MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25 This week of MySpace rape cases, leap day literalists, and alleged "sunshine states" being plunged into total darkness kicks off with an interfamily political brawl straight outta Pennsylvania's Upper Providence Township, where a pair of brothers-in-law on opposite sides of the Obama/Clinton divide were reportedly reduced to choking, punching, and allegedly stabbing their differences home. Details come from the police report obtained by the Smoking Gun, which tracks the altercation to last Thursday night, when 41-year-old Sean Shurelds, an Obama supporter, and 28-year-old Jose Antonio Ortiz, a Clinton supporter, were conversing in Shurelds's kitchen. After Shurelds expressed his opinion that Barack Obama was clobbering Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail, Ortiz replied that "Obama was not a realist," instigating some mutual choking and punching, after which Ortiz allegedly stabbed Shurelds in the stomach. The pro-Obama Shurelds was flown to Hahnemann University Hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition, while the pro-Hillary Ortiz was arrested on charges of felony aggravated assault and jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26 Nothing happened today, unless you count the massive power outage that struck a significant portion of Florida, leaving several million people without electricity and stranding untold dozens in elevators. Further details come from Reuters, which credits the blackout to "a failure" within the Florida Power and Light system and reports power was restored to most areas "within several hours." With officials in Washington, D.C., finding no signs of a link to terrorism, the blackout's biggest danger appeared to be human stupidity inflamed by failing traffic lights. (As Lieutenant Elkin Sierra of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue reminded Reuters, when traffic signals are out, intersections should be treated as four-way stops. Please make a note of it.)

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27 The week continues with an absolutely horrible story from the Pacific Northwest, reported today by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. At the center of the saga: MySpace, the social networking site through which an unnamed, underage girl from Bellevue arranged to meet four young men (along with her female friend) on November 18. After the friend went home early, the girl was left alone with the young men in a car, which they drove around while supplying the girl with alcohol. Eventually the car was parked along a dark stretch of road in Bellevue's Eastgate area, where the young men allegedly took turns raping the young woman before dropping her back at her house. Once home, the girl told her mother about the assault, then logged back on to MySpace, where she was able to identify two of her attackers. Armed with her online identifications, detectives were able to get search warrants for the boys' computers. When cops found messages explicitly referencing the rape, all four of the alleged attackers—18-year-old Sergey Davniy and three unnamed 17-year-olds—were arrested, and last week all four were charged in King County Juvenile Court with second-degree rape. Included in the charging papers was a MySpace message in which one of the boys bragged about the assault, and in a statement to the court, Detective Carl Kleinknecht said Davniy admitted to the assault during questioning and reportedly implicated the other three boys. If convicted as juveniles, the teens would each spend less than a year in jail; if convicted as adults, the penalty goes up to eight years in prison. Prosecutors haven't decided how they will proceed.

••Speaking of troubled kids: Today, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske lobbied Congress on their behalf, urging the government to invest more money in the nation's child welfare system. Details come from the Seattle P-I, which reports Kerlikowske testified before a House Ways and Means subcommittee in a hearing organized by Washington State representative Jim McDermott, who's introduced legislation that would require the federal government to match state funding for foster care, and authorize an additional $50 million each year for adoption-incentive programs. "[Abuse and neglect] are often only the first chapter in a tragic story of violence, and increase the likelihood that a child will engage in later violence," said Kerlikowske in support of McDermott's Invest in Kids Act. "Children who survive abuse or neglect carry the emotional scars for life." Thank you, Chief Kerlikowske, for recognizing that the clobbered and forgotten youth of today are often the muggers and stabbers of tomorrow.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28 Today brings a welcome spin on the elderly-driver-mistakes-gas-for-brake-and-mows-down-16-people-at-a-farmers'-market story, thanks to the elderly driver on the Kitsap Peninsula who "became confused" and drove his car off a cliff, plummeting 40 feet to the beach below and mercifully injuring no one but himself. KIRO reports the plummeting took place around 1:00 p.m. yesterday near the Clearwater Casino, after which the elderly plummeter was taken to a Bremerton hospital with serious injuries.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 29 The week continues with leap day, the once-every-four-years calendar corrector that threatened to get squishingly literal this morning in Seattle's Belltown, where a woman on the fourth-floor ledge of the Josephinum apartments shut down traffic on Second Avenue for nearly four hours. Details come from eyewitnesses reporting to Slog, who described the ledge-dweller as blond, barefoot, and in a pink sweat suit, and her audience as a rotating collection of officials, concerned onlookers, and assholes yelling "jump." Further details come from the Seattle Times, which tracked the movements of Detective Kevin Grossman, the member of the police department's Crisis Intervention Team who, over the course of several tense hours, persuaded the distraught woman to climb back inside her apartment. For the first two hours, Grossman worked to establish a connection with the woman, passing her cigarettes and water and talking to her steadily, even when her back was turned. But for hour three, the detective disappeared inside, a negotiation ploy aimed at getting the woman to seek him out and join him. It worked: After returning herself safely to her apartment, the woman was taken to the psychiatric ward at Harborview Medical Center due to "diminished mental capacity."

SATURDAY, MARCH 1 Nothing happened today, unless you count the ongoing Israel-fueled bloodbath in Palestine.

SUNDAY, MARCH 2 Speaking of bloodbaths: The week ends with one, on the streets of Ballard, where early this morning a man reportedly beat another man to death with a metal pipe, after which the blood-soaked suspect was apprehended by Seattle police. As cops told the Seattle Times, the 45-year-old suspect and the male victim had been in an altercation on Friday, when the suspect saw the victim sleeping in his car near the intersection of Northwest 48th Street and Leary Avenue Northwest this morning, he was allegedly inspired to beat the sleeping man to death with a pipe. Stay tuned, and don't beat each other to death with pipes.

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