Tom Connolly, a 49-year-old lawyer from Scarborough, Maine, may give more thought to next year’s Halloween costume. He was arrested at gunpoint and charged with criminal threatening, after he stood at a highway construction site on Interstate 295 while wearing an Osama bin Laden costume and waving a sign.

When the police officers arrived after being alerted by motorists’ calls, they found a man wearing a white robe and plastic dynamite, grenades, and a replica of an A-K-47 assault rifle. South Portland Police Chief Ed Googins says “The whole thing is just incredibly bizarre, it just crossed the line.” Connolly, who was the Democratic nominee for governor of Maine in 1998, says he intends to plead not guilty. Interestingly, Connolly first drew national attention when he was identified as the Democrat who tipped the media to President George Bush’s 1976 drunken-driving arrest in Kennebunkport.

I hope that none of you dressed as Osama yesterday! LOL

I remember when we were house hunting, god I hope we don’t do that again for a long time. The experience of dealing with a real estate broker, real estate lawyer, mortgage broker and securing a mortgage with the bank were all new, and frankly intimidating experiences for the two of us. Plus, it was around that time that we started hearing more and more stories about Mortgage Fraud in the news.

The news stories were about Mortgage scams where you’d be approved for a loan at reasonable rates but before it was finalized the mortgage company would ask for fees for this or that, and then perhaps ask for more money stating that your approved mortgage wouldn’t be finalized until you paid the rest of the fees they were asking for at that time. Then there were other stories about hidden fees, people being told their month payments would be lower than what they ended up paying in the end. It sounded like there were a lot of scams going on out there and that we’d better be careful in our hunt for a mortgage.

We did our research, talked to friends and ended up using a Real Estate broker and Lawyer that had been recommended by our friends, but it was still a stressful process. It would have made things a bit easier if we’d come across personalhomeloanmortgages.com when we were buying our house. There is so much information there, that I would have appreciated as a novice. There’s articles explaining mortgage brokers, Understanding home equity loans, Mortgage basics - called appropriately Mortgage 101. You can do local searches by city to search housing market trends, local mortgage and real estate related service provider listings.

If you want to learn more you can visit their Financial Forum and talk with others about things like how to spot hidden fees, and which types of loans work best plus hundreds of other topics. You’ll feel secure when you use this site because all customer data is protected through SecureTrust.

Have a look at this site if you’re in the market for a new home or looking to renew the mortgage on your home. I think you’ll get some very useful and timely information that will help you make the decisions that are right for you.

How much pot does it take to get to sleep?

After police found 638 marijuana plants in a Hastings, England, warehouse rented by David Churchward in September, he said he was forced to grow the plants (which would make more than 280,000 marijuana cigarettes) to help his wife, because she has difficulty sleeping. And Reuters reported in September that a farm woman in Lobez, Poland, who had been charged with growing marijuana, said she was forced to because her cow had been acting “skittish and unruly” until she put cannabis in the feed.

I wonder if this little guy has been eating any marijuana munchies, or if he just needs some sleep too?

Lawyer can’t think Logically?

At the Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court in England in July, Andrew Curzon was charged with wrongfully attempting to cash a neighbor’s pension-adjustment check, in the equivalent of about $220,000. The explanation by Curzon (who is a law student) is that he has “dyspraxia,” which renders him unable “to engage in logical thinking.”

Respected Wellington, New Zealand, litigator Rob Moodie, 67, said in July that he is tired of the old-boy network of male lawyers and judges, and that henceforth he will show his disdain by dressing in women’s clothes in court.The worse the “corruption” he senses, the frillier will be his outfits, said the married father of three, who also said he happens to like women’s clothes, but that it took the pervasive male courthouse culture to bring that into the open.

Moodie said already he has enjoyed giving “a flash of lace at the urinal” but said he would keep his trademark moustache.