Editorial: Short takes on roofing riddles, Trump troubles and on-court parking – STLtoday.com

Half-off special on roofing

Imagine coming home to find half of the shingles missing from your roof and debris all over the ground, even though you never ordered any roofing work. No note of explanation and no one in sight to answer questions.

St. Louis resident Laura McInnis, who is moving to Michigan, made this nightmare discovery last week as she was visiting her house before its sale. A roofing company apparently started work on the wrong house hers and then fled before their mistake could be detected. They left behind a badly secured blue tarp to cover the hole they created.

McInnis eventually tracked down the roofers working on another house several blocks away, and the company has promised to replace her roof free of charge, the Post-Dispatchs Erin Heffernan reported. McInnis seems satisfied to let bygones be bygones, but those roofers caused serious damage and tried to get away without owning up to it.

Had she not gone to extensive efforts to find them, chances are they would never have volunteered a word of it to their bosses. Police cant make her press charges. But those cowardly roofers dont deserve to get off scot-free.

Out of the blue, shortly before 8 oclock Thursday morning, President Donald Trump unleashed two tweets. Read together they said, I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (dont watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came. to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Years Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!

This was an official pronouncement of the president of the United States. Here at Short Takes, we like weird news. But considering the source, this is just too weird.

For reasons known but to himself and God, the leader of the free world thought it was a good idea to go public with a beef with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, betrothed co-hosts of MSNBCs Morning Joe. He thought it was a good idea to reference a plastic surgery. He thought to raise questions about their mental states.

Democrats and Republicans alike objected, some in strenuous terms. We thought the best response was offered by Republican Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska: "Please just stop. This isn't normal and it's beneath the dignity of your office."

In other beneath-the-dignity news: Few phrases roll off President Donald Trumps tongue with as much regularity as do the words fake news. Thats his reference to us, the news media. We report the truth, and when the truth of his bizarre tweets and public taunts and repeated missteps cast him in a bad light, he dismisses it all as fake news made up by reporters.

Which is strange, when you consider how he tries to impress visitors to his golf resorts with framed covers of Time magazine from March 1, 2009, depicting his photo with the headline, The Apprentice is a television smash! Another banner reads: Trump is hitting on all fronts even TV!

The cover is entirely fabricated. Time never published a March 1, 2009, issue. And it didnt profile Trump that year. And the magazine doesnt use exclamation points on its cover.

Trump, however, does use lots of exclamation points, especially in tweets, most of the time when theyre unnecessary and add nothing to the idea hes trying to convey. So the exclamation point is a dead giveaway that he had a personal hand in fabricating his own fake-news magazine cover. Sad.

When Mizzous legendary basketball coach Norm Stewart instructed his players to drive for the basket, he didn't mean the sort of driving that got 23-year-old Nathaniel J. Conant arrested early Sunday morning. Conant went for a joyride in a Volkswagen Passat and wound up on Norm Stewart Court inside the Mizzou Arena, police say.

Conant, of Columbia, Mo., drove the vehicle through a closed gate and then a garage door about 4 a.m., according toUniversity of Missouri police. Golf carts and a gate were damaged during the ride, which police said involved the car making it to the court and back out.

Conant turned himself in after he was identified as the suspect and contacted by police. He was charged with second-degree burglary and four counts of first-degree property damage. He also was relieved of his temporary employment as a utility worker for the university athletic department.

Former U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Peoria, once known for his six-pack abs and $5,000 office chandelier, is due in court next month on 24 criminal counts, including theft of government funds, fraud and making false statements.

The German word, schadenfreude, meaning to take joy in the misfortune of others, must have been created for this. It was hard to like Schock, 36, who flaunted the good life, allegedly achieved by treating government and campaign funds as a personal piggy bank. He gaudily redecorated his office to look like Downton Abbey, modeled for the cover of Mens Health and charged thousands of dollars to his government-funded office account for such things as private flights, new cars and tickets to the Super Bowl.

Schock, who was the youngest member of the House when he went to Congress in 2009, resigned on March 31, 2015, immersed in scandal. He pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.

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Editorial: Short takes on roofing riddles, Trump troubles and on-court parking - STLtoday.com