Remember Lebanon, Pa., gun-toting soccer mom Meleanie Hain, whom we wrote about in December? Hain had developed the habit of attending her young daughter’s soccer games strapped with a loaded Glock, and was suing the Lebanon County Sheriff’s Dept. for revoking her license to carry and conceal a handgun. We thought that the story was interesting in a wingnut sort of way — I believe I made a joke about her kid always getting a majority of the orange slices — but no one’s laughing now.

Disturbing word comes today that Hain was shot and killed in her kitchen by her husband on Wednesday in a crime that was, of all things, apparently captured on video chat as she was talking with a friend. A horrific turn of events that kind of brings Friday to an abrupt stop.

I’m not going to get into a whole thing about gun control here. I’m ill-equipped for such a weighty debate involving psychology and technology; I have enough trouble trying to decide on the setting for the toaster. But it’s not much of a leap, sadly, to look at a photo like the one above, and then discover that the subject has met some grisly death due to a firearm. It just isn’t. Read more…

You know, most of the whole “naked cell phone pictures” phenomenon has centered mostly around high school girls (namely, cheerleaders) sending photos around to local boys for attention. But then this guy came around:

He’s a youth soccer coach in New Jersey who decided that it was a good idea to show some 13-year-old boys nude photos on his phone. Only, it appears they were of him. Oof.

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Congratulations, U.S.A., we’re off the hook as the lone purveyor of inexplicable violence at youth sporting events, thanks to this tale of a disturbing attack at a 2006 U-13 girl’s soccer game in Hamilton, Ontario has finally surfaced. How did it come out? Well, some three years after the incident, the police officer who attacked an opposing child’s parent might finally get her due demotion.

(Hey, you might lose your marbles if you had to dress like this, too.)

According to the HAMILTON SPECTATOR, 40-year-old Constable Wendy Bromfield pleaded guilty to misconduct charges at a Police Services Act hearing earlier this week, all connected to a 2006 incident that started when she ratted out an player on the team opposing her daughter’s squad. The victim of Brumfield’s vigilante refereeing was ejected shortly thereafter, and Brumfield’s daughter’s team won the game.

That’s when things got interesting. One of the players from the losing team walked up to Bromfield, blamed her for the ejection and, because of that, the loss, spitting and cursing at her (according to Bromfield). And what happened when Brumfield brought the player over to the opposing team’s coach? She couldn’t constrain herself any more, and attacked the kid’s father.

Let’s see if we can make an equation out of this: Either Canadian cops > or = Los Angeles riot cops. Right? That seems straight, doesn’t it? Maybe we forgot to carry a one.

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Junior soccer officials in Northumberland in England have had quite enough of terrorizing brats that attempt to ruin every match with their selfish and self-centered behavior. We, of course, would be referring to the soccer parents that abuse referees 86% of the time, according to their surveys. Therefore, they’ve turned to Mel Gibson for a solution.

Though they won’t be able to build a cage quite as nice as this one, the officials will be setting up barriers on a trial basis and demanding that parents stand behind them during matches to cut down on abuses of children, referees, and other delicate people. Eventually, parents will discover the joys of blow darts and TASER guns, but they have calmed down in previous smaller trials.

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