A housekeeper at West Point who was busted with a bag full of frozen meatballs that didn't belong to her is facing two years in prison on federal charges of larceny and possession of stolen property.

David Ranta was released from prison Thursday after serving 23 years for a crime he did not commit. On Friday however, his first full day of freedom, he suffered a serious heart attack and had to be rushed to an area hospital where he now waits to undergo several procedures that will hopefully clear blockages from his arteries.

The Welsh Sexagenarian who made international headlines after he was caught on camera using his bare hands to drag a 6-foot dusky shark away from children bathing in the ocean off Australia's Sunshine Coast revealed this week that he had been fired from his job at a children's charity after his bosses saw footage of his heroic actions.

Certain things cannot be borne. There are limits to what the people will put up with from its news outlets, and the Times' recent attempt to trick us all into eating celery goes beyond the confines of human decency.

Let's examine this issue calmly, one step at a time. People invented pickling thousands of years ago as a way to preserve perishable foods. The preservation comes from acidity. That's that classic sourish, pickly flavor. Americans consume more than 20 billion pickles a year. Most of those pickles are dill. Dill pickles are the most popular kind of pickles.

The South Texas family law judge who garnered Internet infamy last year after a YouTube video emerged showing him severely beating his then-teenage daughter has been reinstated by the state's Supreme Court effective immediately.

Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown (D-West) has been prohibited from speaking on the House floor after she used the word "vagina" while speaking out against a proposed anti-abortion bill.

The nondenominational Christian academy Cincinnati Hills is receiving some serious flak today for allegedly rescinding a job offer extended to music teacher Jonathan Zeng because he answered affirmatively when asked if he was gay.

An Ohio mother is fuming today after her son was recently denied his diploma because she and other relatives cheered too loudly for Mt. Healthy senior Anthony Cornist as he walked on stage during the high school's graduation ceremony.

A Texas honor student who works both part-time and full-time jobs to support her two siblings was ordered to spend 24 hours in jail and pay a $100 fine after she missed a few days of school.

Lauren Odes of New Jersey says she was terminated from her data entry position at the Manhattan-based lingerie company Native Intimates because her Orthodox Jewish employers thought she was "too hot."

Associate Justice Stephen Breyer, it was revealed yesterday, had his Georgetown home broken into earlier this month by a burglar who made away with some $3,000 worth of stuff.

A 24-year-old UC San Diego engineering student has come forward with an unbelievable story about being forgotten inside a tiny, filthy DEA holding cell for five days following a drug raid.

Sitting in an airplane on a tarmac in Detroit, lifelong Brooklynite Robert Sayegh turned to his seatmate and said, "What's taking so fucking long to close the overheard compartments?" Shortly thereafter, the pilot turned the airplane around. Police removed Sayegh from the plane for being "disruptive."

Martha's Vineyard resident Frank Hebert, who has been confined to a wheelchair for the past 10 years following a car accident, will be tried for beating the man who allegedly molested the girl he considers his granddaughter. Aren't there worse criminals out there we should be worried about prosecuting?

The good news is that Anthony Graves was released from prison back in October after serving eighteen years on death row for a murder that prosecutors now say he had nothing to do with. Charges dropped, man freed, name cleared. Good things! The bad news is that Graves is now rightly seeking some financial compensation for the nearly two decades he spent in the Texas hoosegow, but the state comptroller's office is telling him and his lawyers no, because of a technicality.

Vanity Fair's Todd S. Purdum (writing for mysterious reasons at Politico) reveals that despite the Situation asking, no Jersey Shore cast members will attend this weekend's big bash in DC. And they call it democracy. [Politico]

It was a miserable, terrible year full of death and loss. Here are a few of the things we will miss, and the things that we wish had died in their place. Please offer your own suggestions in comments.

Lord Brian Griffiths of Fforestfach is a vice chairman at Goldman Sachs Intl., a life peer under England's nobility scheme, and Christian theorist of "biblically based wealth creation." Just the man to explain how Goldman's taxpayer-financed bonuses are perfectly moral.

The most silent victims of crime busts: dogs. Poor pups get executed by rabid cops who shoot first, bark questions last. Now, Maryland cops have to report to the governor's office whenever they kill a pooch. [Daily Beast]