Eideard

A Port St. Lucie woman remained in the St. Lucie County jail Sunday after sheriff’s deputies say she placed drugs and used syringes under her baby’s daughter’s dress to avoid being searched by a female St. Lucie County Sheriff’s deputy.

Deanna Marie Angelico, 31, of the 800 block of Southeast Sweetbay Avenue, was charged with felony child neglect without great harm, felony drug possession and misdemeanor possession of drug equipment.

According to arrest reports, she and Michael G. Angelico, 23, were in a vehicle stopped by deputies in the 800 block of Prima Vista Boulevard after witnesses reported seeing two people shooting up drugs.

Michael Angelico…was charged with felony drug possession and misdemeanor possession of drug equipment. He was released Sunday on $5,500 bond; Deanna Angelico was held in lieu of $8,000 bond.

There probably was a word like “scumbag” used even in pre-biblical times for the behavior of people who enrolled in the addict’s lifestyle.

A 30-year-old woman who pleaded no contest with her boyfriend to burglarizing the home of a Sonoma Valley family killed in a car crash was sentenced…to a year in the county jail.

Amber True of Redwood City also received five years’ probation for the Nov. 30 break-in at the home of John and Susan Maloney, who died along with their children, Aiden, 8, and Grace, 5, when they were struck by a teen motorist on Highway 37 three days earlier.

Judge Arthur Wick rejected a plea from prosecutors for a six-year state prison term, saying there was no evidence True and boyfriend Michael Gutierrez, 27, knew why the house was empty before they crept in through a doggy door…

Earlier this month, Wicked handed down an eight-year prison sentence for Guitierrez, a longtime drug user with a criminal record that dates back more than half his lifetime. Gutierrez was charged with committing the burglary while on probation for another felony…

Prosecutor Mike Li argued her recent sobriety should not be a factor in determining a sentence for the crime, which he said caused a great hardship for surviving family members.

Also, he questioned how True and Gutierrez could not have seen memorial bouquets and cards scattered around the house. Li said “it was highly improbable that they did not know something was amiss.”

Throw away the key.

“I always keep a spare taste in my hat”
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

A former U.N envoy to Afghanistan on has questioned the “mental stability” of Hamid Karzai and suggested the Afghan president may be using drugs.

In an interview on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown,” Peter Galbraith described Karzai as “off-balance” and “emotional.” Galbraith also called for President Barack Obama to vastly limit Karzai’s power to appoint officials within the war-torn country until he proves himself a reliable partner to the U.S.

“He’s prone to tirades. He can be very emotional, act impulsively. In fact, some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan’s most profitable exports,” said Galbraith, in an apparent reference to opium or heroin.

When asked whether he meant Karzai has a substance abuse problem, Galbraith responded: “There are reports to that effect. But whatever the cause is, the reality is that he is — he can be very emotional…”

Galbraith was fired by the United Nations in September as the U.N.’s No. 2 official in Afghanistan after he openly accused his boss, Kai Eide, of concealing election fraud that benefited the campaign of the incumbent president. Eide angrily denied the accusation.

Karzai raised eyebrows most recently when he reportedly said at a closed meeting with selected Afghan lawmakers Saturday that he might quit the political process and join the Taliban if he continued to come under outside pressure to reform.

Karzai made the statement just days after he suggested foreigners were behind fraud in last year’s disputed elections. He even accused Galbraith, the deputy chief of the U.N. mission to Afghanistan before he was fired by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and Philippe Morrillon, a retired French military officer who headed an EU vote-monitoring mission, of rigging the election.

Maybe we’re just witnessing a few very political individuals coming apart under the stress of war.

Maybe we’re watching the truth within an unstable and corrupt relationship come to the surface. We haven’t been provided much more than grim platitudes from “official” sources over the course of U.S. nation-building in Afghanistan.