call tells the Concord Monitor she somehow ended up recording that Paul received no votes in her town out of the 920 cast. But by the next morning the mistake had been fixed, and Paul received credit for 31 votes.

Call says over the next few hours she received about 40 calls from Paul supporters. Some falsely claimed they were media looking into a story about voter fraud. Others yelled she had committed treason. One said she should be shot. She also received enough calls at home that she locked her doors, unhooked her answering machine and requested an unlisted number.

Of her experience with Paul supporters, Call says — "most of these people are not rational."

Killing Fields

The New York Times published a lengthy article Sunday alleging that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are responsible for 121 killings since their return from combat. The Times wrote the veterans have left — "a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak."

But the Times did not compare its anecdotal statistics for military personnel against the averages for the general population. Powerline.com reports that the figure of 121 homicides out of a conservative estimate of 700,000 returning veterans over six years works out to a mere fraction of the national average for homicides committed by males aged 18 to 24.

The Times' figure for veterans involved in fatal automobile accidents is also not placed in context with members of the general driving population — who are 12 times more likely to be involved in a fatality than Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Blast From the Past

The man credited with convincing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair about the dangers of global warming — now says green activists are actually hurting their own cause. Media reports say former chief scientific adviser Sir David King claims environmentalists are — "Keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century."

King says the only way to beat global warming is by relying more on nuclear, wind, and other power sources — and use genetically modified food. He says aviation has been unfairly scapegoated — and that many attempted fixes by environmentalists just make things worse.

But King's contentions were dismissed by the head of Greenpeace, who says it is King who is living in the past.

Crime and Punishment

When the state of Virginia instituted a set of abusive driver fees — charging serious offenders hundreds — sometimes thousands in extra penalties — it said they were aimed at only the worst drivers. But now a 19-year-old boy from Newport News has been ordered to pay more than $1,000 for recklessly operating — his bicycle.

Kajuan Cornish says he was stopped by a police officer who said he was riding too fast through an intersection. Now Cornish must pay the fee or hire an attorney to fight it in court.

Cornish was assessed the fine one day after Virginia Governor Tim Kaine admitted the abusive driver fees were a failure — and called for them to be repealed.

— FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.